STORYTIME WITH GRANDPA

This Covid 19 pandemic has meant fewer opportunities to be with others especially our family both near and far. 

I wanted to be able to stay connected with our grandkids but how? While looking through Facebook and YouTube I saw how people like Dolly Parton were reading stories online for children. That was it but then again the question of how?

I didn't want to simply video me reading since these were picture books. I thought about taping me reading with the camera looking over my shoulder but dropped that idea. Besides the technical issues there was the issue of getting books. Covid means that our local library was closed for a time. I could get books online but then what? After doing some research about resources I came up with a process that works pretty well.

I download 1st Reader ebooks from the library. Then I use a program on my laptop to clip an image of each page. Once I have the images copied (I hope I don't get into trouble for this) I copy them into another program called PhotoStage. PhotoStage is a program for making slideshows with sound. I insert each page into the slideshow. Then I record audio for each page one at a time. Each slide changes the length it is on screen depending on the length of the voice recording. Then I use my webcam to record individual openings and closings. The final step involves changing the file to an avi video file format and then uploading it to YouTube.  

The more I use this process the easier it becomes but it still is a bit labor intensive.

I enjoy doing it especially when I get feedback saying that they were enjoyed.