Windows Movie Maker

What can you do with Windows Movie Maker?

Capture clips - directly capture from DV camera, most standard cameras have software enabled device control. Capture from video camera or other firewire (IEEE1394) connected device and analog (like VHS) if your computer has analog-to-digital conversion hardware. Never capture to removable media. (See * below for important tip on capturing.)

Add audio, still images, existing video files, titles/credits, and visual effects -   Import audio (wav and mp3), video (avi, mpg, wmv), stills (gif, jpg, bmp, tif)

Rearrange clips - clips can be arranged in the timeline or storyboard view

Apply transitions between clips - a range of transitions offered, straight cuts and dissolves and considered the most professional.

Trim clips - set in and out points for clips to be recognized when a new movie is rendered

Split and combine clips - add cuts anywhere in a clip as well as separate the audio/video so audio can be replaced with a different soundtrack

Add narration that synchronizes with clips - record narration in realtime as clip sequence is played back

Render video project with clips, transitions, audio, still images, and special effects -   Render edited video to hard drive then copy video file to CD-R or back to camera. Output video quality and file size determined by fps, pixel dimensions, and compression (also referred to as bit rate in wmv files).

The Taskpane on screen right clearly lists the available features and sequence of capture-edit-output. The menu can also be seen by using the View>Taskpane command.

The Help menu is very good - often providing answers to your specific questions, and describes the full functionality of this easy to use software.


Windows Movie Maker Terminology
   Collection - a container for organizing clips. Source files in a collection are always linked.
   Project - arrangement and timing of clips, transitions, effects, titles and credits. The project file is .mswmm file type, this does not contain the linked media, it is instructions on what to do with the media (editing layout).


* Disable before capturing:
"Create clips" is a little checkbox in the setup wizard for capturing video. This is an automatic feature based on camera time stamp info (dates) if an analog device and based on substantial difference from frame to frame if a digital device. The recommendation is to disable this. Capture clip lengths you define with a little more on the beginning (headroom) and end (tailroom) with intent to trim clips on the computer.