I bet most of you who read this blog has access to a computer, portable music listening/video viewing device, or smart phone, and use such a device on a daily basis. If that’s the case, you can turn it into a source of inspirations – by creating a video clip that inspires you and watching it on that device.

I’m sure you can find a bunch of inspirational video clips on YouTube, but I believe it’s better to make your own video clip, because you can choose your own favorite song, pictures and words.

Yes. You know what inspires you. If you make a video clip just for yourself… it will be more inspiring than any other clips made by others.

In this post, I will give you a quick guide to creating such a clip.

I’ve used Picasa to create my own clip, and I bet it’s one of the easiest ways to do it. Quick and easy. Yes. If you are already familiar with another software, use it by all means.

A sample clip

The clip I made specifically for myself uses my favorite song (The bold and the beautiful by Bane) and pictures that I found through Google Images as well as Flickr. Since I don’t have the rights to use the song and some of the images, I cannot show you this clip. So, I made another clip as a sample, using materials licensed under Creative Commons.

Check it out. This is the kind of video clip I’m talking about.

How to create a kick ass video clip that inspires you every time you watch it

Finding images that inspire you

Let’s start with collecting materials. You will need to find images and pictures that represent what you want in your life.

For searching images, I recommend you to use Flickr and Google Images.

If you go to the top page of Flickr, you’ll see a search box. Type and look for images you want. You favorite images might show up in the first page of the search results. But, it’s possible that some of those images are not available for download for a copyright reason.

In order to view downloadable images only, you need to customize your search option a little bit. Click Advanced Search right next to the blue Search box.

In the Advanced Search page, go to the bottom of the page. You’ll find a section on Creative Commons. Check “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content”; now you’re ready to search for downloadable photos.

Click the blue Search box below this section and it will take you back to the search result page. If you’ve changed your setting correctly, you’ll see a text that says “Showing Creative Commons-licensed content” below the search box.

Now you are ready to have fun with browsing excellent photos taken by amazing photographers.

Using Google Images is much simpler. You just need to go to this page and search for what you are looking for.

Using Picasa

After collecting images and photos that inspire you, you are ready to make your own inspirational video clip.

I assume that you are familiar with Picasa. If not, Picasa is a free software created and provided by Google and you can organize and edit pictures easily with this software. You can download it from here for free.

Now… run Picasa. Go to the folder you’ve download the photos and images into. Select the files, and click the Video button in the right bottom of the main window. Or alternatively, you can choose, in the menu, Create -> Video, to get the video making function started.

I only did the following steps in order to create the sample clip:

• Choose your favorite song from your digital music collection. You can use an mp3 file or wma file for audio. To fit photos into audio… well, choose that option “Fit photos into audio”.
• Create text slides. You can add a text slide by clicking the button below the play button.
• Add license information to the picture slides. I needed to take this step, because I wanted to show the sample in public and I must display license information for each photo. If you are to make a clip only for your personal use, you don’t need to do this. (If you want to add texts to a slide with a picture, by the way, you can select the Slide tab in the left column)

I believe you can play with it and get used to other editing functions. For the sample clip I made, all I did was to select a music file, to make text slides, and to add some texts to photos for a Creative Commons license reason. I didn’t do anything else.

Simple.

Once you are done with editing, click Create Video in the bottom of the Video tab. Picasa will process the movie and turn it into a wmv file.

If you want to watch it on iPhone, you need to convert the wmv file into a mp4 file. I used DVD Catalyst Free for converting a wmv file into a mp4 file. You can search for a convert software on Google as well. (And you will need to if you are using Mac. Handbrake seems to be a great option both for Windows and for Mac.)

Now you have your own video-graphic source of inspiration. I bet it’s the best you’ve ever seen.

I have my home-made video clip on my iPhone and watch it in the morning and whenever I want to remind myself of what I want in my life.

Now, here’s a question – how do you remind yourself of what you want in your life? Do you keep a list and take a look at it every day? Do you use a vision map? Or something else? Please share with us!

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Photo: mckaysavage