Making Movies with Microsoft Movie Maker

Windows Movie Maker is a free video-editing tool included with Microsoft Windows XP. With Movie Maker, you can turn your home movies into awesome videos that you can share across the Internet, or burn to a CD or DVD. Movie Maker is easy for anyone to use, so don't be afraid to dive in, even if you're not a computer expert.

Windows Movie Maker 2.1 makes home movies amazingly fun. With Movie Maker 2.1, you can create, edit, and share your home movies right on your computer. Build your movie with a few simple drag-and-drops. Delete bad shots and include only the best scenes. Then share your movie via the Web, e-mail, or CD. Using third-party software you can even take movies you've made and turn them into DVDs. You can also save your movie back to the video tape in your camera to play back on a TV or on the camera itself. Normally Windows Movie Maker can be found by going to Start, Accessories and clicking on Movie Maker. If you can't find the program on your Accessories menu, you can get it  it by doing the following:

1. Open Windows Explorer and click the Help and Support Center from the drop down menu.

2. Type in Movie Maker into the search box.

3. In the search results click on Using Windows Movie Maker. Detail instructions will appear on the right side of the Support Center window

4. Below the first paragraph you will see Open Windows Movie Maker. By clicking on the link Movie Maker will open.

5. If you now check your Accessories menu, Movie Maker should be displayed.

If you want to view videos that are stored on your computer you need to have Windows Media Player which most computers have installed. However, if you do not have it, you can get it at this site. The latest iteration is version 10.

Making a Video Using My Pictures

Perhaps the easiest way to become familiar  with Movie Maker is to make a video with pictures you have taken and stored in My Pictures So let's give it a try.

Go to Start, Accessories, and click on Windows Movie Maker from the drop down menu.

When Movie Maker opens you will see on the left side items that you can import. Since you are going to work with pictures, you want to click Import Pictures as shown on the right. This will open up your My Pictures folder. Select the folder or pictures you want to work with. It is best to select all the pictures in a folder. You can do that by clicking on the first picture and and, holding down the SHIFT key, scroll to the last picture and click the last picture.

Now click the Import button and all those pictures will be moved to Movie Maker.

At the bottom of Movie Maker will be blank spaces where you can drag and drop your photographs in any order that you wish and place then in the blank spaces.                                 

Between each blank space there is transition box that looks like the picture on the right. You will fill the transition box after you have completed selecting all the pictures for your video.

We now want to add the transition effects for each picture so you need to click on the View Video Transition link listed under Edit Movie. What will appear is a list of nine different transition effects with names like Circle; Checkerboard, across; Bars and many more. Scroll down to see all of them. Add a transition effect between each picture.

Next we want to add Titles or Credits by clicking on the appropriate link under Edit Movies. First make a Title Page and identify the name of the video. You can add titles anywhere you want between pictures. Just select the picture where you want the title to precede the picture and write the caption you want to appear. Click done when finished with each caption.

Now that you have finished adding pictures, placing transition effects between each picture and adding titles and captions to your video, you are ready to take the final step. You have several choices as can be seen on the right. Saving it to your computer or to a CD is the most logical choice. Select the option you want and follow the directions. You have now made your first video!

More Information on Movie Making

The process described above in creation of a video of photographs is the same with movies although there are various ways of inputting your material. The editing is fundamentally the same. If you wish to explore how to input video from your movie camera, this Microsoft site does a good job of explaining the steps. Be aware that the information was written in 2006 and you movie camera may be more advanced that what is on the site

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