Using Windows Movie Maker 2 to Present Still Photos
Published: December 2, 2002
By Tony Northrup, Windows XP Expert Zone Community Columnist
Editor's Note: Past articles by members of the online community are archived for your use. The information may become outdated as technology changes. For the most current information, please search the Web site or post a question in the newsgroups. This column was based on a beta version of Windows Movie Maker 2.
Digital video fans already know about Windows Movie Maker, a feature of Windows XP for creating and editing home videos. Windows Movie Maker can import many different kinds of media to your computer, including video from a file, from a video camera, and from a Web cam. Movie Maker can also import audio and music files and record your voice directly from a microphone. (If you haven't worked with digital video before, check out Getting Started with Windows Movie Maker for help in making the most of your equipment and the digital video features of Windows XP.)
Even digital video experts may not know that you can use Windows Movie Maker to create dynamic slide shows by importing your still digital photos and adding titles, creative transitions, music, and narration. You can even mix different media types to create a video with still pictures, video clips, and music or voice-overs. I'll walk you step-by-step through the process of creating a slide show with still photos and show you a few tricks along the way.
Download Windows Movie Maker 2
If you haven't used Movie Maker before, this is a great time to jump in. Windows Movie Maker 2 is faster, easier to use, and has many new features. It gives you more choices for creative transitions, lets you add special effects to your video (such as fading in and out and adding black and white or sepia tones), and scrolling credits. Get started by downloading Windows Movie Maker 2.
Note: Microsoft Windows Movie Maker 2 is an update of the Windows Movie Maker component of the Microsoft Windows XP operating system. Upgrading to Windows Movie Maker 2 completely replaces the existing version of Windows Movie Maker on your computer. In order to restore the original version of Windows Movie Maker after updating Windows XP, you must use System Restore. Please check to ensure System Restore is turned on before you install Windows Movie Maker 2. For more information, see the Release Notes for Windows Movie Maker 2.
Create Your Own Slide Show
Windows Movie Maker is extremely straightforward—the steps you should follow are clearly numbered in the task pane. Don't be afraid to experiment as we walk through this process, because you can't damage your pictures. The image or audio file you import into Windows Movie Maker is a representation of the original source file. The file remains in the folder or location from which it was imported. You can delete or rename pictures shown in the Collections pane of Movie Maker without actually deleting or renaming the original picture. You can also add special effects to the pictures within Movie Maker and the original pictures aren't ever modified.
Step 1: Import Your Pictures
Transferring your still pictures to your PC is the first step in making your own slide show. Then you'll need to import them into Windows Movie Maker. A tip before you begin to assemble your slide show: Pictures that are wider than they are tall (landscape orientation) fit the shape of computer monitors better—so use horizontal pictures whenever possible.
To import pictures into Windows Movie Maker:
1. | Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Windows Movie Maker. |
2. | In the Movie Tasks pane under Capture Video, click Import pictures. |
3. | You'll be prompted to import your pictures, so browse to the folder where you keep your photographs. You can select several pictures in a single folder by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking each picture. |
4. | When you've selected your pictures, click Import. If you have pictures in other folders to import, click Import pictures again and repeat the process. |
Your pictures will appear in the Collections pane of the Movie Maker window. We're actually working with representations of your pictures, so there's no risk of damaging your original images. (If you edit the source file in another program after it is already imported into Windows Movie Maker, the changes that you make to the file automatically appear in Windows Movie Maker and in any Windows Movie Maker projects that include the edited clip or picture. And, if you delete the thumbnail or clip for the file in Windows Movie Maker, the source file still remains unchanged in the original location. To ensure that you can continue to work with a project, avoid renaming, deleting, or moving the original source files. For more information, search Windows Movie Maker Help topics for source files.)
Don't worry about the order of the pictures just yet—you'll have the chance to specify their sequence in the slide show later.
If you want quick results, in the Movie Tasks pane, under Edit Movie, click Make an AutoMovie. This choice automatically adds the pictures in your collection to the storyboard, creates a default title, and adds a blank set of credits. Afterwards, you should right-click both the title frame and the credits frame and click Edit Title to customize these pages. Then skip straight down to Step 6 to narrate your slide show and Step 7 to send it on its way.
Step 2: Add Your Pictures to the Storyboard
When you import pictures, they're added to Movie Maker as collections. Collections aren't automatically added to your video, so you should drag your pictures from the Collections box into the storyboard at the bottom of the window. Now is the best time to put them in the correct order, but you can always reorder them later simply by dragging and dropping them on the storyboard. Figure 1 shows the storyboard filled with pictures of my cat, Sammy.
Figure 1
Step 3: Add Titles and Credits
Once you've added all your pictures to the storyboard and put them in the right order, it's time to add a title. A title is a great way to tell viewers a little about the pictures before the show begins. While you're at it, add Hollywood-style credits (without the Hollywood-style budget)!
To begin, in the Movie Tasks pane, under Edit Movie, click Make titles or credits. You'll be prompted to choose where to add the title and select a style for your title screen. There's room for creativity here, because a title can be one line of simple text or several pages that fade into the distance. Take some time to explore, and choose a style for the title that sets the mood for your slide show.
Step 4: Add Creative Transitions
Now that you've added a title and (possibly) credits, you've got all the content you'll need in your slide show. You can preview your slide show by clicking the Play button in the preview window. The transitions between the pictures are a bit abrupt right now and don't stay on screen long enough to get a good look at them. We can fix that by creating new transitions:
1. | In the Movie tasks pane, under Edit Movie, click View video transitions. The Collections pane will become the Video Transitions pane. |
2. | Drag the video transition to the video transition cell between two pictures on the storyboard. |
These transitions are one of the greatest features of the new version of Movie Maker. Take some time to experiment with them—my favorites are the Fade and Wipe transitions.
Step 5: Adjust the Timeline
Your slide show is almost ready. You'll probably want to make the pictures stay on the screen for more than a couple of seconds, however. This is easy to adjust by using the timeline to modify the timing of clips in your project. Your Timeline shows the pictures that you've added and how long they'll each be displayed. The time is displayed as hours:minutes:seconds.hundreths of a second (h:mm:ss.hs).
1. | Click Show Timeline above the storyboard. |
2. | To make a picture appear on the screen longer, select the picture, and when the pointer becomes a red arrow, drag the picture's right border to the right. |
The individual pictures probably appear too narrow on the timeline, so click the button with a magnifying glass and a plus (+) sign a couple of times to zoom in on your pictures.
Step 6: Add Sound
One of the greatest benefits of using Windows Movie Maker to create a slide show is that you can add your own voice-over. If your radio voice isn't so great, you can always dub in an MP3 or other music file by clicking Import audio or music on the Movie Tasks pane under Capture Video and following the prompts to Add an audio file to your slide show. This step is entirely optional. Your audience probably won't complain if you create a silent slide show, but narrating the contents of the timeline serves as another way for you to enhance your presentation.
To add your voice to the slide show, grab your computer's microphone and select the Timeline view. If you're not already looking at the timeline, click Show Timeline above the storyboard. Next, click the timeline where you'd like your voice-over to start. The second button on the toolbar that looks like a microphone is Narrate Timeline. Click this button and the screen will switch to show your narration controls, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2
The Input level control lets you adjust your microphone so you don't sound too loud or too quiet—as you talk, you should see a bar moving. Instead of adjusting your own volume, move the slider up or down so that the bar hovers near the middle of the graph. When you're ready to go, click Start Narration. Your slide show plays as you talk, so you'll know which picture you're talking over. When you're done, click Stop Narration and you'll be prompted to save your recording. The narration you capture is saved as a Windows Media Audio file with a .wma file name extension in the Narration folder under My Videos on your hard disk. Don't worry about this extra file, because Movie Maker has already mixed it into your movie.
Step 7: Save and Send Your Video
All that's left to do now is save your video. This may actually be the trickiest step in the process, because you need to choose a format that your audience can view in a reasonable size, and one that doesn't degrade the quality of your images too much. In the Movie Tasks pane under Finish Movie, you can choose to save the slide show to your computer (the most flexible choice), send it through e-mail, send it to the Web, burn it to a recordable CD, or send it to your digital video camera.
If you choose to send the video through e-mail or burn it to a recordable CD, Movie Maker will help you select a format that fits your use. For example, videos created for sending through e-mail will be small enough that they can be sent as an attachment. Videos created for recordable CDs, where file size is less important, are created with a higher quality format. Of course, you can pick any format you want if you choose to save the video to your computer. To illustrate the different quality levels, here's a sample slideshow using the lower-quality e-mail format: Sammy the Cat Slide Show at E-mail Quality. For those of you with broadband connections, here's that same slideshow at the highest quality: Sammy the Cat Slide Show at Highest Quality.
The DV Camera save option lets you record the movie you create to a tape in a DV camera through Windows Movie Maker, so you can watch the final movie on a DV camera or on TV when you connect the camera to a TV. To record your movie to tape, your DV camera needs to be in the playback mode, often labeled VCR or VTR on your camera.
Choose a Program to Build a Slide Show
If you just want to view your slide show on your own computer, you can use the Windows XP My Pictures Slideshow screensaver. But My Pictures Slideshow won't allow you to send your slideshow to another computer.
To create a My Pictures Slideshow:
1. | Open Control Panel, click Appearance and Themes, and then click Display. |
2. | In the Display Properties dialog box, on the Screen Saver tab, click My Pictures Slideshow under Screen saver, and then click Settings specify options for your slide show. |
There is a downside to presenting still pictures using video. Video files, at best, offer 720 x 525 resolution. The most commonly used video file formats only support up to 640 x 480. All but the least expensive digital cameras offer far greater image size, so displaying your images in a video presentation will require you to sacrifice sharpness.
Video files include compression, but the compression is optimized for movies instead of still images. The video compression will further degrade the quality of your images, and the file size will be far greater than the combined file size of your images stored in JPEG format. So why use Windows Movie Maker to create your slide show?
There are other ways to create slideshows—a quick search of the Internet will turn up dozens of applications. However, many slide show applications designed for photos produce a proprietary file format, so you need a special viewer to watch the slide show.
The benefit of using Windows Movie Maker for slide show creation is the convenience and easy interface it offers. It's included with Windows XP and the upgrade to Windows Movie Maker 2 is a free download. The new features and the drag-and-drop interface make Windows Movie Maker 2 the most user-friendly program you'll find. And slide shows you create with Windows Movie Maker can be viewed with Windows Media Player, which most users already have installed.
For those times when creative control is more important than image sharpness, the latest version of Movie Maker is a great way to share your pictures. Titles, creative transitions, and narration add new dimensions to your images. Windows Movie Maker brings the tradition of the slide show to the Internet, allowing you to reach friends and family thousands of miles away. With you as the director, your friends, family, and pets can be the stars of the lowest budget movie ever—free!
Expert Zone columnist Tony Northrup is an Internet engineer, a part-time photographer, and author of dozens of books and articles. He writes to help people safely use the Internet to communicate, share, and learn.
