At RootsTech, MyHeritage announced the new Live Story, a new means of adding stories to your family tree in a manner that looks like (and sounds like) your ancestor is speaking... LIVE! I wrote about this in yesterday's newsletter at https://eogn.com/page-18080/12638302.

Trying to properly describe a new video product in a text-based description is challenging, to say the least. Luckily, MyHeritage has now released a video that shows Live Story in action.

The incredible Live Story feature from MyHeritage takes the facts and photos in your tree and transforms them into an animated video of an ancestor telling his or her own life story. In the video, Tal Erlichman, Director of Product Management at MyHeritage, introduces this futuristic feature and shows you how to use it to give voice to your ancestors' stories.

You can watch the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBwr-DO63vI&t=46s.

The following announcement was written by TheGenealogist:

For the first time, researchers will now be able to see more accurately where their ancestor’s house was situated on maps down to house, street or parish level, giving more detail than ever before.

J R R Tolkien recorded in 1939 Oxford displayed on Bing Satellite map

TheGenealogist.co.uk has also added over 258,000 new records that have now been officially opened. Now you can use TheGenealogist’s SmartSearch on even more records in the 1939 Register to discover where your ancestors were living.

Film star Leslie Howard’s house in Surrey shown on a historical map

With the addition of the more precise mapping feature there are some very compelling reasons to search the 1939 Register on TheGenealogist. Firstly it benefits from their unique and powerful search tools and SmartSearch technology. This offers a hugely flexible way to look for your ancestors as the authorities scrambled in 1939 to issue identity cards and ration books for the population.

Secondly, searching the 1939 Register on TheGenealogist allows researchers to take advantage of some powerful search tools to break down brick walls. For example there is the ability to find ancestors in 1939 by using keywords, such as the individual’s occupation or their date of birth. Researchers on TheGenealogist may also search for an address and then jump straight to the household or, if you are struggling to find a family, you can even search using as many of their forenames as you know.

With a record found in the 1939 Register, TheGenealogist then gives you the ability to click on the street name to view all the residents in the road. This feature can be used to potentially discover relatives living in the area and can therefore boost your research with just a click.

The 1939 Register on TheGenealogist also benefits from innovative SmartSearch technology that enables you to discover even more about a person by linking to their Birth, Marriage and Death records.

The 1939 Register, when linked to a more detailed mapping tool than ever before, is a fantastic resource for family historians searching for where forebears lived in September 1939.

See TheGenealogist’s article:Powerful mapping linked to 1939 Register pinpoints ancestor’s households https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2022/powerful-mapping-linked-to-1939-register-pinpoints-ancestors-households-1520/

About TheGenealogist

TheGenealogist is an award-winning online family history website, who put a wealth of information at the fingertips of family historians. Their approach is to bring hard to use physical records to life online with easy to use interfaces such as their Tithe and newly released Lloyd George Domesday collections.

TheGenealogist’s innovative SmartSearch technology links records together to help you find your ancestors more easily. TheGenealogist is one of the leading providers of online family history records. Along with the standard Birth, Marriage, Death and Census records, they also have significant collections of Parish and Nonconformist records, PCC Will Records, Irish Records, Military records, Occupations, Newspaper record collections amongst many others.

TheGenealogist uses the latest technology to help you bring your family history to life. Use TheGenealogist to find your ancestors today!

The following announcement was written by Findmypast:

If you were unable to attend RootsTech 2022's opening sessions yesterday, you can watch a video of a keynote session featuring Palestinian-American comedian, Maysoon Zayid, and Stranger Things actor, Matthew Modine, as they shared their stories as keynotes on the Main Stage. Listen to Maysoon speak to the importance of equality and the power of comedy. Also hear Matthew Modine share the importance of story-telling. All this is available as a video at https://bit.ly/36QhkUb.

If you were unable to attend RootsTech 2022's opening sessions yesterday, you can watch a video of Ancestry.com's presentation featuring Crista Cowan (also known as The Barefoot Genealogist) at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT-6h2jQIdE

If you were unable to attend RootsTech 2022's opening sessions earlier today, you can watch a video of MyHeritage's (one of the Keynote sessions) presentation at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sz3mlg31sw

If you were unable to attend RootsTech 2022's opening session earlier today, you can watch a video of it at: https://bit.ly/3pwYoQL

FamilySearch CEO, Steve Rockwood, and French-American bread-maker, Apollonia Poilâne, share their stories as keynotes on the Main Stage. Join us to hear about Apollonia's experience taking over her grandfather's world-famous bakery, and Steve speaking to the importance of Choosing Connection.

The following is a press release written by Ancestry.com:

LEHI, Utah--Taking photos and attaching them to a family tree on Ancestry can help people preserve images and memories, help connect family members with information they would never have found otherwise, and build ​​deeper connections with loved ones. That’s why Ancestry®, the global leader in family history, today announced its exclusive partnership with media preservation and archiving specialist company Photomyne.

By integrating Photomyne’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) based technology, Ancestry customers will get an even easier way for family historians to digitize old family photo albums, by scanning and uploading multiple photographs at once through the Ancestry mobile app.

“Almost everyone has a shoebox filled with old family photos and albums that sit on a top shelf in their closet. The problem with that is that no one sees or shares them and they are often forgotten,” said Heather Friedland, Chief Product Officer at Ancestry. “With the Photomyne technology integrated into the Ancestry mobile app, you can now easily and quickly scan full pages of multiple images from your photo albums at once and with a click, have them automatically digitized and saved to Ancestry. Uploading your photos to Ancestry ensures your family memories are preserved and your family’s stories will be cherished for generations.”

Unlike other scanning tools, Photomyne’s AI technology uses the phone’s processor and their proprietary algorithms to:

Auto-detect image boundaries and auto-crop photos

Scan multiple images from one page and split into individual images

Enhance and restore the quality of images

“They say a picture is worth a thousand words and photos are more valuable now than ever with the rise of user generated content,” said Photomyne CEO Nir Tzemah. “We are excited to be able to give the Ancestry community an even easier way to upload, scan, enhance and share priceless family images and memories.”

Ancestry customers will now also be able to upload and share images of photo albums previously added to Ancestry and apply the same auto-cropping, rotation, and image enhancement.

Beginning today, anyone can get started by downloading the Ancestry app and creating a free account.

Be part of the conversation and share your images and family history discoveries using #MyAncestryStory or follow Ancestry on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Tik Tok.

About Ancestry

Ancestry®, the global leader in family history and consumer genomics, empowers journeys of personal discovery to enrich lives. With our unparalleled collection of more than 30 billion records, over 3 million subscribers and over 20 million people in our growing DNA network, customers can discover their family story and gain a new level of understanding about their lives. For over 30 years, we’ve built trusted relationships with millions of people who have chosen us as the platform for discovering, preserving and sharing the most important information about themselves and their families.

About Photomyne

Photomyne facilitates the way people around the world save, share, and enjoy their life memories by harnessing the power of AI technology to bridge between the past, present, and future of one’s personal legacy. Using cloud-supported services for its iOS and Android applications, Photomyne leverages its original, unprecedented technology to provide tools for digitizing and managing all types of old (analog) and new media. It is offered in 16 languages and is used in 200 countries around the world. Photomyne is headquartered in Tel Aviv. For more information, please visit photomyne.com.

The following announcement was written by MyHeritage:

We are thrilled to announce that we are launching our first-ever podcast, Blast From My Past. The podcast will feature the incredible true stories of people whose lives were changed by what they discovered through MyHeritage about their family’s pasts — whether it was a close relative they never knew existed, the key to unlocking an old family mystery, or a newfound connection to a long-forgotten legacy.

Click here to follow or subscribe to Blast From My Past

Since our foundation, MyHeritage has been privileged to play a key role in many breathtaking and deeply moving stories. We see it as a duty and an honor to share these inspiring stories with you, and we have been doing so through various platforms, including this blog, our social channels, the international media, and video. Now, we are so excited to utilize a new medium for sharing these stories: the podcast. It’s our first foray into the world of podcasting, and in complete alignment with our company philosophy — it’s all about our users.

The debut episode, “The Secret of Ereikoussa,” tells the story of Yvette Corporan, a bestselling author and Emmy Award-winning producer who set out on a quest to confirm the extraordinary story her grandmother told her: that the Greek Island community where she grew up conspired to hide a Jewish family right under the noses of their Nazi occupiers.

Listeners will follow along as Yvette digs for clues, and, with the assistance of MyHeritage CEO Gilad Japhet, makes discoveries beyond what she had ever imagined.

Some of the stories we have lined up for this season include:

• • A journey to the world’s most far-flung locations to preserve the endangered legacies of remote tribes
  • A project to reunite adoptees around the world with their birth families through free DNA testing results in a number of touching reunions
  • A soldier who earned an Iron Cross for his service on the German side in WWI, only to be driven out of Germany by the Nazis and earn a Silver Star fighting for the Allies in WWII
  • A pair of sisters, abandoned as babies at the same train station in South Korea and adopted to families on opposite ends of the globe, who discover each other through DNA testing
  • A pair of Colombian half-brothers, adopted in different countries, who found each other through DNA testing — but whose discoveries didn’t stop there

With audio production by award-winning agency Listen, Blast From My Past is presented in first-person narrative format with no host, giving center stage to the protagonists. Each episode will focus on a story, or a series of stories surrounding a common theme, and will run for a maximum of 30 minutes. The first season will include eight episodes, to be released once every two weeks — and we intend for it to be the first of many.

Blast From My Past is now available for streaming and download on all major podcast platforms — and of course, it’s entirely free.

How to follow and listen

• • Click here to follow and listen on Spotify.
  • Click here to follow and listen on Apple.
  • Tap here on your mobile device to follow and listen from your favorite podcast app.
  • You can also follow and listen on your web browser by clicking here.

Giveaway alert! 

We’ll be choosing 3 of our podcast followers to win a MyHeritage Complete Plan, our ultimate family history package which includes unlimited family tree size, access to over 16 billion historical records, priority customer support, and much, much more.

To enter, just comment below that you’re following the podcast on one of our podcast streaming platforms. We’ll notify the winners on Sunday, March 13, 2022. Good luck! 

Our best stories come straight from our users, so please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and ideas with us at blastfrommypast@myheritage.com.

MyHeritage made several new announcements at this year's RootsTech conference. One that really caught my eye is the addition of a new means of adding stories to your family tree in a manner that looks like (and sounds like) your ancestor is speaking... LIVE! This is neat!

Check out the examples in the following announcement and at https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/03/introducing-livestory-give-voice-to-your-family-stories/:

We’re thrilled to introduce LiveStory, a groundbreaking new feature from MyHeritage that allows you to create animated videos of your ancestors telling their life story. This exciting new tool gives you a whole new way to document, preserve and share your most treasured family stories.

The name LiveStory comes from “live life story”. A LiveStory is a video biography, where the narrative is told by a speaking portrait of your ancestor or relative, based on details from your family tree and manually entered text, and is enriched by photographs that illustrate various life events. 

Learn more about LiveStory in this short video: 

Imagine watching a realistic simulation of how your grandfather may have looked and sounded telling the story of his life, his immigration to the United States, and how he fell in love with your grandmother. How emotional and exciting that would be, to say the least! Well, that’s exactly what you can do with LiveStory, as in the example below:

All you need is a clear photo of the individual and a simple narrative written in the first person to create your own LiveStory in just minutes! If you already have a family tree on MyHeritage, we can create an automatic LiveStory for you using information and photos from your tree. You can then edit the narrative and add photographs, customize the voice, and preview the result as much as you like until your LiveStory is ready to share with your family and friends.

LiveStory will make your ancestors’ stories come alive. It can be a deeply moving experience to hear your relatives reminisce about the past and take you along for the journey. This unique technology is sure to engage and excite your entire family! 

How it works

LiveStory is powered by some of the most advanced AI technologies available today. The innovative technology for the speaking portrait was licensed by MyHeritage from D-ID, a company specializing in video reenactment using deep learning.

Our first license and integration of D-ID’s impressive technology resulted in Deep Nostalgia™, which allows users to animate the faces in historical photos. This feature took the internet by storm and was used nearly 100 million times in the first year since its launch. 

LiveStory takes this concept even further by adding audio. The narrative that describes a person’s life story, taken automatically from their MyHeritage family tree and enhanced by the user, is converted to high-quality audio using text-to-speech technology. Cutting-edge reenactment technology then creates a high-resolution video animating the person’s face and mouth to speak the audio, by generating realistic lip-sync. The gestures in the driver videos that are used to create the animation sequences are real human gestures. However, the end result is not authentic, but rather a technological simulation of how the person in your photo would have moved and looked if they were captured on video and spoke the words that you provided.

LiveStory works equally well on black and white photos and photos that were originally taken in color. It also works well on colorized photos and photos whose colors were restored using MyHeritage In Color™. In fact, combining these features can lead to great results. MyHeritage now makes it possible for you to take a blurry black and white photo, repair it, colorize it, enhance its focus, and then use it to create a LiveStory.

LiveStory combines some of the most impressive AI technologies available today, bringing your family stories to life like nothing you’ve ever seen! And remember, you can create a video biography using LiveStory for people who lived before video was even invented!

More Examples

Want to see some more nice examples? Check out the gallery in the LiveStory page!

Getting started

Creating a LiveStory is fun and easy. Anyone can create an amazing LiveStory in a few simple steps. There are two ways to create a LiveStory: from scratch (available to those who are new to MyHeritage), or automatically (available to existing users of MyHeritage who have a family tree).

If you’re new to MyHeritage 

You can easily create a LiveStory from scratch. To do so, visit the LiveStory web page: www.myheritage.com/livestory. 

Upload a photo to get started, and you’ll be asked to create a MyHeritage account for free on this page.

You’ll be asked to review and accept the LiveStory service terms. 

Upload a photo of someone you’d like to create a LiveStory for, typically an ancestor of yours.

As a first step, your photo is enhanced for optimal results:

 If your photo contains more than one person, we’ll show you the individual faces we detected in the image. Click on any of the round faces shown to create a LiveStory for that person. 

Next, enter the person’s name, and select the gender.

You’ll now reach the LiveStory Editor. Use the editor to write the narrative that you want the person to speak, in small convenient sections, called chapters, and optionally add one photo to each chapter. Each chapter is intended to cover an aspect of the person’s life, such as their birth, parents, occupation, and so on. You can decide which chapters you want to have.

See more details further below on how to use the editor to write the narrative and upload photos, and customize the voice options.

Once you are ready, click the “Create LiveStory” button in the top right corner.

Creating a LiveStory typically takes between 30 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the length of the narrative you have entered and the number of photos you have added. 

Once your LiveStory is ready, it will appear along with the option to play it, edit it or share it. There will also be links to view all the LiveStories you’ve created or to create a brand new LiveStory. Because it can be a lengthy wait, we’ll also email you with a link when the LiveStory is ready, so you don’t have to wait for it to be generated, and you can do something else in the meantime.

If you already have a family tree on MyHeritage

If you are one of the 99 million users who are already using MyHeritage to build a family tree, you’re in luck. We can create a beautiful LiveStory for you based on the information already on your family tree in just a few clicks. Then, use the LiveStory editor to improve the LiveStory further.

Access the LiveStory page for existing MyHeritage users by selecting “LiveStory” under the “Photos” tab in the navigation bar:

Here, suggestions of individuals for whom to create a LiveStory are listed. We’ll include deceased ancestors or relatives of yours, for which sufficient information from the tree is available, with preference to those with a personal photo in the family tree. We take great care in suggesting people that we know we can create the best LiveStories for from your family tree, based on how closely they are related to you and how much information about them is included in your tree.

To create a LiveStory, simply click any of the suggestions. Or, scroll to the bottom of the page to create a LiveStory from scratch using a new photo that you upload. 

Once you click a suggested individual, a LiveStory will be generated automatically based on the information and photos in your family tree. The more details and tagged photos you have in your tree, the richer and more engaging your LiveStory will be. 

Note that you will be asked to accept the LiveStory terms before creating your first LiveStory.

Our team has developed a very sophisticated logic to curate the information and accompanying photos from your family tree when you create a LiveStory in one click based on your family tree. 

There are many different types of facts that could be added to the family tree. We take all the information that has been entered in the family tree as facts for that individual, and we choose the most important facts that pertain to the story. We generally select and show when and where people were born, their parents, their siblings, marriages, birth of their children, grandchildren, occupation, military service. We often omit information if the story becomes too long. 

When the family tree information is automatically selected for your LiveStory, we then randomly choose different ways to present each type of fact, to avoid repetition. In this way, every single LiveStory will appear different and create a different story each time. 

This information is grouped into chapters based on topics, and we try to locate a photo from your family tree that best fits that chapter. We invest considerable effort in picking the best photo for each chapter based on several criteria including:

• The more people that are tagged in the photo and are relevant to the chapter, the better; and the fewer people that are tagged and aren’t relevant to the chapter, the better. 
• The resolution of the photo, and the sizes of the faces in the photo. 
• The dates of the photo and how they relate to the ages of the people in the photo.
• The title and other metadata of the photo.

For example, for a chapter that describes a person’s siblings, we will automatically select the photo in which as many of these siblings as possible were tagged. For a chapter about the person’s marriage, we will guess which one of the photos is an appropriate wedding photo, and so on. You can later replace any of the default photo selections.

Uploading and tagging more photos on your MyHeritage family site will improve the photos that are automatically curated for your LiveStories. If you haven’t yet uploaded your trove of family photos to MyHeritage, there is no time like the present. Upload your family photos today, and tag people in the photos based on the individuals in your family tree. 

Remember — the automatic LiveStory we create for you is just a starting point! You’re encouraged to edit and enrich it further with vivid details, colorful anecdotes, and additional photos. The family tree is only a starting point but your LiveStory will come alive when you add stories that may be missing in the family tree.

Once you’ve created at least one LiveStory, you’ll see all the LiveStories already created at the top of the main LiveStory page under the label “Your LiveStories”, and on top of “Suggested LiveStories”.

You can return here at any time to keep improving a LiveStory that you have previously created.

Click the three dots on the bottom right of a LiveStory that you have created in the past to share, download, edit, or delete the LiveStory.

If you don’t yet have a family tree on MyHeritage, go to the Family Tree tab and create your family tree. It will then be easier to create a LiveStory.

If you have a family tree on MyHeritage but the person you want to create a LiveStory for is not one of the suggestions listed, you can easily create the LiveStory by finding that person in the family tree first. The panel in the family tree page offers a new option to create a LiveStory, as shown below. It is only available for deceased individuals.

There is also a similar option on the profile page:

Sharing a LiveStory

Once your LiveStory is ready, you’ll surely want to share it with your friends and family. Their reactions will be priceless! Plus, they’ll get the opportunity to create their own LiveStories for all of you to enjoy. The LiveStory is a video that you can download and share in any way you’d like, or share it directly to Facebook or Twitter. You can also copy a link to the LiveStory that you’re created and share it via other means.

Editing a LiveStory 

Click “Edit LiveStory” to open the LiveStory Editor. 

In the editor, you’ll be able to improve and customize your LiveStory until you get a result that you’re proud of. 

Select a chapter to edit the text, or add or replace the photo for that chapter. 

Click on the three dots on the bottom right of a chapter to hear how it will sound, add a new chapter, or delete the chapter. 

In the editor, click “Add a new chapter” to do just that. A pop-up window will open from which you can select a topic for the new chapter. Topics already used in the LiveStory will no longer be listed.

You can select one of the chapter topics suggested, or click “Free Text” to do it on your own on whatever topic you’d like.

A lot more detailed information may be found at: https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/03/introducing-livestory-give-voice-to-your-family-stories/

Try LiveStory today and let us know what you think!