If you have never made a video before, or don’t think its possible because you only have an ordinary digital camera and don’t possess a cine camera, then this how-to is just for you! Now with the new version just released of Live Movie Maker, its so easy to do so just follow these easy steps.
1. First of all, you need to download the new version of Live Movie Maker from HERE. NOTE. Windows Live Movie Maker will only work in Vista and Windows 7.
2. Once you have downloaded and installed Live Movie Maker, just click on START, All programs, Windows Live and select Move Maker from the Windows Live list. TIP. Its a good idea to pin it to your taskbar and/or the start menu by right clicking on it and then selecting that choice. It will then be easily accessible and just ‘one click away’ for future use.
3. You will notice that in the ‘ribbon’ interface, you are currently in the HOME tab, which is where you begin. On the left hand side of this screen is a black video screen with some transport buttons underneath it. To the right hand side is a larger area which is also currently empty and says ‘drag videos and photos here or click to browse for them.’ You will also notice that in the ‘ribbon’ area above, the only choosable icon is Add videos and Photos and all the other options and choices are ‘greyed out’ and inaccessible. This makes sense and once you have added some pictures and/or videos to your project, you will see more choices become available to you.
So let’s choose some pictures shall we?
4. Click inside the large area on the right, your picture files will appear in a screen, select some of your photographs that you would like to include in your Movie, and then either drag them into the large area, or click on Open and they will all appear inside the large window on the right.
5. As soon as they are in the window, the ribbon will change, the TAB will now have changed to VIDEO TOOLS and lot’s more options will be available to you. The very first photograph, which will be the first ‘frame’ of your Movie will be now visible in the left hand side ‘video’ screen. Because you are a ‘newbie’ to Movie Making, for this how-to we are going to use the fantastic AutoMovie feature.
6. So click on AutoMovie in the ribbon. You will see a small pop up window asking you whether or not you want the program to make a Movie for you, and also explaining just what it will include in your Movie, such as adding a title, credits, transitions between each photograph, pan and zoom effects and that it will automatically fit all your photographs to the length of the music for you.
7. Click on OK. As we haven’t yet added any music, Movie Maker will now ask you whether or not you wish to add some music to your Movie.
8. Click on YES and you will then be presented with your music files on your computer so that you can choose a file to add. So just select one and it will be added to the ‘timeline screen and that’s it!
9. Now just press PLAY and watch your completed Movie! NOTE. Live Movie Maker will call your Movie, My Movie by default. However, you can easily change that, so let’s change the title shall we?
10. Click on the first frame of your newly created Movie. A black line will appear at the beginning of the first frame which at this stage is black. We are going to make it a different colour and change the title to something more appropriate. The black line is the indicator in the ‘timeline’ and shows just whereabouts you are both in an individual frame and in the whole movie. Move it along to check this by clicking on it, holding down the left arrow button on your mouse, and then moving it along to the right in the row of frames. See what happens in the Video window?
You will also notice that now that we have a ‘complete’ movie, other tabs have appeared at the top of the ribbon, namely Video Tools, Music Tools and Text Tools. This is because we are now in Editing mode. See how its so simple with the ribbon in Live Movie Maker, and how you are presented with only the options that you need to use at that point in time?
So, let’s change that Title frame and the colour! We’ll also add an effect to it as well.
11. Right click inside the first black frame in the timeline screen and select remove. The black Title frame will be removed from the Movie timeline.
12. Next, click on the Title icon in the ribbon. You will then be presented with an area in the video screen where you can enter your text. Not only that, the ribbon will now have changed to Format, and will present you with the Icons option, Paragraphs (so that you can have your title to the left, centre or right of the screen) Adjust (the time that your title is shown on screen) and Effects.
12. Type your title into the box area inside the video screen. You can change the font and the size of your title by selecting from the font list above. For this How-to I am calling my Movie Autumn Fruits and have selected the Boopee font at the largest size of 72. I have also moved the box around until the Title is in the middle of the screen. Now let’s change the colour of the background for the Title.
13. Click on Background colour from above the Adjust options, and then from the drop down colours, choose a colour for your background. I have chosen green. Now let’s choose an effect for our text.
14. All you need to do to see how your text will look with an effect applied is just ‘hover’ your mouse over each effect in the line. TIP. You can see the whole choice of effects for your Title by clicking on the lower down arrow to the far right. As you hover over each effect window, you will be played a short ‘preview’ of how each effect will look. I am going to choose the ‘Zoom In – big’ for my effect.
15. Now we can play our Movie through again to see how our new title looks and fits in with the rest of the Movie. Of course, now that you have changed the title, you might want to also change the END as well! Now we need to Save our Movie so that we can share it or upload it to YouTube or Facebook, or transfer it to a DVD.
16. Click on the Home tab in the ribbon and then select the Sharing icons. There are lot’s of different icons here. You can choose to upload it straight away to YouTube, save it on your computer as a HD file at 1080 or 720 resolution, burn it to a DVD to play in a DVD player or send to a family member, save as a widescreen standard format or 4.3 format, or even save it for playing on a mobile phone or to send in an e-mail. NOTE. The HD formats will obviously be larger file sizes, so do take this into consideration.
17. For this how-to, we will save it as a 720 HD file to our computer. Once it has been saved, you can then play it or open the file. NOTE. These choices are also available from the FILE tab to the left of the ribbon in a drop down list.
And that’s it! Your very first Movie! Here is mine to demonstrate just how easy it is to make a Movie using Live Movie Maker.
TG
