Harry Potter moving ‘wanted poster’ using own video

Last week I noticed we had the option to use short videos in our Facebook profiles.  This got me thinking about what might make a fun profile video; the best I could think of were those wanted posters from Harry Potter where the image moves.

I had some rare free time so I put on my headphones, stared at the screen and went into the zone for the next two hours.  It took me a while but I was able to figure it out using software I already had – nothing really fancy either.

So how did I do it?

  1. Used my Logitech computer camera to record a short video
  2. Put the video into Windows Movie Maker and change it to black and white.  You must save as a Windows Media Video File or else you cannot import the video in the next steps
  3. Download a picture of the wanted poster from the internet
  4. Put the picture into a picture editor – I use Macromedia Fireworks from way back in 2004.  Cut out the center where you want your own picture to go and save as a PNG file.  Saving it as a PNG keeps the hole in your picture.
  5. Open up Macromedia Flash.  Resize the document to the size of the picture and import the picture – this goes on Layer 1
  6. Create another layer (2) and import your video into it.
  7. Make sure the picture (Layer 1) is on top, and then scale and position your video on Layer 2 so that just your head shows through the hole in the picture on Layer 1.
  8. Export as a GIF or AVI and done!

By Mateo de Colón

Global Citizen! こんにちは!僕の名前はマットです. Es decir soy Mateo. Aussi, je m'appelle Mathieu. Likes: Languages, Cultures, Computers, History, being Alive! \(^.^)/