How to make a video from photos and clips, in the order they actually happened
The editing is twenty minutes; the sorting is the afternoon. Upload the folder, HEICs included, and the capture times do the sorting. How to brief the rest.
A week away comes home as a folder: sixty photos and thirty clips off a phone, HEIC and MOV, a few more from a camera, all named by number. Making a video of it is not hard. Sorting it is. Which day was the boat? Which clips belong with which photos? The editing is twenty minutes once that is answered, and answering it by hand is the afternoon.
This is how to hand the whole folder to Narrative and get a video back in the order things actually happened, with the photos on the beat and the clips playing through. The festival recap is the closest public example: eighteen minutes of a day cut to twenty seconds. The photo version works the same way, with stills where the recap has shots.
Upload everything, including the HEICs
Drop the folder in. Phone photos arrive as HEIC or HEIF and are converted in your browser before upload, so nothing needs to go through Photos or Preview first. The important part is what happens before the conversion: the photo’s tags are read from the original. When it was taken, on the camera’s own clock with its time zone. What took it. Where, if the phone recorded a location.
Clips carry their capture time too. So by the time the folder has landed, every item in it has a place in time, and the editor can see it. It orders by it. Until the middle of September it could see only file names, which is why a request like “the photos in the order I took them” used to come back guessed; now it comes back in the order the cameras recorded.
A photo on the timeline is a clip
A photo goes on the same row as the footage, as a still clip: three seconds of the picture by default, trimmable like any clip. Its bar on the timeline is the picture itself, so a run of stills reads as what it is. Press “Add to timeline” on any image in the media panel and it lands at the playhead; or let the editor place them all from the brief.
A photo can show whole or fill the frame. A portrait photo in a 16:9 video shows whole by default, with the frame’s ground either side; ask for “fill the frame” and it is cropped to cover. Mixed orientations are the normal case for a phone folder, so decide which you want before the first cut: whole keeps every photo intact, fill keeps the video looking like a video.
The music sets the pace
Upload the song, or name one, and it is analysed for its grid before anything is cut. Then the rhythm is a request: “a photo per beat, hold on the clips” gives a fast run of stills that opens into footage. “A photo every two bars” is slower and warmer. The clips can play with their own sound under the music or be silent; say which, or say “keep the sound of the boat clip”.
Titles that know the dates
Because every item has a time, the video can be chaptered by it: a title with the date when the day changes, or one title with the range. The editor knows the coordinates a photo was taken at, but not the name of the place; give it the names. “Title each day with the date and the town: Lisbon, then Sintra, then Cascais.”
How to ask
Everything the editor needs to know in one message:
- Length. “About a minute.” Sixty photos and thirty clips will not all fit; it picks.
- Order. “In the order they were taken.” Or “the beach stuff together at the end” if you want a theme over time.
- Rhythm. “Photos on the beat, clips held for a few seconds.”
- Fit. “Fill the frame” or “show the whole photo”.
- Sound. “The song I uploaded, keep the sound on the boat clip.”
- Words. “A date title on each new day, one closing title with the dates.”
Make a one-minute 16:9 video from these photos and clips in the order they were taken. Photos on the beat of the song I uploaded, clips held four or five seconds, fill the frame. A small date title when the day changes and a closing title with the dates.
You will get a first cut on a timeline. If it picked the wrong photos, name the ones you want: “use the sunset one from the second day.” If it is too fast, “half as many photos, hold longer.” Every change is a version.
What to watch for
- Two cameras, two clocks. A camera whose clock was never set to local time will file its photos an hour off. The time zone recorded on the phone is honoured; a camera that recorded none is taken at face value. If a day looks shuffled, that is why, and “the camera was an hour behind” fixes the order.
- Screenshots and saved images. They have no capture time and sort to wherever the file says. Leave them out or place them by hand.
- Vertical clips in a horizontal video. They show whole with the frame’s ground either side unless you ask for fill, and fill on a vertical clip crops most of it. Consider a 9:16 video if most of the folder is vertical.
See a day become twenty seconds
Open the festival recap and scrub it. Twenty shots from an eighteen-minute day, each held for a beat or two, the last five seconds shortening into the drum build. Everything above is that, with stills in the slots. Opening it needs no account; your first change starts a free trial, and the editor runs on desktop today.