This year instead of sending out greeting cards or form letters typical of the holiday season, tell the story of 2009 in pictures and videos by sending a Video Holiday Card made with Windows Live Movie Maker!

In this post, we’ll give you the step by step instructions to make fun video holiday cards using those photos and videos you captured in 2009. As an added bonus, the Windows Live Movie Maker team is giving you a holiday theme package that includes music and title slides to spruce up your video cards. Let’s get started!

Before you begin, you’ll need a couple things:

– Windows Live Movie Maker – install it for FREE from download.live.com if you haven’t already

– Your own photos and/or videos 

– Optional (but fun): Video Holiday Card Package, including 13 images to use for title and credits pages and six songs to make your movie more festive – DOWNLOAD HERE and save it to your PC. Here’s a sneak peak of the images you will get in the package:

And you can “preview” one of of the songs (“Piano medley”) by clicking here:

 http://cid-2f7eb29b42641d59.skydrive.live.com/embedicon.aspx/Public/WindowsLiveWriterplug-ins/PianoMedley.mp3

CREATING YOUR VIDEO HOLIDAY CARD

1. First, open Windows Live Movie Maker. To add your content click anywhere in the blank space on the right or click the Add Videos and Photos button in the Home tab.

2. Choose the 8-12 photos you would like to use in your video holiday card. Why 8-12? Because when combined with any one of the 30-second long music clips we’ve provided in the Holiday Package, each picture is shown for a nice length of time. But it’s up to you how many photos or videos to include, just make sure you add 8-12 photos for every 30-seconds of music. You can select all (CTRL+A) or a group of content by holding down the CTRL key when clicking on photos and videos. When 8-12 photos and videos are selected, click Open.

3. If you haven’t already downloaded the Video Holiday Card Package, do so by clicking here. Once downloaded, unzip the file. Add a title and credit slides from the Holiday Package by clicking on the Add Videos and Photos button. Now, navigate to the place you put the Video Holiday Card Package. Click on Titles and Credits folder. You can either choose to add a title slide with “Seasons Greetings” already on it and a blank credits slide for the end, or pick two credit slides that are blank to add your own message, and click Open. 

4. Now that your title and credit slides have been added, move the title slide to the very beginning of the movie by clicking and dragging it to the first spot. Similarly, move the credit slide to the end of the movie if it’s not there already. This will frame up the beginning and end of your video card.

 

AUTO MOVIE  

5. On the Home tab, click Auto Movie. This will automatically add transitions and effects, and ask you to select soundtrack for your movie. In the Video Holiday Card Package, there are six song selections to choose from. Pick one and click Open. Depending on the amount of content and the song you picked, you might see a dialog box that says ‘Can’t fit photos to the music’. If you see that, don’t panic. Click OK. This will be fixed momentarily. If you don’t see ‘Can’t fit photos to the music’, the next step will still apply. 

6. Since a holiday title slide has already been added, delete the black slide at the beginning of your movie. Next, fit your content to the music by selecting Fit to Music in the Home tab. If you still get the ‘Can’t fit photos to the music’ dialog box, check to see if you have less than 12 photos. If you have video clips in your holiday card, check to make sure to check if the video clips are short. You can use the Trim Tool in the Video Tools tab to trim the clips to shorter lengths if needed. Or add a second song to create a longer holiday video.

CREDITS

7. The credits screen puts the finishing touches on your holiday card. Thanks to Auto Movie, the hard work is already done. All that’s left to do is move the start of the text box under the credit slide from the last slide (the black credit slide) to the slide just before it (the holiday package credit slide).

 

8. Finally, let’s edit the text that was just moved. Double click on the text box below the credit slide to pull up the text editor. It’s up to you what you want to write here, for example:

Happy Holidays from

the [insert family name here]

When you’ve added your text, increase the font size by clicking the A^ button in the ribbon to make it easy to read on the screen.

 

9. You’re done! Click play to see your video.

Want to customize your video further?

If you want to add captions to any of the photos or videos in your holiday card, it’s very simple with Movie Maker. Just click on the photo or video you want to add a caption to, in the Home tab click Caption. A text box will appear with the [Enter text here] highlighted, simply type in the caption. Adjust the font, add a text effect, even move it around the screen. It’s all up to you. If you mess up, click the back arrow above the Home tab to ‘undo’ anything you just did.

 

So there you have it, Video Holiday Cards made easy with Windows Live Movie Maker. Happy Holidays and Seasons Greetings

– the Windows Live Movie Maker team

How to

December 1, 2009

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