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Using Vista Movie Maker.
I had many, many goes at this and wasted quite a few hours. Well, maybe not wasted for you can always learn by your mistakes. The first thing I would advise is - “be prepared“. Create a new folder, something like ‘My videos‘ to work from.
I find it easier to work from a single point, rather than searching all over the place for various pictures and MP3 tracks later.
It pays to get it right.
You see once you have published a movie you can’t edit it.
If you keep a copy as a ‘project’ before you publish, you can go back and change thing there, but not after ‘publishing’.
To start with I would suggest a slideshow with no sound.
It is a good practice for later, so, choose, say 36 pictures and take copies and put them in your new folder. I then re-size my pictures. You don’t have to,
but it is much quicker when you come to create the movie and upload it to blogger or YouTube.
Make your pictures about 600/650pix wide and if you can, preferably in landscape.
Portrait mode works but you get black lines down each side.
When I have re-sized them, I then rename them AA, BA, CA etc. through to ZZ in the order that you want them to play. The reason being, if you change your mind you can then rename, say, picture GG to become AD, which will then be sorted between AA and BA. Once they are in your preferred order,
play a Windows Slideshow to get an idea of the finished thing.
These example screen pictures below are not photos of my screen, because the flash always goes off when I try to take pictures. They are scans from my “How to use Vista” book.
Now let us open ‘Windows Movie Maker’ from your ‘all programs’ menu.
It should (if you are using Vista) look similar to this, but without the sample pictures:-
(Click to enlarge)
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.Sorry it’s a bit wonky.
There are six movie clips shown here in the 'contents pane',
which will be replaced by your 36 (still) jpg files when you load them.
This next picture below shows the upper left hand side of the screen
and you will see on the left, a list of ‘Tasks’.
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.The first group is ‘Import’ and the third item is ‘Pictures’. (red blob)
After selecting this, you will go to your new (picture) folder and select all of them to import. They should all appear - in alphabetical order - in that central section where the six examples are.
Now down in the bottom left of the screen you will find the ‘storyboard’ similar to below (but empty of pictures).
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.The idea is to click/drag your pictures, in order, down to these boxes one at a time. This ‘storyboard’ just keeps going as you fill up the boxes. I expect there is a limit but I have never got that far. When you have all 36 in place it is now possible to play your slideshow by clicking the ‘play symbol’ under the ‘preview monitor, (upper right) or the one at the left of the ‘storyboard’ line. There is a rewind symbol here also.
That is all there is to it!
The next thing to try is ‘transitions’. The second group of tasks on the left - third down. This comes up with a screen (and more) full of transition effects, like fade, dissolve, page curl etc. You have to click/drag these effects to the small boxes between your pictures on the storyboard.
You can do this 35 times for your 36 pictures if you like. You can leave them out and the pictures will change without any transition.
All the time you do this you can see what is happening in the monitor and you can rewind and replay as many times as you like. If you don’t like the transition, you can drag down a replacement to overwrite it or (right click mouse and select ‘remove‘).
Now to headers and footers.
I think they call them ‘Titles and Credits’.
I have only tried - ‘Title at the beginning’ and ‘Credits at the end’.
I don’t (yet) know what the others do.
After you have entered your text and clicked ’Add title’ it will appear at the start of the ‘storyboard ‘ and can be played through the monitor. It is also possible to edit the colour of the background, the text font or style and also if you prefer rolling credits/ fading titles and all sorts of fancy things. I tend to run with what is offered first, rather than change too many things at my first attempt.
When you have done credits at the end, that should be it. You can now save this as a project if you want to come back to it again, or/and you can now go ahead and ‘Publish Movie’. I save mine to my PC first, rather than publish it to other places.
That will give you a silent slideshow.
Adding sound and getting it to fit and synchronise is a wee bit more complicated and I will do that bit in an 'update' to this post,
when I get a spare minute or two.
These next two pictures are waiting for my text.
Shan't be long.
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