Play Home Videos and Digital Slideshows on Media Player Mobile

For this issue, I wanted to find something that power users could do with their Windows Mobile device to make it truly entertaining. Right now, you might carry around photos of your family and pets and maybe even your latest exotic vacation, but leave videos of your children at home. Everyone expects more than a typical stack of photos these days, and it would be a shame to keep your most cherished video moments at home. Using two free applications from Microsoft, you can create slideshows and videos that will play on your Windows Mobile device and are sure to impress.

Wallet photos—21st century style

With digital photography vastly outpacing standard film photography in the home, it only makes sense that we move away from paper pictures and display our photos in the digital realm. Using Microsoft Photo Story 3 for Windows (http://microsoft.com/photostory), you can create a multimedia slideshow (Fig. 1) that will run on your Windows Mobile device. The software is available as a free download from Microsoft and works on computers running the Windows XP operating system.

Fig. 1: With Microsoft Photo Story 3 for Windows, creating an exciting slideshow is as easy as picking your favorite photos and the music you'd like to play in the background.

After you have downloaded and installed Photo Story 3, here's how to create your own photo story specifically formatted for Windows Mobile:

1. Import your photos into Photo Story: Launch Photo Story 3 for Windows, on the first screen (Fig. 1) click the Import Pictures button to select the photos you'd like to use in your photo story. You can drag and drop the pictures in at the bottom of the screen to change their order, or perform simple editing tasks like rotating the images and removing red eye.
2. Add captions: On the second screen you can add titles to any photo by selecting the image you wish to caption and typing in a message. You can also add one of several digital effects to the image (to give it an antique sepia tone color, for example).
3. Narrate your pictures and customize motion: If you have a microphone attached to your computer, you can add a voice narration to the slideshow. You can also choose to customize how the slideshow transitions from one photo to the next.
4. Add background music: You can select any unprotected WMA, MP3, or WAV file to play while your slideshow is displayed. Click the Create Music button and you can generate your own background music by selecting from 50 styles (like "soundtrack: mysterious cave" or "jazz: boogie") and picking the instruments and tempo for the piece.
5. Save your story: The final screen (Fig. 2) allows you to choose the settings for your saved file. Rather than having to select aspect ratio, bit rate, frames per second, and pixel size, Microsoft has included pre-set selections for saving your file for playback on a Pocket PC or Smartphone. TIP: Smartphones with a higher resolution 320x240 pixel screen (Motorola Q, T-Mobile Dash, Cingular 3125, Samsung BlackJack) should choose the "Save your story for playback on a Pocket PC with Windows Media Player 10 Mobile" option.