Moviemaking 202 with Windows Movie Maker 2
Published: January 27, 2003
By Tony Northrup, Windows XP Expert Zone Community Columnist
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If you haven't used Windows XP to edit your home movies, now would be a great time to start. Windows Movie Maker 2 is even better than the first version of Movie Maker, an accessory that came with Windows XP.
Movie Maker 1 allowed you to capture, trim, and rearrange your video clips. Movie Maker 2 does that too, but also makes creating home movies easier and encourages creativity with dozens of new special effects and transitions.
Best yet, it can actually make you a better videographer. Do you wish you'd zoomed in a little closer on an otherwise great shot? Even if you took the video years ago, it's never too late to fix it.
In this column, I'll share some of my own terrible footage and show you how Movie Maker 2 improved it. And I'll show you how to quickly create a movie from old video clips by using the new AutoMovie feature.
Get Started with Movie Maker 2
The best way to learn what Movie Maker can do is to dive in. Start by going to Microsoft Update. Click Scan for updates, and then click Windows XP in the Microsoft Update pane. Look for Windows Movie Maker 2, click the Add button, click Review and install upgrades, and then click the Install Now button.
To start Movie Maker 2:
| • | Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Windows Movie Maker. |
Capturing and editing your home movies doesn't require expensive equipment. The Movie Maker 2 software is free to anyone who has Windows XP. If you happen to have a digital video camera, that's great—you can load your movies directly into Movie Maker using your IEEE 1394 port. My video camera is a four-year old analog Hi-8 camera though. To capture my home movies, I bought a $50 video capture card from my local electronics store, popped open my computer case, and installed the card in my Windows XP-based desktop. The next time I booted, Windows XP automatically detected the hardware and loaded the drivers.
Note: Your video camera and computer probably have microphones built into them. However, an inexpensive external microphone will probably sound much better and will greatly improve your narration.
I connected the camera to my video capture card just like I connect it to my television. After starting Movie Maker 2, I clicked Capture from video device and answered the Video Capture Wizard's questions. When I got to the Capture Video page of the wizard, I fast forwarded to the start of the clip and pushed Play on my video camera.
After I saw that the video was displaying correctly on my computer monitor, I clicked the Start Capture button in Movie Maker. At the end of the clip, I clicked Stop Capture, as shown in Figure 1, and then clicked Finish.
Figure 1
Movie Maker saves the video and automatically adds it to your collection.
You can have fun with Movie Maker 2 even if you don't have a video camera. If you just want to experiment with video, you can use a Web cam and a microphone to capture audio and video. If you take pictures with a digital camera, you can load those still photos into Movie Maker to create a slideshow. For more information about how to do this, see my column on Using Windows Movie Maker 2 to Present Still Photos.
Check Out the New User Interface
The first thing you'll notice about Movie Maker 2 is that the steps to make a video are listed in the left pane of the window: Capture Video, Edit Movie, and Finish Movie. Underneath these steps are a handful of choices that give you complete control over your production, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2
It's so straightforward that you can make an entire movie without ever opening a menu. In comparison, Movie Maker 1 did not have as friendly or as easy-to-use interface. A friendly interface is important, because the harder it is to create movies, the more I'll procrastinate.
Edit Video with AutoMovie
I have a stack of video tapes that I've been meaning to do something with for a long time, but I just never get around to it. I'd like to send the highlights to my friends, but I know that editing the videos into something presentable will take me a long time. So the tapes have been gathering dust on my shelf.
The AutoMovie feature in Movie Maker 2 solves this problem. AutoMovie assembles your video clips and adds transitions and video effects that fit the style you choose. To use AutoMovie, start by importing at least 30 seconds of video into your collection. After you've done that, you're only a few clicks away from watching your movie.
1. | Under Edit Movie, click Make an AutoMovie, and select the style that fits your collection: Flip and Slide, Highlights Movie, Music Video, Old Movie, or Sports Highlights. |
2. | Optionally, you can add a title and music. |
3. | Click Done. |
AutoMovie will spend a few minutes processing your video by adding transitions and effects consistent with the style you chose.
After you create an AutoMovie, you can save it as a movie using the Save Movie Wizard or you can make further edits to your movie, just as you would when creating a project on your own in Movie Maker.
Add Cool Video Effects
Movie Maker 2's video effects won't let you add aliens or dinosaurs to your video, but you can brighten those clips that were taken in a dark room. To work with video effects:
1. | Under Edit Movie, click View video effects. |
2. | Drag the effect to the video clip in the timeline below to apply the effect. The results are shown in the Contents pane. |
Take a look at my Sammy the Cat Sample Video to see how I improved my footage with Movie Maker effects. The sample video is available in a low bandwidth version, Sammy the Cat Sample Video for Low Bandwidth, and a high bandwidth version, Sammy the Cat Sample Video for High Bandwidth.
I added two Brightness, Increase effects to a dark clip of my cat, Sammy, playing with a Christmas tree ornament in my sample video. I wish I had zoomed in closer to him in that clip, but I fixed it with Movie Maker by adding three Ease In effects. On the clip of Sammy chasing his own tail, I used the Speed Up video effect to double the speed. This has two benefits: it reduces the length of the clip (that piece of tape entertained my cat for about ten minutes), and it adds humor to see him spinning really fast.
Those video effects are all very practical, but there are more creative video effects too. You can add grain or a watercolor effect if you're feeling artistic. To simulate an old movie, you can add the Film Age, Grayscale, or Sepia Tone effects. Ever have a kid hold the camera upside down or sideways? You can use the various Rotate effects to straighten that video out. In total, there are 30 effects that can help you strengthen the impact of your movies.
Choose the Right Transitions
Transitions are important for creating a polished video because without them a video seems harsh and disconnected. The transition plays before one clip ends and while the other clip starts to play.
Movie Maker 1 supported transitions by allowing you to overlap two video clips. When the video played back, the first clip nicely faded into the second. Movie Maker 2 still supports fading between video clips and adds 59 other transitions. These transitions range from the subtle to the flashy and can really set a mood for a movie. I tried out all the cartoonish transitions, got that out of my system, and now find myself relying on the most subtle ones: Fade, Dissolve, and the various Wipe transitions.
Low key transitions give your movies a more professional look. The dramatic ones can be annoying for your audience unless they really fit your movie or you use them selectively, just where you need the excitement.
Enhance Your Movie with Titles and Credits
One of the most exciting new features of Movie Maker 2 is the large number of creative choices for titles and credits. You could make titles with Movie Maker 1—but you had to use Microsoft Paint to create a title screen and then import that picture into Movie Maker. Movie Maker 1 didn't offer any way to add a title to a video clip, so you were forced to rely on low-tech methods like cardboard and a marker.
With Movie Maker 2, in the Movie tasks pane, under Edit Movie, click Make titles or credits, select where in the movie you want the title, pick the animation style, and type the text.
I'd be thrilled if Movie Maker simply let me add titles and credits as plain text, but you actually have 43 animation styles to choose from. One of my favorites is the News Video, Inset title animation that shrinks the video into the corner and adds a banner across the bottom of the screen. The Sports Scoreboard title slides in from the top and then quickly disappears.
Credits are a great way to give your video a professional finish. They're handled very similarly to titles, but the credit animation styles allow for more than two lines of text. Two of the new credit choices resemble the way television shows use credits: the Video Left and Video Top squeeze the video into a portion of the screen and use the extra space for scrolling credits. You also have several styles of traditional scrolling credits to choose from.
Enjoy Video Highlights
Many of us tape home movies and never watch them. After all, capturing a perfect moment requires hours of recording, but few people are willing to watch an entire taped softball game—just to see you hit one home run. In a few minutes using Windows Movie Maker 2, you can assemble your video highlights into something entertaining enough for the music video generation to enjoy.
The process of capturing and importing the video is entertaining too. I really enjoyed looking through the home movies I've taped over the years. Now that I can watch the highlights of those videos on my computer, my family and I will enjoy those movies much more often.
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.
