As far as vids to use for Dreams, you just have to scour around with your favorite search engine, using key words like "HD video", "HD film clips", "HD animations", etc. Check out the nature/science sites, space, scuba diving, etc. ..a lot of them offer free short clips (some good, some bad). What you are looking for are wmv, avi and mpeg formats. If you find good Quicktime clips (good resolution), you will need to convert them to avi/mpeg...lots of free converters around. Programs like Frap can pull clips out of games that are fairly good. But with game scenes, as well as movies and other propietary film clips, you have to be careful not to violate copyright laws. Check the original site for usage rules.

Capitalism at its best: Many really good HD, royalty-free, broadcast-quality animations and film clips are available, but for a hefty price (we're talking upwards to $600 for a CD with maybe 20 clips. If you have that kind of cash and are serious about it, you can get some really nice clips....send me some of that cash and I will send you back a gold-embossed Thank You note....

As far as software, it's really a matter of preference....but at a minimum you should have a good graphics program (like Adobe Photoshop or JASC (Corel) Paintshop Pro...Bryce 6 would also be nice) for making your own stills into animations. Windows Paint just will not be robust enough. You will also need a decent video/movie editor such as Pinnacle Studio 10 (using their Vista upgrade download). Vista has Windows Movie Maker that it surprisingly halfway decent for making film clips (although it is a little lacking in the special effects/transitions department). I do not own any of the WYSIWYG animation-making software except Animation Shop, so I cannot really recommend any from experience.

In any case, when making a loop, it is vital that you match the last frame in the clip as closely as you possibly can with the first frame...that allows for a smooth loop....look for frames that match, but have no motion. Those work quite well. If that isn't available, the second-best choice is to put in a quick fade out-fade in transition in the loop.

And....hint, hint, hint....you will need Dream Maker from this site to upload in the Dream format.

I'm sure others will come along with more suggestions.

To get stills ready I use Photoshop and MS DigImage Pro
but any good Photo Editing program will do in most cases ......
there are some free ones out there - try search in Google - for one ..

When ready to render Video - I use Vegas ( Video Editing software }
this program is costly - try Windows Movie Maker to start
it's free and part of windows - not full featured but will do
in a pinch - will convert your video to MPG2 format or .wmv and then
convert in DreamMaker ..... another excellent video editing
program is Sony Vegas Movie Studio ( retail $79 for reg. version
and $129 for HD version ) lot more features than movie maker
to edit your video .... .... PS ... and making a smooth loop if tuff sometimes
for all , depends on the Vid some will be very hard to get a seamless loop
botton line - practice my friend , practice .. makes perfect ...well sort of !