Create Movie

Picasa can combine your photos into an AVI movie slideshow, suitable for watching on-screen, emailing, or posting online. Picasa creates a formatted title slide displaying the date and folder / label name.

To make a movie:

1. Select the pictures you want in the movie and choose Create>Movie.

2. Choose the size of and duration of each slide and click OK.

3. Pick a codec from the Video Compression dialog. (Learn more about codecs below)

4. If desired, adjust codec quality settings, and click OK to render the movie.

5. When the movie is finished, Picasa will open its folder in Windows.

6. Watch your movie using Picasa or any media player.

Picking a codec:

A codec is the compressor used to make a movie small.  Windows has several codecs available for making AVI movies, but they do not perform as well as the other codecs available from third parties.  The default codecs typically include "Full Frames (uncompressed)", "Indeo video 5.10" and "Cinepack Codec by Radius", but these make very large files.

You may want to use one of the popular MPEG-4 based codecs at www.divx.com, www.3ivx.com, or www.xvid.org.

Note: Working with codecs can be tricky - if you share your movie, the person viewing it must have the same codec installed which you used to encode the movie.  If others encounter trouble when viewing your movies, make sure they have the above codecs installed on their computers.