Section 16.5. Photos and Video: Home Premium Ultimate | Windows Vista: The Missing Manual

16.5. Photos and Video: Home Premium ¢Ultimate

Just above Music in Media Center's blue-toned main menu is the intriguing entry, Pictures+ Videos . Here you'll find a list of all the digital photos and video clips that Media Center found when you first showed it which folders you wanted it to watch.

UP TO SPEED
Videos

Media Center can also handle video clips, like the masterpieces you make with Movie Maker (Chapter 15). A Videos category is also listed in the Pictures+Videos mode. As it turns out, you navigate your Videos and Pictures folders in exactly the same way:

Find a video by drilling down to it.

Sort the videos by clicking a heading above them: Folders, Date Taken, Tags, and so on. (Tags are keywords that you make up; see Chapter 13.)

Play a video by highlighting its icon and pressing Enter or Play.

Control playback using your remote control, if you have one. If not, use the buttons that appear when your mouse approaches the lower-right corner of the screen.

After a video plays, you're offered a Finished screen with three choices: Done, Restart (meaning play again), and Delete. The fourth optionBackappears only when you mouse your way to the top-left corner of the screen.

Once again, Microsoft starts you off with some basic pictures and vids, so that, at the very least, you can practice navigating the system.

To view some photos, select Pictures+Videos, and open Picture Library. From here, you can view sample photos, as shown in Figure 16-11.

Figure 16-11. To navigate the Picture Library, run your mouse across the titles in the Picture Library and highlight Folders. Once highlighted, move your mouse to the area underneath Folders, and hover your mouse over Sample Pictures, shown here .

Once again, you work this mode by drilling down. Highlight a folder (Sample Pictures, say) and then press Enter. If you then highlight an individual photo, clicking Enter makes it fill your screen.

Tip: To close the picture, click the Back button. (Don't click the X button at the top right of the screenyou'll shut down the entire Media Center!)

16.5.1. Slideshows

Alternatively, click "Play slide show" at the top of the screen to trigger a magnificent full-screen display. To control its playback using a remote control, use its buttons; if you're using the mouse, move the cursor to the bottom-right corner of the screen to make the playback controls appear. You can also manually move from one image to another using the Fast-forward and Rewind buttons.

Click the Back button in the top-left corner to close the slideshow.

16.5.1.1. Adding music

Of course, just about any slideshow is more compelling if there's music playing in the background. In Media Center, that's an easy effect:

Start the music playing .

In Media Center, click Music Music Library. Select an album, playlist, or other music grouping, and then click Play.
Select Picture Library, select a photos folder, and then hit Play Slideshow .

The music you started continues as the slideshow proceeds.

16.5.1.2. Slideshow settings

Unless you change the settings, the standard slideshow presents your pix in random order, a new photo every 12 seconds, with a standard crossfade (transition) effect.

Frankly, however, 12 seconds per photo is an eternity if you're anyone but the subject of the photo (or you're in love with that subject). Fortunately, you can change the settings easily enough; see page 529.

16.5.2. Editing Pictures

If you really want to edit your photos, of course, Microsoft has a specialized new Vista tool just for you: Photo Gallery (Chapter 13).

But sometimes you spot a misrotated photo, a picture that needs cropping, or some red-eye in a portrait that you just want to fix quickly without exiting Media Center. Sure enough, you can actually perform basic photo editing from the comfort of your own living room couch .

Start at the thumbnails page. Right-click the problem photo; next , from the shortcut menu, choose Picture Details.

Now you arrive at a new screen that lists tasks at the left side. You can click Rotate to rotate the photo 90 degrees clockwisea great way to fix a photo that you took with your camera turned vertically.

The real fun, though, awaits when you click Touch Up. On this new screen, these more powerful editing options beckon:

Red Eye is a fully automatic tool. Click the words Red Eye to trigger Vista's "Do your best to remove the reddish retinal reflection from the subject of this flash photo so my loved one doesn't look so much like the spawn of Satan" function.
Contrast is another fully automated feature. One click makes Media Center attempt to improve the tonal range of the photothe brights and darks.
Crop places a smaller rectangle within the larger frame of your photo, indicating which part of the photo it plans to keep. Everything in the dimmed, foggy outer margins will shortly be hacked away. Click the directional arrow buttons to position the crop box, the magnifying glass buttons to shrink or enlarge the cropping rectangle, or the far-right button to rotate the cropping rectangle by 90 degrees. The actual crop doesn't take place until you click Save (described next).

When you're finished, click Save. You're asked if you want to replace the original; click Yes. There is no other option for saving.

Tip: Click Next and Previous to edit additional pictures.

16.5.3. Burn a CD of Pictures or Videos

Burning photos or videos to a CD or DVD is a handy way to make a backup of them, and it's also a convenient way of taking them with you to a friend's house or a party.

Note: You're not actually creating a music CD that will play in a CD player, or a video DVD that plays in a DVD player. You're basically creating backup discs that hold a lot of computer filesand that are designed to go into another computer .If you want to burn a music CD or video DVD, see Chapters 14 and 15.

Start on the Media Center main menu. Choose Tasks Burn CD/DVD.

Vista asks you to insert a blank CD or DVD, if you haven't done so already. (What it actually says is, "Insert media," but it means a blank disc; nobody expects you to insert CBS News or the New York Times.)

Insert a blank disc and then click Retry; choose the CD or DVD type (Data CD or Audio CD); type a name ; choose the photos folder or music album you want to back up (Figure 16-12); and then click Burn CD (or Burn DVD).

Figure 16-12. Drill down into the Picture Library subfolders to select pictures you want to add. You can select entire folders or single images. Once you've selected a picture, a folder of pictures, or a mishmash of pictures in any one subfolder, click Next .

Tip: During the Burn CD/DVD process, Vista invites you to click OK if you want to do other work while the disc is being burned. Light background work like typing or Web surfing should be no problem. Heavy work (Photoshop, video editing) can interfere with the burning, however, resulting in a half-burned, failed discyet another Frisbee for the yard!