Creating Animated Ecards with VS X5

[Old_Friend]

I've been subscribed to Hallmark's website for a long time. I paid them the fee to select and send any of their 'Premium' cards for the 1-year rate. However, I'm extremely disappointed in Hallmark's website, their Ecard offerings, etc. Their list of choices is very small, and many of the cards do not even fit the categories they are placed into. Hallmark has fallen way short of the reputation for quality that it used to have years ago. I'm referring to its website's online greeting cards.'

So, I want to know how I can use Video Studio X5 to create my own personalized animated "Ecards" (including sound) that I can send as Ecards. I have found no animated GIFS in the downloadble stuff from Corel, although I can create my own, if necessary. Neither have I found any quality 3rd-party programs for creating online Ecards; most are junk (according to reviews I've read).

I would be working mostly from very short avi files, jpg images, and adding my own text and sounds. An objective is to keep each filesize smaller than 25MB's so that each Ecard can be E-mailed.

Any suggestions, please? Have any of you done such things?

[canuck]

There a many free websites out there to do what you want (I don't know what reviews you read but I don't put much faith in most of those reviews) Have you even tried some of the on-line sites? Why re-invent the wheel?