The “grown up” side of Windows Live Movie Maker

For all those out there looking for an edge when using Movie Maker, here are some examples of more advanced features we’ve added to Movie Maker.

Today we’ll examine three areas of Movie Maker that should appeal to more advanced users:

1. Video Editing Keyboard Shortcuts

2. Leveraging Multiple Monitors

3. Creating Time-Lapse Videos

Video Editing Keyboard Shortcuts

Advanced users typically appreciate having keyboard shortcuts for most common actions and commands. In Windows Live Movie Maker we support all of the standard Windows and Office shortcut keys (i.e. Save, Open, Undo, Redo, Cut/Copy/Paste, etc…). You can find a list of all of our keyboard shortcuts here (or by choosing Help and searching on the word ‘keyboard’).

Today I would like to call attention to some keyboard shortcuts that apply more directly to video editing. First of all a quick one is the Play/Pause toggle (the ‘space’ bar or the ‘K’ key). Why the ‘K’ key? Well, commonly used shortcut keys in video editing programs include “J”, “K” and “L”. The “J” keys steps back one frame while the “L” key jumps forward one frame. Since the keyboard repeats you can hold down the “L” key and depending on the size of your video (and performance of your PC) you can get almost real-time playback. When using the “J” and “L” keys it’s convenient to use the “K” key to Play/Pause the video.

Next, another common action is to Trim the beginning or end of the video and Split a video. In Movie Maker these commands are based on the current cursor (caret) position. So you can scrub to a specific point in a video clip then press the “M” key to Split the video at exactly that point. The “I” key will trim off the beginning (from the caret position) and the “O” key will trim off the end of the video (from the caret position).

While we no longer have the timeline in Windows Live Movie Maker we now have a simple storyboard. The new Storyboard is approachable to the most novice user yet, it can still represent time visually! To zoom in (expand time) on the storyboard use the “+” key while the zoom out shortcut is the “-“ key (go figure…). You’ll note however that when we zoom in that the thumbnail representing the video clip is simply replicated.

Quick Access toolbar

Admittedly there are a lot of features exposed in the new “Scenic” ribbon that don’t have keyboard shortcuts. The good news though is that if you add those features to the Quick Access area of the Ribbon then you can use the keyboard shortcuts ALT-1 through ALT-0 to access those features!

To add a QAT (‘Quick Access Toolbar’ as we call it) shortcut, simply right-click on any button in the Ribbon and choose “Add to Quick Access Toolbar”:

It will then show up in the QAT and you can use the assigned “ALT” key to access it (press “ALT” to see what key is assigned to your new QAT entry).

Multiple Monitor Support

Since Windows seamlessly supports multiple monitors, we do too! This means that you can size the window for Windows Live Movie Maker across two separate monitors to get a nice, large Preview Window along with a large screen to use with the Storyboard:

Time-Lapse Videos

Enthusiasts come in all shapes, sizes, and ages! My kids, ages 11 and 14 love making movies and one of their favorite types of movies is a Time-Lapse. Here you take a lot of photos (either manually or via software that comes with you camera) and load them into Windows Live Movie Maker. Then simply set the photo duration to “.03” seconds for each photo (you can do that quickly by selecting all of the photos at once before changing the duration).

Here’s an example of my son Jade building an airplane from Lego’s. I set my camera up on a tripod and manually shot a picture of him every couple of minutes.

Another example video is posted here

We’re planning on the next wave now, we’ve heard your feedback on network and codec support – we’re looking to add more enthusiast oriented features as well! Please send us your ideas and features you would love to see.

- Mike Morrison, Windows Live Movie Maker Team