Everyone loves a good video, so let’s learn how to create a favorite family video using Adobe Spark video. Scan the photos. Have a favorite vacation spot and exciting travel adventure, a family reunion, or anything else that would be a good story or give interesting information about people or an event once you get your photo scanned. Open a web browser. I tried three browsers. I started with Safari, but it had trouble syncing my voice with my images and I wasted a lot of time trying to make it work. Also, the recording of my voice was really quiet, no matter how close I got to my computer. I finally tried Google Chrome and it did a great job syncing my voice to the images, but it recorded my voice so loud that I had to move my chair back from my computer quite a ways. I didn’t try adjusting my computer settings, which would have been one thing to try, but it’s kind of odd that one browser was too soft and the other quite loud.

The biggest problem I had with Chrome was the export of video. My voice sounded good, but the music was so low that it distracted more than it enhanced. I exported the video multiple times using different volume settings, but no matter what I did, the music was either way too low or if I turned it up high enough, it was suddenly so loud. It overpowered my voice in spite of several attempts. I could never get a happy medium between the music and my voice. I finally tried Firefox and had much better luck with adjusting the music volume to an acceptable level in relation to my voice, but when I tried doing the initial recording on Firefox, it was terrible. Horrible. Static and voice echoes. Terrible. So in the end, I recorded the video with Chrome and exported the video with Firefox. The final exported video turned out great.

I placed it below this video in case you want to watch the whole thing, which is a little over three minutes long. The moral of the story is to do a short test using a few slides with your favorite browser and actually download the test to check the sound. If it isn’t working as you’d like it, try another test with a different browser. Once you find a browser that works for you, then you can start your actual project. So here I am in Google Chrome at Spark.Adobe.com.

Log In with your Adobe id or create a free account. If you don’t have an Adobe subscription, I’m using the free version that puts in Adobe Spark logo on every project. Click the plus icon at the top. To start a new project, scroll down and click on Create a Video. Enter the name of your video. I’m going to call mine “1988 Trip USA.” Next, choose a story template. I’ll choose “Tell What Happened.” You’re invited to describe who or what your story will follow, but I’m just going to click the plus mark to add a title: “1988 Trip around the USA” and click outside the video to commit the text.

Now let’s add a photo for the background by clicking on the upper left plus mark and choose Photo. Decide where to get your photo. I’m going to click on find free photos and type “American flag” into the search field and press enter, and this one right here is great, so I’ll just click on that and it loads over here. I’m also going to edit it by clicking on the edit button and zooming it in a little bit and just moving the type around. I’m going to move that down just a little bit. You can either move the type or the video. Now, see that wants to go down at the bottom, so I’m kind of fighting with it. So instead I’m going to click just on the Edit button and click on the photo and move it. Maybe I’ll move it up a little bit. Yeah, that looks better right there and click outside to commit that. Also, let’s change the time to six seconds.

Next we’ll click on the next slide, thumbnail and choose a photo. This time I’ll upload my own photo, this first one right here, and I’ll just get rid of this little item that comes up. And so now I’m ready to create my narration. You press and hold the microphone button down with your mouse and you say something about the photo or the event. Then you upload another photo and you do the same. You don’t have to talk on every photo, but you’ll say something most of the time. So let me demonstrate a couple of times starting with a voice for this photo. The first time you do this, you’ll need to give Adobe Spark permission to use your microphone and then you can record, but I’ve already given permission so I’m just going to hold it down. And right now I’m saying something that I don’t want for my video, so I’m just going to let go and it tells me nice work. You can record again as many times as you want. So let’s do that again. And this time I’m going to actually record. “In 1998 our family said goodbye to my parents in Portland, Oregon and took off on a grand adventure to travel the perimeter of the continental United States pulling an RV with old suburban, nicknamed Bub The Sub.”

Notice that it said, keep it short when I got up to around 10 or 15 seconds, and that’s because you’re only allowed 30 seconds to talk, so you will need to keep it somewhat brief. If you need to say more about the same photo, you can always upload that same photo for the next slide to listen to what you said. Click the play button. “In 1998 our family said goodbye to my parents in Portland, Oregon and took off on a grand adventure to travel the perimeter of the continental United States pulling an RV with an old suburban nicknamed Bub the Sub.”

Okay, so that sounds good. If I go up to music in the upper right corner, I can adjust the volume a little bit and I’ll turn that down a little bit. I can also add my own music or choose a different one and I’m actually going to check on a different one here. Let’s go up and I’m going to choose Highway. That seems appropriate for this topic of going around the US and let’s try that. “In 1998, our family said goodbye to my parents in Portland, Oregon and took off on a grand....” Yep, that sounds good. I liked that one.

So now we’re ready to do the next one. I’ll click on the thumbnail here, and if I run out of thumbnails I can always click on the plus over here to create a new thumbnail. So I’ll click on that, click on Photo, and I want to upload my own photo and I’ll double click on the next one and let’s go ahead and do the recording for this. “We stopped in Bend, Oregon to visit with my children’s book publisher Multnomah Press. My publisher had set up book signings for my book, the Rhyme Bible in bookstores all around the US. They also made a sign to put on the RV to spark interest and conversations along the way.”

All right, so you try it again. “We stopped in Bend, Oregon to visit with my children’s book publisher, Multnomah Press. My publisher had....” Okay, that sounds good. Now if you don’t like your recording, you can record again as many times as you wish until you’re happy with it. If you want to delete the recording, click on the time icon in the lower right corner and choose the delete option, but I’m not going to delete mine at this point. I’m going to pause the video and upload the rest of the slides and then I’ll come back and download the video.

Okay, I’m back and I’ve added all my slides and narration. There’s a slide at the end already created for you so you can include the credits and it includes credits for any free photos you used. As I created this movie, I would stop occasionally and click the preview button at the top or the play button in the lower left to preview the video. So let’s click play right now.

“In 1998, our family said goodbye to my parents in Portland, Oregon, and took off on a grand adventure to....” Once you’re satisfied, click the Download button at the top or you can X out of this and then click the Download button at the top or you can share it. Also remember what I said earlier about me having trouble with music being too low in the download version, even when it sounded fine to me on the website. So if you have that problem, try opening Adobe Spark in Firefox or another browser and downloading the same project there. So that’s how to create a fun little video with music and narration using Adobe Spark video. Yeah.