Chapter 20: Working with Video

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Creating and Editing Video Files with Windows Movie Maker

Windows Movie Maker is essentially the same program that came with Windows Me. It enables you to edit graphical, audio, and video files into movies that are stored in video files that you can play with Windows Media Player.

Windows Movie Maker creates files called projects, with the extension .mswmm. Each project can contain one or more collections, which are lists of items to include in the movie. A collection contains clips, which can be video, audio, or still-graphics files. Information about your collections is stored in your My Videos folder, which is in your My Documents folder. Once you've created your movie, you can save it as a video file in Windows Media format with the extension .wmv.

The Windows Movie Maker Window

To open Windows Movie Maker choose Start | All Programs | Accessories | Windows Movie Maker. The Windows Movie Maker window has four areas and several toolbars, as shown in Figure 20-3. The parts of the window are
[figure]
Figure 20-3: The Windows Movie Maker editor window, where you compose the next Oscar winner

If you've already been working on a movie, Windows Movie Maker opens the last project you opened. You can open any existing project by choosing File | Open Project from the menu or clicking the Open Project icon on the toolbar.

warning We've had a lot of trouble getting Windows Movie Maker to work properly on computers with limited memory. It sometimes can't export your project as a movie that you can play with Windows Media Player, and other times it can't reopen files that it saved only moments before.

Importing Files

Before you can create a movie, you need to import video, audio, and graphic information with which to make the movie. Depending on where your picture, sound, and video information come from, you need the appropriate hardware or access to get that information onto your computer. The three types of information you can import are

Once you have graphic, audio, or video files, you can import them into Windows Movie Maker. Follow these steps:

  1. Run Windows Movie Maker and open your project if it's not already open. To create a new project, choose File | New | Project from the menu bar.
  2. Select the collection into which you want to import the files. You can create a new collection for them by selecting the top-level collection (My Collections) and choosing File | New | Collection from the menu.
  3. Choose File | Import or press CTRL-I. You see the Select The File To Import dialog box.
  4. Select the file or files to import. You can select more than one file by holding the SHIFT or CTRL keys while selecting files.
  5. After a potentially grueling wait, the files are added to the active collection.

tip Another way to import files is to drag-and-drop them into the Windows Movie Maker window.

After you import information into the program, Windows Movie Maker shows each clip as a little icon in the current collection. You can find out more about any clip by right-clicking it and choosing Properties from the shortcut menu that appears. To play a single clip, select it and click the Play button on the VCR-style buttons just below the Monitor (the leftmost button).

tip When you import a video file, Windows Movie Maker automatically breaks it into clips, based on where it thinks the scenes start and end. To turn this feature off, choose View | Options and deselect the Automatically Create Clips option.

You can organize your clips into collections by dragging the clips from one collection to another, or by using cut-and-paste (CTRL-X to cut and CTRL-V to paste).

note If you don't have any video, just place all of your still pictures in a collection and make a slide show with still pictures and a soundtrack or narration.

Composing Your Movie

The Workspace area at the bottom of the Windows Movie Maker window displays either the Storyboard or the Timeline. To create a movie out of your clips, you drag them to the Storyboard or Timeline in the order that you want them shown.

The Storyboard is like a book, in which each blank square is like the page of a book, and you decide what appears on each page and in what order. Find the first clip--either video or graphic file--and drag it to the first space in the Storyboard. This clip becomes the first page of your story, and the first part of your movie. Continue dragging video and graphic clips to the Storyboard in the order in which you want them to appear. You can always switch the order later. With clips, the Storyboard looks like this:
[image]

tip To move clips around after you've placed them in the Storyboard, just drag them left or right. When a line appears between the clips where you would like to place the clip to be reordered, drop it.

The Timeline gives you another view of the same movie. Display it in the Workspace area by clicking the Timeline icon at the left end of the Workspace (switch back to the Storyboard by clicking the Storyboard icon that takes the Timeline icon's place), or choose View | Timeline from the menu (View | Storyboard takes you back to the Storyboard). The Timeline shows the timing of the clips in the movie, displaying how many seconds each clip takes:
[image]

You can add, delete, and rearrange the clips on either the Storyboard or the Timeline--the effect is the same. If you delete a clip from the Storyboard or Timeline, it disappears from the movie, but remains in the project available for reuse. If you don't think you'll use a clip after all, you can delete by selecting it in the Clips area and pressing the DELETE key--this action deletes the information from the project.

Adding Sound

To provide a soundtrack, you can drag an audio clip to the Timeline (not the Storyboard). The audio clip runs along the bottom of the Timeline, showing where the audio starts and ends. You can control the balance between the sound portion of the video clips and of the audio soundtrack by choosing Edit | Audio Levels from the menu and sliding the slider between Video Track and Audio Track:
[image]

You can record a narration to go with your slide show or video. The idea is to synchronize what you're saying with what's appearing on the screen. (Note: Your computer needs a working microphone to record the narration.) Follow these steps:

  1. Choose File | Record Narration to display the Record Narration Track dialog box.
  2. If you want to mute the audio track during the playback of the movie, click the check box marked Mute Video Soundtrack.
  3. When you're ready, click the Record button. Be prepared--as soon as you click the Record button, Windows Movie Maker begins recording and playing the video at the same time.
  4. Talk along with the movie.
  5. When you're finished, click the Stop button. Windows Movie Maker prompts you to save your narration and imports it into your project.

tip Run through your video a few times, clicking Pause and making some notes. Then spend some time rehearsing. Don't try to be Marlin Perkins, but you'll gain appreciation if you do a well-timed job.

Previewing Your Movie

After you add the clips for your movie, you can see how it looks. Choose Play | Play Entire Storyboard/Timeline from the menu, or right-click the Storyboard or Timeline and choose Play Entire Storyboard/Timeline from the shortcut menu that appears. You can also play a section of the movie by selecting a series of clips from the Storyboard and clicking the Play button below the Monitor. Or, select all of the clips on the Storyboard (right-click any clip and choose Select All) and then click the Play VCR button below the Monitor. The VCR-style controls look like this:
[image]

Editing Your Movie

Windows Movie Maker includes many commands for editing your movie. Here are a few neat things you can do:


[image]

The wider the overlap, the longer the transition will be. The resulting fade-in looks like Figure 20-4.
[figure] [figure] [figure]
Figure 20-4: Overlapping two clips results in a fade-in.

note Windows Movie Maker does not have integrated transition effects as other consumer-grade video editors do. You can't add special transitions other than the fade effect.

Saving Your Movie

Once your movie shines, click the Save Movie button on the toolbar or choose File | Save Movie from the menu. You see the Save Movie dialog box. The Setting box in the Playback Quality section gives you four choices for quality. They are

As you set the Play Quality Setting, the File Size shows how large the resulting movie will be. The default is Medium Quality, which gives reasonable clarity and excellent sound. A collection of photographs and music that runs 30 seconds took a mere 791Kb of space at High Quality. It was 94Kb at Low Quality and 343Kb at Medium Quality, all of which are reasonable sizes when sending movies via e-mail. If you plan to make large movies with video, be aware that they can take up anywhere from several megabytes to several hundred megabytes of disk space.

Fill out the other information on the dialog box with as much or as little detail as you wish and click OK. In the Save As dialog box that appears, enter a name for the file. Windows Movie Maker saves the movie in a file with the .wmv extension.

tip If you have a CD-R or CD-RW drive, create a CD-ROM to send your family and friends, rather than e-mailing huge files.

You can e-mail your movies or send them to your Web server directly from Windows Movie Maker. To send a movie via e-mail or the Web, click the Send button on the toolbar or choose File | Send Movie To from the menu. Select E-mail or Web Server from the menu that appears. Choose the quality for the resulting video and fill out the other information on the dialog box. When you click OK, Windows Movie Maker asks which e-mail program to use. Select either Default E-mail Program at the top of the list or the name of the program you typically use from the items below. If you plan to send the videos using a different program another time, leave the Don't Ask Me Again item unchecked. Click OK. Your e-mail program opens and a new message appears, waiting for you to enter the addresses of those you wish to send it to.

tip Be sure to check that your intended recipients have Windows Media Player before sending them a movie.

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