E-mail this pageEditing Video with Windows Movie Maker 2.0
This document provides an overview of the most common steps involved in editing video using Windows MovieMaker 2.0 . Although this document doesn't mention it at every step, it is a good idea to save your video project frequently during the editing process. Movie Maker is a fairly stable program, and crashes are rare, but all systems can be temperamental. Save your project regularly.
Viewing and Trimming the Clip(s)
If you've arrived at this page of the documentation after capturing a DV video clip using the program, you'll see a thumbnail representation of loaded clip(s) in the center of the screen. If you loaded the program from the menu and haven't yet captured your video clip(s), you'll want to do that before proceeding through this page. You can access previously saved video files by clicking the Import Video link: you'll find it under the Capture Video heading in the Movie Tasks window at the left of the program screen. Any video file that is imported can automatically be segmented into scenes or clips by right-clicking on its thumbnail in the Collections window and selecting Create clips from the menu that appears. Note that you can also import still images or audio files into your video production, in the event that you are assembling your video from a variety of multimedia sources.
NOTE: If your video was shot in wide-screen (16:9) format, select Tools|Options from the main menu, and then, under the heading of Video Properties , select the option for the 16:9 aspect ratio. Otherwise, everything in your video will look narrow and squashed. If your source video is not in a wide-screen format, you needn't worry about this step.
Clicking on one of the thumbnails in the Collections window will have the effect of loading that clip or segment into the preview window on the right side of the screen. At the lower left of the preview window are a set of common media playback buttons for playing (it becomes a pause button after it's been engaged) a clip, stopping it, advancing to the beginning, moving through the clip one frame at a time, and advancing to the end, To the right of these controls are a button for "cutting" the video and for capturing a still image from the video.
The Split Clips
button will probably be among the most useful buttons as you edit your video, as it allows you to take a sequence of video frames and cut out the pieces you don't want. Let's say you have an interview video in which everything goes perfectly except that the interviewee has a coughing spell in the middle of the recording; to edit out the coughing, you would first load the video into the preview window, advance the clip to the exact point where the coughing begins, and then click the Split Clips
button. The program will split the video into two clips: the first clip will be ended at the point at which the button was clicked, and the second (which remains active in the preview window) will be represented by a new thumbnail.. From that point, you can advance the clip to the point at which the coughing has ended and click the Split Clips
button again. As before, the clip is divided into two parts, with a new thumbnail representing the new starting point. So, if at the outset you had a video that ran AAAABBCCCCCC, you will now find that the preview window shows you three separate clips: AAAA, BB, and CCCCCC. If BB is simply a coughing spell, you can click on its thumbnail and delete it.
Save your video project now if you haven't done so several times already.
Assembling the Clips on the Timeline
Chances are pretty good that if you started with one thumbnail, representing one video clip, by the time you've trimmed out pieces you don't want or need, you might have many thumbnails, representing many segments of video that you'll want to re-assemble into an attractive whole. It is at this point that you will want to work with Movie Maker's Storyboard/Timeline .
The Storyboard/Timeline
window appears at the bottom of the screen, and toggles from one view to the next. When the timeline is being shown, you'll see the the timeline view illustrated below, with a Show storyboard
(
) button appearing as the last button in its toolbar.
When the Storyboard is being shown, you'll see the the storyboard view illustrated below, with a Show timeline
(
) button appearing as the last button in its toolbar.
As the Storyboard view is the easiest to work with, these instructions will take you through the steps involved in assembling your clips in the Storyboard view. The process is quite simple: you need only drag the thumbnail clips from the Collections area onto the timeline. Note that you can arrange the clips in any order you'd like: just because you videotaped one clip first doesn't mean that it has to be first in your final edited video.
Even after you have dragged your clips to the storyboard, you can change their sequence by dragging them to the left or right along the storyboard.
If you want to preview your newly re-arranged video at this time, you can do so by clicking on one of the thumbnails on the timeline and then clicking the play button: the video will play back in the preview window from the selected clip onwards.
Adding Transitions between Clips
You'll probably find that you might want to add a few transitions between some of the clips that you've assembled on your tiimeline. It might, for instance, be nice if one scene faded into the next instead of simply having a sharp cut. To view the transitions at your disposal, click on the View video transitions link under the heading of Edit Movie in the Movie Tasks toolbar on the left side of the Movie Maker screen. This will populate the Collections space (which had previously shown your clip thumbnails) with a range of transition types.
To apply a transition between clips, you need only drag the transition thumbnail from the upper part of the Movie Maker display onto on of thes spaces between video clip thumbnails on the storyboard.
In the illustration above, a "Normal, Right Wipe" has been applied as a transition between each of the clips on the storyboard. There are many transitions you might use, but it makes more than a little sense not to go wild with them: use them for effect, and use them consistently. To preview what a transition will look like with your clips, click on the transition and click the play button in the Preview window. If you don't like what you see, you can always drag a different transition into that location, or, if you decide you don't want a transition after all, you can right-click on the transition and select delete from the ensuing menu.
Adding effects
After you've added transitions you may want to touch up a few other elements in the video by way of adding some video effects to the clips. Movie Maker has several useful effects (ones that will increase brightness or fade a clip to or from black), and you can view the range of them by clicking on the View video effects link under the heading of Edit Movie in the Movie Tasks toolbar on the left side of the Movie Maker screen. When the link has been clicked, the central portion of the Movie Maker screen will show you the video effects at your disposal.
Applying a video effect to a clip is a simple matter of dragging the desired effect down to the storyboard and releasing it over the clip to which you would like it applied. You should note that you can apply several effects to the same clip: you can, for instance, first increase its brightness and then convert it to a greyscale clip. Whenever an effect has been applied to a clip, the small star to the lowerl left of the clip thumbnail turns blue, as illustrated in the second thumbnail in the image below.
To review, change the order of, or remove effects that have been applied to a clip, right-click on the clip, and select Video effects from the popup menu to introduce the Add/Remove Effects dialog.
The Add/Remove Effects dialog lets you quickly add additional effects, remove existing ones, and alter the sequence in which the effects are applied.
TIP: Even if you use no other effects in your video, you might want to add a "Fade In from black" effect to the opening clip and a "Fade out to black" effect to the closing clip.
Adding Titles
Once you've trimmed your clips, arranged them on the storyboard, applied desired transitions, and assigned desired effects, your last editing step is to add titles and/or credits, as appropriate.
To add a title to a clip, first select the clip on which you would like the title to appear, and then click on the Add Titles or Credits link under the heading of Edit Movie in the Movie Tasks toolbar to theleft of the Movie Maker screen. You'll be given the option to add your title at the beginning of the movie, before the selected clip, on the selected clip, after the selected clip, or at the end of the movie. Choose whichever option best suits your needs. Once you've done so, you'll be prompted to enter the text for the title. As you do so, keep in mind how the video clip will be used: if it's going to be displayed on a web page or embedded into a small window of a PowerPoint presentation, you're going to have to make the title pretty big for it to be intelligible, and this means you won't have a lot of space to put a lot of words.
By default, your title text will appear in the preview window, so you'll be able to get a sense of roughly how it will look. Movie Maker automatically uses the largest possible font size for the text to fit on the screen, but if you want to make changes to the font size, color, or animation (that is, whether the title fades in, or flies in, etc.), you can do so by clicking on the Change the text font and color or the Change the animation buttons, as appropriate.
Once you have finished tweaking the title, click on the link marked Done, add title to movie . Once you've done so you'll find that your Storyboard view has changed to a Timeline view. Go figure.
In this view, you can see all of the elements of your video on a timeline. If you'd like, you can continue to work directly in this view: items on the timeline can be selected and moved along the timeline by dragging them, and objects like titles and transitions can have their durations expanded or decreased by moving the mouse to their edge, and then, when the red double-headed arrow appears, dragging the edge point to the left or right to elongate or shorten the duration on the timeline.
If you're happy with the title where it is, you can always return to the Storyboard view by clicking on the Show Storyboard button.
To add additional titles, repeat the steps you followed to create your first title.
To edit a title, switch to the Timeline view (if you're not already in it), and double-click on the title you'd like to modify.
Friendly reminder: save your video project.
Reviewing the Edited Video
After you've completed your trimming, arranging, assigning of transitions and effects, and titling, it'd probably be a good idea to review the video from start to end to ensure that it looks pretty much like you want it to. Chances are that the playback will be a bit jerky as you review the video, but that's to be expected: the computer is doing an awful lot of work. Your finished video won't have the same uneven playback rate. Once you've reviewed your video, you're ready for the final step of exporting the assembled video to its final format.