HIRE A PROFESSIONAL
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We all have a nephew or cousin that is good on a home computer and often peoples first thought is to have them create a slide show for presentation at a funeral service.
Sometimes this works but in most cases it doesn’t. Many times people are surprised to find out that the slideshow video made by their nephew doesn’t play properly on the funeral homes A/V equipment, leaving guests wondering what happened.

Sadly they often find this out during the service. Photos and music should be played in proper sync and the pictures should be prepared to look great on the big screen.
How the photos look on your smart phones screen is very different from how the same photo will look when blown up and displayed on a 10’ screen.

Professional display equipment utilized in many funeral homes today require very strict adherence to specific technical parameters to ensure that they play properly. Most modern audio/video equipment also utilizes copy protection which disable songs which were originally downloaded on a computer or copied from a cd. The music may have played on your computer but it won’t play when transferred to another computer for playback.
It’s best to hire a professional for the creation of a video slideshow and guarantee that the video plays properly, photos will look their best, the music will sound great and best of all there’s no last minute surprises.
TECHNICAL CONCERNS
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Many families employ slide shows during funeral services. They’re a great way of helping people remember their recently lost loved ones. These video slideshow montages have become very common and often contain family photos, slides and even video clips.

We work closely with many local funeral homes and they have varying abilities to present these slideshows during a service. Some facilities can play video files directly from a computer while others can only play your video files from a DVD. Some can present power point presentations, others cannot.
Whatever their technical requirements are we can create a slideshow that works best with their in-house audio/video systems.

We have been creating funeral slide shows for almost 10 years and have produced hundreds and hundreds of them. We have the artistic talent to make sure the video is interesting, paced correctly and matches the accompanying music. We can even ‘Photoshop’ certain people out of photos (ex-wife or ex-husband, for example).

Our videos are designed to keep the viewers’ attention and not become boring. We also have the technical savvy to make sure the video is created correctly. We have the experience to make sure the video will play properly, as intended, with no last minute surprises.  Pictures are played in the proper order, with the proper framing (cropping) and timed correctly with the music to create a wonderful video that will be enjoyable to watch and remember.
Photos will be touched up to always present people at their best. We employ movement during the photos to bring them to life as static photos can become tiresome to watch.

Our projects are often presented on DVD with printed discs and professionally designed, printed cases. The DVD’s we produce often become gifts for family members and are watched many times in the coming years. They’re also make great gifts to hand out to all those who attended the service as a way of saying ‘thank you’ for attending, and are often sent to distant family and friends that could not attend the service in person.

Many families also desire to have the entire funeral service recorded. This is a great way to present the entire service to those who could not attend in person. Many times family from far away locations can’t make the service in person. Viewers will get a chance to see the wonderful service including any personal messages and tributes from friends and loved ones, often from family members they haven’t seen in years.

Many families also use our services to record their special messages, to be shown at the funeral services that they cannot attend in person. They can simply make their comments to our cameras and we can arrange to have the video sentiments sent to the funeral service and presented. This becomes a far more personal message than simply sending a telegram.
For others speaking at the service in front of all those people can be too emotional and difficult, so we often record their speeches ahead of time in private and present it during the service. This makes it much easier for many people to pass their along their sentiments or share a special memory with the audience.
We encourage you to call us and discuss your needs. We will do whatever is needed to give you the best memorable slideshow video possible, with all the class and dignity, it deserves. We’re caring professionals and we treat every project as though it was our family member that were being remembered.
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PREPARING FOR THE PERFECT SLIDESHOW VIDEO
"There are a few things that you can do to help us create a very memorable slideshow"
  1. Sort through your photos and select which ones work best. Keep in mind that ideally photos should be in focus, subject should be looking at camera (eyes open). These criteria make it easier to narrow down the large pile of photos into a manageable number that will be used in the video. It’s very difficult to not use every photo you find, but persevere and be diligent in removing photos from the pile, until you narrow down the selection.
  2. Select some photos of the honoree, when they are alone, no one else with them in the photo, if possible.
  3. Find pictures of them as children, at work, doing their favorite pastimes, with their kids, with their grandkids, etc.
  4. You don’t have to use a picture just because it’s the only picture you have with Aunt Mary or Uncle Phil in the photo and they will be at the service. The service is for your loved one, not for the benefit of Aunt Mary or Uncle Phil. They will understand. …Sometimes there are exceptions to this rule of course, and there are some photos you just have to include, so go ahead and include it. After all, it is Aunt Mary!
  5. Find their wedding photos. These often have the person in their best attire, and they are happy. These could be the perfect photos for the DVD case cover.
  6. Try and not use photos that include heavy drinking or smoking, or nudity. Use your discretion here, as this is how people will remember the service. Of course there are exceptions to this rule, and some photos were just meant to be included, beer in hand or not.
  7. Number the pictures in chronological order, or in groups of family, at work, pastimes, etc.
  8. Put your name and phone number on the back of each photo.
  9. If you are going to use digital photos, (which look great on screen) try and get the original picture from the camera that took the picture. Many times these photos are emailed or sent electronically and they have been down sized for ease of emailing, but they lose a great deal of information. The original large file sized photo is best to use for these video projects.
  10. Select music that is appropriate, something they listened to. Something that has an emotional bond (song that played at their wedding, for example).
  11. If possible use music that has a bit of a crescendo at the end. It conveys a more intense moment of emotion which works well for the ending last photos of the slide show.
  12. The words of the song are very important, so choose carefully.
  13. Don’t write on the photos, use a light pencil and mark the back of the photos, don’t press too hard. Photos are delicate and should be handled as little as possible. Don’t rub your fingers on the front of the photos. Use gloves when handling them.
  14. Old photos should be cherished. Unlike how often we use our cameras today, back in the day, having your photo taken was a big deal and people planned their entire day around getting 1 picture taken, and they paid dearly for the privilege. Treat those old photos with the respect they deserve. We can always perform a high quality scan, touch up and restore old photos for reprinting. In fact many of our customers prefer to have us give them a cd with all the scanned and touched up pictures just for that reason. For printing later.
  15. If a photo to you want to use is in a frame, and it seems difficult to remove without damaging the photo, leave it in the frame! We can take care of the safe removal and if needed we can copy it while it’s in the frame or photo album.
  16. Place wax paper between the photos to keep them from getting stuck to each other, and place them in order in a large manila folder. If you can place a full size piece of stiff cardboard in the folder to prevent the photos from bending.
  17. Bring the envelope with the photos to the funeral home or bring it to us. We'll take good care of them and will return them to you in good condition when we drop off the completed DVD.
  18. Make sure you let us know how many copies you will need and if you need any copies to send to family in a different country, so we can make sure it works there.
  19. We'll have the DVD at the funeral home ahead of time, along with as many copies as you need for handing out.

DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME

"There's a reason that we suggest you hire a professional"
We have numerous horror stories of how people, for whatever reason, decided to make their own videos and during the service when they first go to play the video, nothing works. Now funeral home staff are scrambling around behind the scenes thinking there’s something wrong with the equipment, and after a very uncomfortable 20 minutes of repeated attempts to make the video play, they come to the conclusion that the home made video was not formatted correctly.
It’s true that sometimes there can be equipment failures, and it does happen, but modern day audio / video equipment is pretty reliable. However, the equipment is designed to work with normal broadcast standards and these standards can be very strict. So if you decide, even against our better judgement, to make your own video, here’s some technical information that should help you out.
  • Most funeral homes are set up to play videos from a DVD disc. So this is the format of choice for you. Don't make anything else.
  • DVD’s come in a multitude of varieties. There’s standard DVD 9, DVD 5, Blu Ray. HD DVD, Dual layer DVD, DVD-R, DVD+R, triple layer DVD and more. It’s best to go with DVD 5 –R discs. These have better chances of playing properly in most set top DVD players.
  • The video section of a DVD needs to be in one very specific format, and that’s MPEG 2 TS (transport stream), with a bit rate not to exceed 8 MB per second. Don’t use AVI or quick time files that play on your computer, they need to transcoded before they will work properly on a DVD player.
  • DVD players will broadcast videos at 29.97 framers every second, not 30 frames per second, but exactly 29.97, so adjust your settings accordingly.
  • The music needs to be in one of 2 formats to work. Select either pulse code modulation (PCM) or AC3 audio format, nothing else will work on the DVD player. If the songs you will use are not in that format, you must transcode them.
  • Speaking of music, did you know that most digital music nowadays have something hidden in the files called DRM (digital rights management). This prevents you from copying music and giving it to your friends or burning it on a DVD disc. It’s designed to limit how many devices are capable of playing the music. So don’t be surprised if the music plays fine on your home computer, but won’t play on the DVD player at the funeral home. Apple music from iTunes has possibly the strongest DRM.
  • The DVD needs to be mastered, which means there is a beginning, and end, and instructions of what to play, when to stop, and what the DVD player is supposed to show, when the video is not playing. A DVD will not play an un-mastered disc.
  • All audio should go through a normalization process before being burned to a disc. This makes all volume levels consistent and will keep you from having to adjust the volume of the TV during the service when there are changes of songs.
  • You can select to play the videos in widescreen format or in traditional full size format. It’s best to stick to one and not change back and forth with each picture. So with that in mind, you should crop all the photos to the same ratio before inserting them into the video.
HOW MUCH DOES A SLIDESHOW VIDEO COST?
Though every memorial video project is unique, we have several packages that have proved to be very popular.
 Please call us and discuss other options we have that may better suit your particular needs.
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