Windows Live team blog archive

On September 8^th, President Obama announced his Back to School challenge – the “I Am What I Learn” video contest for students. The President is asking students to create videos describing what they can do to improve their education, and the role education will play in fulfilling their dreams.

Let Windows Live help you tell that story. Windows Live Movie Maker is a powerful free video editing application from Microsoft, which is a part of Windows Live Essentials, that can help you quickly create and easily share your videos. Get up and running in minutes using content from the most popular types of cameras, camcorders, and webcams; and be able to share your video across a wide range of media.

The video posted below showcases some of the visual effects you could add to your movie easily by using Movie Maker

We put together a little step-by-step guide to help you create that awesome video!

With a webcam:

1. Most webcams come with software that allows you to capture/record video from your webcam to your computer. Using this software, record your story.

2. Once you capture your story on video using your webcam. Save the file to a folder on your hard drive.

With a camcorder or camera that records video:

1. Set up the camcorder/camera – record your story

2. Plug your camcorder/camera to your computer, import your files to a folder on your hard drive using a free application such as Windows Live Photo Gallery (a part of the same suite of software that Movie Maker is a member of).

Then make your movie!

3. With Movie Maker open, click on the Add Videos and Photos button or click on the Storyboard pane in the application to open up the explorer window. Find your recently captured video and click Open.

4. With the content in your project, you can now easily edit your video:

a. To trim a clip – select the video clip you want to edit, click Video Tools -> Trim Tools -> and use the Trim Bars on either side of the preview bar to find the exact spot in the clip you want to trim to.

b. Add a Transition between clips – select the clip you want to transition to, click Animations in the Ribbon toolbar, preview the animations before you apply them simply by hovering your mouse over the different effects, when you’re ready to apply the effect -> simply click on the animation and it’s added to your content. You can do this for as many or as few pieces of content as you wish.

c. Add a Visual Effect – similar to adding a Transition, select the clip you want to add a visual effect to, click on the Visual Effects tab in the Ribbon toolbar, hover your mouse over the different effects to preview what it would look like when added to your content, then simply click on the transition to add it.

d. Add a soundtrack – With your content organized in your project, you can add a soundtrack simply by clicking on the Music Note in the Ribbon Toolbar under the Home Tab. Once you click on the Music Note, an explorer window will open allowing you to select the music you would like to add. Once you found the song, click open and it is automatically added to your project. From here, you can fine tune the placement of the song (for example, have it start after the dramatic opening of your of your speech, or announce your movie with a rocking soundtrack that fades out as you begin your story). To fine tune the song, start by dragging the song across your content in the Storyboard to where you would like it to start. Just like editing video, you can also split and trim your soundtrack to fit your movie perfectly.

e. Use photos as transitions – a very cool effect to move from video clip to video clip is the use of photos as a transition. When you have two video clips next to each other without a transition, the result can look mediocre – but add a transition between the two and instantly your video looks more professional. Then take it to the next level by getting creative with the transitions used, for example; in a video clip of a speech talking about what you would like to see happen in the near future, use a photo as a symbol and transition to help better tell the story. To add this, simply find the spot in your video where you want to add this photo -> click Video Tools -> Split (which will split your video into two parts at that point) -> then insert the photo at the split either by dragging the photo to that point, or clicking Add Videos and Photos from the Ribbon toolbar and adding it separately. Once inserted, you can change the duration of time that the photo is shown by clicking on the edit tab and selecting an amount of time from the Duration drop down menu. Now add the final touches, adding a transition animation to the photo and the two video clips will really give some polish to your movie. Click on the Animations Tab, select your content – preview the transition animations until you find the one you want to add -> select the animation by clicking on it -> and be sure to do this for each piece of content (you can shortcut this by selecting all [Ctrl+A] or clicking and dragging your mouse over all the content and selecting an animation, this will apply it to all selected content – which is called Batch Editing).

You can follow the guide above, or, better still, you can use the resources posted below. These are links to videos that demo how to use Movie Maker. You will be a pro in no time!

– Introduction to Windows Live Movie Maker

– Create movies easily

– Easily share your movies

We hope you will have fun working on the Obama challenge. Don’t forget to earn some good karma by telling your friends about Movie Maker!

– The Windows Live Team