Movie Maker Quick Start

To make a video slideshow of your pictures or powerpoint, Movie Maker provides a quick but deceptively powerful tool. It is a free download from Microsoft, bundled with a Service Pack for XP or available for Vista.

The basic steps are as follows:

1. Open Movie Maker
2. Click “import pictures” from the Movie Tasks pane
3. Find the pictures on your computer to use (holding down the “Ctrl” key will allow you to select more than one picture) and click import
4. Drag the pictures onto the timeline below in the order you want them to play
5. Save the file
   1. Choose “file – save movie file”
   2. Pick the “My Computer” option
   3. Give your movie a name and decide where to save it
   4. Pick “Best” for the quality
   5. Save the movie!!

That is all there is!

Most Movie Maker videos include credits and titles (words on many of the slides; like in a powerpoint). The credits start (and end) the movie, providing an introduction and conclusion. Titles are the ‘narration’ that can explain or give details about different parts of the movie.

1. Credits and titles (link to Microsoft tutorial)
   1. Easy way to ‘narrate’ the movie
   2. Choose the type and placement of your titles
   3. If desired, you can change some of the look of the titles
2. Transitions and special effects (link to Microsoft tutorial)
   1. Transitions are used between slides: similar to what happens in Powerpoint. Click and drag a particular transition type to a slide; that transition will happen going in to that slide
   2. Effects make particular slides look ‘funky’. Click and drag a particular transition to a slide to activate it.

People everywhere who use Movie Maker have little “hints” that they wished they knew before finding out the hard way how to do something correctly. Here are some of mine:

1. Save Every Time You Do Something! Movie Maker has a reputation for freezing!
2. Use the Timeline view
3. To lengthen or shorten the duration of slides (or titles), click on one and then drag the black bar
4. You can’t change the location of titles; they are predefined by the program. Different ones appear in different places, and that is as much control as you’ve got (although you can change colors)
5. If you want some blank space in between slides, you’ll have to make an image (that is the color you want) and insert it in the movie.
6. You can reuse images as often as you want in a movie
7. You MUST keep all files in the original location you told Movie Maker it was until your video is finished. A good way to help out with this is by creating a “media folder” where you store everything until the project is finished. That way you don’t have to hunt all over the computer to re-find your files.

Now we’re getting into some music action – it is not necessarily central to completing a movie, but adding music or snippets of narration really isn’t too difficult. BUT – aside from some very basic things, any sort of manipulation must be done in a program other than Movie Maker.

• Music (link to Microsoft tutorial)
  • Add one mp3 (or several) to the movie in the same way as you added pictures
  • Audacity allows you to edit and manipulate the music
• Narration (link to Microsoft tutorial)
  • You can record your narration directly into Movie Maker (link is to a Microsoft tutorial)
  • Audacity allows you to edit and manipulate the narration
• Audacity lets you combine several tracks, so you can have both music and narration at the same time; follow the link for a quick overview

For many people (and most students), these extras are the things that make using Movie Maker fun and are what they will ‘play around’ with. Just remember to save often!

Here is an example of a movie maker video that makes use of the ability to adjust the timing of different slides:

Head over to the YouTube instructions