Making Videos With Movie Maker

You don’t need expensive equipment or software to create videos promoting you website, goods or services to video sharing sites. Read on to see how tools within Windows will help you to make great videos.

You don’t need a camcorder to make home videos. Most digital cameras have a good quality video mode and some mobile phones let you record video as well. To transfer video you made need to remove a memory card and slot it into your computer. Alternitavely your device may be supplied with cable for transferring the footage.

If you are using a camcorder then it depends on the type as to how the footage is transferred to your computer. If you are using a camcorder that uses a hard disc or memory card then it is likely that a USB cable was provided for transferring the footage. Some DVD based camcorders provide a USB or Firewire port but in many cases you’ll need to resort to converting your own finalized disc. Windows Movie Maker can’t handle this but free DVD ripping tools are available such as DVDFab. As an aside, if you are considering buying a camcorder then a DVD format model should be your last choice.

If you have an ever popular miniDV camcorder then you will be transferring the footage with a Firewire or IEEE-1394 cable. If your computer does not have a built in Firewire socket then you can buy a Firewire card quite cheaply and fit it yourself.

Windows Movie Maker should already be installed on your computer or can be easily added from Microsoft. When you are ready to transfer footage from your miniDV and have found the start point on the tape then connect the camcorder’s DV-out socket to your computer’s Firewire port with the Firewire cable. The first time you do this Windows will install a driver which will take a few seconds. Once installed an Autoplay window will appear and ask what you want to do next.

In Windows XP, highlight where it says ‘Capture Video Using Windows Movie Maker’ and click OK. In Windows Vista click the ‘Import video using Windows Import Video’ option. The Windows Import Video wizard will start.

The first page of the wizard will for basic information and in the second page select a location on your computer to save you video files to. In Vista there is a third option where you can choose between AVI or WMV. AVI files are high quality but much larger (13GB/hour) while WMV take up less hard disk space but are lower quality.

Window’s Movie Maker interface works in pretty much the same way whether you are using Vista or XP, often it is just the labeling that is different. On the left hand side of the screen is the Task Pane. It is split into three sections: Import (or Capture Video in XP), Edit (Edit Movie) and Publish (Finish Movie). The contents of the MiniDV tape you just captured should be displayed in the Content pane in the middle of the screen. On the right is the Preview monitor, where clips play and below all this is the Storeyboard and Timeline.

The Storeyboard shows all clips Vista while XP cuts all clips into a series of sections. The Timeline shows footage with a rule above to denote the length of the clip. Basically you drag and drop clips from the Content pane into the Storyboard or Timeline and arrange them in order. In addition to the video that you just captured you can import further video clips and photos stored elsewhere on your computer. It is easiest to trim clips in the Timeline. Highlight a clip and move your mouse pointer to either end of the clip, where it will change to a double ended red arrow. Click and drag to the left from the end and to the right from the start of the clip to trim it. There is also an option to split clips at specific points.

As you edit and assemble your video you can drag effects, transitions and music to your Storeyboard or Timeline. Click Effects in the Task Pane and the Content Pane will change to display the selection of filters, zooms and tools for color and contrast available. Similarly click on Transitions to see the selection available that can be dragged and dropped between the clips.

You can click the Audio or Music option under Import on the Task Pane to add an MP3 file to the video. If you have a microphone you can record a voice over or narration for your video. Now click on Titles or Credits to create on screen text.

Movie Maker offers a number of options for producing your video which are listed under ‘Finish Movie’(XP) or ‘Publish to’(Vista) in the left hand Task Pane. You can output a low quality video to attach to an email as well as full quality video which will be available to add to your website or post to YouTube or other video sharing sites with a little extra work.

Here’s a video to get you started, there are many more available on the internet.