USVI-On-Line

How many of you watch your old S.T.J. vacation video tapes again and again over the years to remind you of happier times? I for one do.It helps me get through the winter months as I cozy up to a cup of coffee on the sofa on a Sunday morning.I can't tell you how many times i've watched our 94' honeymoon tape! I still remember the size of the VHS camcorder back then...LARGE and HEAVY!Parafins

No video from the honeymoon (in '95) but I do remember those giant cameras. My dad had one of the early ones and he looked like a one-man TV crew in the late 80's.

We do look at our honeymoon pictures often as our son likes to look at the photo albums. I continue to be amazed at how young (and thin!) we looked.

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No video, but I use a great website to make a great photobook of every trip. I look at them all the time. Has anyone else tried photobooks instead of photo prints in a photo album? They are too cool.

VickiH wrote:No video, but I use a great website to make a great photobook of every trip. I look at them all the time. Has anyone else tried photobooks instead of photo prints in a photo album? They are too cool.

yup! love 'em. who do you use?

Blurb.com

I have tried lots of them (viovio, shutterfly, winkflash, snapfish, photoworks, etc.) and I like Blurb the best.

Can you have your photobooks on line to be viewed by others, or are they just for printing?

I like the Yahoo Widget called "Picture Frame" it runs on the desktop - once you point it to a particular folder it runs a constant slide show of memories.

Vicki - thanks for that blurb recommendation. We are leaving for costa rica in a month (yeah!) and just got a new DSLR to use on the trip. I think I'll try the blurb software when I get back. Those look much more professional than what Wolf/Ritz or even Apple put out.

I have video that I will try to edit and burn to DVD etc now that I have a new computer and software that can handle the size of those files.

Agree 1000% on the photobooks. They look great on the coffee table. I'll never get another 4x6 developed again - you gotta put them in one of those thick old fashioned sticky albums, or they sit in a shoebox til you get around to doing that.

Photobooks not hard to do, a little time consuming to do well (IMO you need to be a harsh editor, take the time to crop photos, etc), but way better than having your photos just sit on your hard drive, and well worth the effort.

V - I'll have to try blurb. Have used shutterfly, photoworks, and mypublisher. Just discovered you can embed code to allow viewing shutterfly albums on a site like this. See example below of 06 book. Use right arrow next to PLAY to turn pages.


<object width="425" height="425" align="middle" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shoc ... wflash.cab" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000"> <param name="movie" value="http://images-community.shutterfly.com/ ... how_pb.swf"> <param name="flashvars" value="xmlURL=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds-community.shutterfly.com%2FPostSlideshowFeed%3FpathID%3D%2Fgallery%2F1%2Fpost%2FGMGDBg0buGTNo5ZgOozw0E%26size%3D0%26updtime%3D1207230329000%26height%3D425%26width%3D425&size=0&ob=0&fc=0&ss=0&sb=0&ft=0&pg=http%3A%2F%2Fcommunity.shutterfly.com%2Fgallery%2Fpost%2Fstart.sfly%3FpostId%3D%2Fgallery%2F1%2Fpost%2FGMGDBg0buGTNo5ZgOozw0E"> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"> <param name="menu" value="false"> <param name="quality" value="best"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"> <embed width="425" height="425" align="middle" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" name="wrapper" quality="best" menu="false" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" flashvars="xmlURL=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds-community.shutterfly.com%2FPostSlideshowFeed%3FpathID%3D%2Fgallery%2F1%2Fpost%2FGMGDBg0buGTNo5ZgOozw0E%26size%3D0%26updtime%3D1207230329000%26height%3D425%26width%3D425&size=0&ob=0&fc=0&ss=0&sb=0&ft=0&pg=http%3A%2F%2Fcommunity.shutterfly.com%2Fgallery%2Fpost%2Fstart.sfly%3FpostId%3D%2Fgallery%2F1%2Fpost%2FGMGDBg0buGTNo5ZgOozw0E" src="http://images-community.shutterfly.com/ ... how_pb.swf"> </embed></object><p> <a href="http://community.shutterfly.com/gallery ... o5ZgOozw0E" target="_blank">Click here to view this photo book.</a></p>

The last time we were on STJ, we got one of those one time use dvd recorders from CVS. It was about $20 -- and took 20 minutes of video. Not the greatest quality, but it sure was fun to use. I spliced the clips together with music using some editing program on my computer. We're not responsible enough to own a real digital camera or recorder, so this was perfect for us. I highly recommend it! Plus, you can share the video snippets via the web.

I used a compilation of my photos from 5 different trips to STJ and made a 1:45 DVD slide show with my favorites tunes as a soundtrack. It's the most played DVD in my house. I play it while working out, cleaning the house, or just on snowy and or dreary rainy days.

jofus

Here are a bunch of videos I've taken of my guests..

http://www.youtube.com/user/PalmTreeCharters

I loved the photobook. I still have my pics from the 2006 STJ trip on disk so during my spare time I am going to try to make one - sounds like my new project (haven't finished my last two as of yet). I will keep this in mind for our June trip this year - it was great!! Thanks for sharing