The Art Institute allows pictures without flash, but not video. This 4 minute clip was made from some pictures taken on a quick in-and-out visit to Chicago on Thursday.

The stitched composites from Windows Live Photo Gallery have me back in Movie Maker with Pixelan's Pan/Zoom PRO Wizard. Together they handle larger size composites and produce widescreen video easier than Photo Story 3.

This one uses a downloaded picture... cropped with IrfanView and made into a collage using Paint.

The audio is from one of my camcorder tapes of a market-place in Istanbul.

After Vista's Movie Maker 6 won the playoff testing with the Pixelan Spice FX4.0 Pan/Zoom PRO wizard, I expanded the project to add music, a transition from the same Pixelan pack... and saved the video to a much higher level of quality using a custom profile made for HD720 files at vimeo.

PS... yes, that's me in the picture above shooting video... Bernadette was taking the panoramic images.

Sorry for no thumbnail.... I learned from this one that, when you first upload a regular def file, then replace it with a hi-def... thumbnails don't work.

This video opens with some scenes from a world famous university and an equally renowned annual art show... followed by some art masters' work from times gone by, now hanging in the Chicago Art Institute.

Some of the stories in this channel 'inspired' me to put a few of our pictures together and mix them with a sobering song.... things that university environments evoke.

For some reason, the panning and zooming of still pix seem most appropriate for such things.

It's done with Movie Maker 2.1, the new Pixelan Pan/Zoom Pro wizard, and Photo Story 3.

This is my first test sample using a number of pictures in a project, some with diffferent pan/zoom effects... to study how well the effects integrate into a project that uses other effects and transitions.

It's looking good. I think I'll keep going with this project for a video at Trip Advisor.