For the last installment here, I will be going over publishing your final project in Windows Movie Maker. As a quick review, in the first article we went over setting up your project by importing video, audio and picture files. In the second article, we went over basic editing of your project including simple fades and transitions, and overlaying a second audio track.

At this point, all of our editing should be completed. if you’re not sure about how your project will look or feel, this is the time to do a final review. Using your preview pane in the upper right side watch the video all the way through to see how the finished project will look. The idea is to look at the project from the end viewers perspective. Does it take a long time to fade in to the video? If multiple video clips were put together to make the project, do the clips flow well with each other? If the volume on your computer is set to medium, does the audio in the video crackle or boom out too loud? If you added secondary audio, does it match up well with what’s going on in the video? All of these things can put a real damper on the final product if they feel out of sync. as a best practice, I usually preview the video in full screen mode to see how it looks before I publish it. Especially if I will be publishing it in a full screen format.

Once you are satisfied with the final project, it’s time to publish! At the top of the screen, you will see the “Publish Movie” button. when you click on this, you will see the various options for output of your video – your computer, DVD, recordable CD, email and digital video camera. For our purposes, we will be publishing to the computer, so that the video can be uploaded and shared.

The next screen gives us the options of what to name the video and where to save it on the computer. As with any file, you want to give it a unique name that has some reference to what the video is. The drop down menu option will let you navigate to a recently used folder, or you can use the browse button to navigate to any folder on your computer and if desired create a new folder to save the file in. for those of you who are using Windows Vista – I recommend that you save the file in a new folder in your public documents. this will keep you from having issues with uploading the file to the internet for sharing, as Vista’s built in security features may ask you repeatedly for administrator permission to upload this from your regular documents folder. As a best practice, I will generally create a master folder (such as videos for upload) and then create a new sub-folder for each video project I am saving.

The next screen let’s you set the quality settings of the output video. by default, it will choose best quality for your computer. The second option is to select a specific compression for the file. This is more for advanced users, and it is very possible to really degrade the final video if you are not careful with this option. The last choice let’s you decide on a specific format that it will be saved in for playback. Since the file is meant to be shared, this option will be best. these presets will automatically compress your video and set the output quality. Lower quality will mean a smaller file size and quicker download, but it will also be just that – a lower quality playback. I recommend that you use the DVD quality option. This will create a file that is manageable to download even by people using a wireless air card or dial up modem, and still produce a good quality video.

Once you have selected your output option, click on the publish button. Depending on how long your video is and the speed of your computer, it will take anywhere from five minutes to an hour. Most videos will complete the publishing process in twenty to thirty minutes. Once publishing is complete, remember to view the final product. I can’t tell you how many times I thought I had a video project exactly the way I wanted it, only to send it out and have the end user contact me to say that the playback was horrible or jumpy.

As always, I am happy to answer any questions that you may have. I do hope that this article has helped make your project a little more bearable. I will be putting out some new articles on photo editing soon, and would also be happy to take suggestions for dealing with other software for video editing. Have a great day!!!

In my last posting, I went over the basics of creating a new video project using Windows Movie Maker on your PC. In this post, I will touch on some of the basics for editing your clip including fades, transitions, titles and credits, and replacing or supplementing your existing audio with music.

Previously, we had created a new project by importing a video clip as well as a couple of music files from a folder on our PC. With that project open, we can now start putting the elements together. To begin with, make sure the video clip has been dragged to the storyboard at the bottom of the screen. If you are viewing the added items in the stroyboard view, you will see that Windows Movie Maker places any additional video clips in the next open large box. If you add a music file however, it does not “appear” in this view. Don’t worry – the music clip did get added. at this point, we are going to change to the “timeline” view.

Looking at the project in the “timeline” view, we can see the individual elements, and an actual time track showing how long each element is. Each element also has it’s own track inside this view, making it easier to work on them one at a time. Next to the video track, you will see a plus sign to expand this view. Clicking on this will show you the audio currently embedded with the video clip. All of the items on the storyboard can me quickly edited by right-clicking the individual track and selecting the option you want. Let’s start with the embedded audio (if you have any) first.

Quick note – from this point on, I will refer to some things as “best practices”. These aren’t requirements, just useful things that I have picked up on through my own work and through input from others in working on my own projects at home and at work.

If you right-click on the audio track, you will see a couple of options – mute, fade in, fade out and volume. the mute option will do just that – mute the entire audio track embedded with the clip. Fade in and fade out will automatically adjust the volume of the audio track at the the beginning and end with a two second fade. Selecting volume will allow you to change the ENTIRE volume level of the track. this is something that you will have to experiment with based on the clip you are working with. as a best practice – you never want audio to start or stop abruptly. you also never want audio to be “booming” in a track. Keep in mind that most people leave their speakers on a low to medium level, so try to keep your audio or music for the final project to a 3/4 or 2/3 setting.

As you make changes to your project, remember to preview the changes. the preview pane on the right hand side of the screen works just like Windows Media Player. You can play, pause or use the drag bar to move through the clip to a specific portion. One item that will help you immensely is the “split” button. This let’s you split the clip in to smaller pieces to work with. if you are running a slower PC, this can be really handy since it takes less time for the changes you make to get processed and to review. Note however that if you split a clip with embedded audio, it will split that audio as well. this does not effect the final clip though, and play back will still run seamlessly.

What about adding background music to a video clip, or even replacing the embedded audio with music completely? This is actually a lot easier than it sounds. Any music files that you want to use – either stored on your PC or from a CD – can be imported in to the project and dragged to the audio / music track in the timeline. The same basic controls apply (mute, fades, volume) as they did with the embedded audio. But you can also “drag” the files along the time line to a specific part of the movie. As an example – we have all seen on videos and TV shows where they have background sound or music set in to match the scene for dramatic effect. Say you wanted to go from you talking in the clip to dancing, but the mic on your camera isn’t picking up the music from your CD player that you are dancing to? You can mute the embedded audio from the point where you quit talking, import the music to the project from the CD you were dancing to, and drag the music to the point in the video to where you start dancing. This takes a little practice to get just right, but the effect is worth the time.

The last thing we are going to talk about is adding fades and titles / credits to your video. Just as you did with the audio tracks, right-clicking on the video track will give you quick options. In this case it is effects, fade in and fade out. Fades are a wonderful thing! just as you don’t want audio to abruptly start and stop, you also don’t want video to do this. By right-clicking and selecting fade in and fade out close to the beginning and end of the clip, the software will add a two second fade automatically for you. You can edit the length of the fades if you wish, but as a best practice you generally don’t want to have a fade exceed four seconds. As for effects, well there are a lot of great ones that are included with Windows Movie Maker. Time and space don’t allow for me touch on all of them. But a word of caution – effects can do wonderful things for your projects, but using too many effects is just like having too many cooks…it ruins the meal.

The last thing we will touch on today is titles and credits. This is purely a personal choice to add or not. Titles are great for identifying your finished video to the person watching when either the file name that you save the final video to is something obscure, or the person who downloaded the file has changed the saved name to something else. Windows Movie Maker give you the option to change the text, text style, text size, background color, font color and scrolling options. The same applies for credits. but remember – simpler is generally better.

As with my previous post, I have embedded a YouTube video going over all of this information (with the exception of titles and credits).

 

I am also including a link this time to project I did a couple years ago for some friends here. This was done completely using Windows Movie Maker, just to show some of the interesting things you can do.

Sample Video

As always, I hope this has made your project less of a chore, and feel free to contact me with any questions. until next time…

Since my post about working with Windows Movie Maker, several of you ladies have asked me if I know anything about Mediafire and can give them any tips on using it. Since this kind of goes along with my postings on creating video clips and such, I decided to offer what advice I could since I use the site myself.

Q: If I upload several files, the link I send out let’s the person see ALL the files. Can I fix this?

A: If you are using a free account, then your options are a little more limited. Free accounts cannot use a “direct link” to the file they are trying to share. Rather they can only link to the general folder they are in. the only fix I have found to this is to make a Seperate folder for each item, and then make the folder “private”.

Q: Some of the people I have sent links to have told me they had problems getting the file to download. Did I send them the wrong link or type it wrong?

A: It is possible that you typed the link wrong, but odds are good that it is how their internet browser is processing the link that is the problem, especially if you are using a free account. If people tell you they are having a problem getting the file to download, let them know to click the link, copy it from the address bar and then open a new window to paste the address in to. This usually resolves the problem. If it still isn’t working, re-check the link you sent to make sure you didn’t type it wrong.

Q: Is there any real difference in a pro account and a free account? Is it worth the cost?

A: This is really a subjective question. If you are going to be doing a lot of photo set uploads or video uploads, getting a pro account can be worth it. The pro account allows for larger uploads, direct linking to the files instead of just the folders, and gives you reports about how many downloads you are getting from each file. You also don’t have to deal with pop-ups from the site, and you get better file security. But please, don’t take this as an endorsement for either type of account.

Q: Do I have to “zip” the files before I upload them?

A: No, you do not HAVE to compress the files. Again, this is a subjective thing. Generally, I only compress a file or folder if it is over 12MB in size. compressing the file or folder only results in a quicker download for the person getting the file and doesn’t effect the quality. Just remember, a lot of people now use wireless cards for internet access, which is a slower connection, so bigger files take a long time and can be frustrating.

As always, I hope this information helps. and feel free to message me with more specific questions or if you need help. until next time…

I have had a lot of ladies (once they find out that I deal with video for work) ask for some help in getting their video files to work and upload. After almost three years on the site now, I talked to the J’s to see if I could do something to maybe help ALL of you through the news…and behold – they have allowed me to post some help articles for you!

For this first article, I will be covering some basics using software for video editing that most of you have – Windows Movie Maker. For all of you who are using newer PC’s running Windows Vista Home Premium or higher, this software is already included on your machine. Those of you still running Windows XP Home or Media Center Edition will also have this software. If you don’t have it, you can download it from Microsoft.

Windows Movie Maker, although not the most robust editing software, does have a lot of great features. And for most projects it is a great fit. In this article, we will be going over the basics of creating a new project – importing video saved on your PC, and selecting some additional music to put in the background. At the end of the article, there will be a link to a video covering these items as well. Let’s get started!

When you first start the software, you will see some basic controls. Along the left hand side you will see options for importing video, pictures and audio. You will also see options for adding titles, end credits, transitions and effects (those will be covered in the next article – editing). Lastly, you will see options for publishing your video project. In the center of the program is your work area. Here you will see all the imported items for your project. On the right hand side you will see the preview window. The controls here work basically the same as the ones in Windows Media Player. Finally at the bottom of the screen is your storyboard area. This is where you will be working the most with your video, audio and picture files for editing before you publish the final version.

At this point, it is assumed that you have copied the video file(s) from your camera to the PC, either by copying it to a folder from the flash card on your camera or by copying it using the cameras connection cables. If you are not sure how to do this step, consult your user’s manual or the manufacturer’s website (I am happy to assist you in this process if you are still having problems, but keep in mind that I may not be fully aware of how your individual camera works and connects to your PC). To begin working with your video file(s), click on “Videos” from the import section. You can then browse through the folders on your hard drive until you see the one you want to work with. You will go through the same process for importing any pictures or audio files that you want to work with as well.

Once you have imported the files to work with, you will be able to get a brief description of the file (name, size, and length for audio and video) by putting your cursor over the file in the workspace. Once you have decided on which files to work with, you simply drag the file to the storyboard to add it in. as more files are added, the storyboard will advance. You can then preview what the final project will look like in the preview pane, and choose points where you want to edit the clip, make transitions, etc.

The last thing for now will be to save your project. Like most Windows applications, you can click on “File – Save Project As..”, or in this case simply press the F12 key. Make sure you save the project to a folder on your hard drive that will be easy to remember, and as always choose a unique file name for the project to help you keep track of it.

Here is a video covering all these items as well:

In my next article, I will go over some of the basics of video editing inside of Windows Movie Maker. Hopefully this has made working with your project a little less of a chore, and as always feels free to find me with any questions. Until next time…