Selecting the quality settings for your story:

Since I plan on emailing my finished Photo Story to Morgan's grandparents, I'm going to choose Medium Quality with the resolution of 320x240 which should keep the file size relatively small. This resolution will cause the images to distort if played at full screen but it's perfect for downloading and since I anticipate the file to be under 5mb it should be email friendly. If I was going to save this for local playback or use it to create a Video CD I would choose the higher quality setting.  Keeping file size in mind, I also lowered the quality of the music file from CD to FM.

The advanced setting tab allows you to choose additional profiles that let you save your files at even higher quality and larger resolutions. Microsoft offers a free 800x600 Profile and a 1024x768 Profile in addition to the default installation profiles. You can download the two additional profiles from Microsoft.com: Get More Photo Story Profiles. Please keep in mind that the higher the quality, the larger the file that will be created.

I'm going to choose Medium Quality with the resolution of 320x240 which should reduce the file size.

Saving your story and project:

When it's time to save your Photo Story you will be asked to select a location and file name. The saved format for your Story will be a .wmv (Windows Media Video).  You'll also have the ability to save the entire project file allowing you to re-edit at a later time. I recommend saving the project file until you are completely satisfied with the final video. When you're done, the project is built into a .wmv file. Morgan's Photo Story took about 2 minutes to build using a Pentium 1.7Ghz with 512mb of ram PC.

The saved format for your Story will be a .wmv (Windows Media Video).

Next More Photo Story 2: Completion of Morgan's Photo Story project