3. Working with Projects
Each time you work in Windows Live Movie Maker, you are creating a project.
A Windows Live Movie Maker project is basically just a file that points
to the various digital media files you're accessing, along with
whatever transitions, effects, and titles you've made in the timeline
or storyboard. This project does not contain
any of the videos, photos, music files, or other content, so if you
move these files around in the file system or delete them, Windows Live
Movie Maker will not be able to use them in a saved project later.
Instead, the project is simply a way to save your work so you can
return to it later. You don't have to create your finished video in one
sitting.
4. Importing Content
To start a new project in Windows Live Movie Maker,
you first need a collection of shortcuts to digital media files that
will be used in your final video. Windows Live Movie Maker can import a
variety of video, audio, and picture files, and most of these
files—with one glaring exception—can be assembled however you like in
your project's storyboard or timeline. Table 1 highlights the formats you can use with Windows Live Movie Maker.
Table 1. Media Formats Supported by Windows Live Movie Maker
| Movie formats | .ASF, .AVI, .DVR-MS, .M1V, .MP2, .MP2V, .MPE, .MPEG, .MPG, .MPV2, .WM, .WMV, .WTV |
| Audio formats | .AIF, .AIFC, .AIFF, .ASF, .AU, .MP2, .MP3, .MPA, .SND, .WAV, .WMA |
| Picture formats | .BMP, .DIB, .EMF, .GIF, .JFIF, .JPE, .JPEG, .JPG, .PNG, .TIF, .TIFF, .WMF |
NOTE
Windows Live Movie Maker cannot import some key
digital media formats, including H.264/MPEG-4 video content and AAC
audio content, which is odd because Windows 7 supports playing back
these formats natively. Why is this? It turns out that while H.264 and
AAC format support is a feature of Windows 7, Windows Live Movie Maker
can also be downloaded, installed, and used on Windows Vista, an OS for
which Microsoft has not paid the applicable format licensing fees. It
is hoped that this issue will be resolved in the future.
NOTE
There are other file types that Windows Live
Movie Maker does not support, including copy-protected movies and TV
show episodes you've purchased from an online service such as Apple
iTunes, Amazon On Demand, and the like. These files are usually
protected to prevent intellectual property theft and are thus
specifically designed to prevent you from editing them in Windows Live
Movie Maker or similar applications. When you import such a file, you
will see a small red "x" on it in the Storyboard pane. Double-click it
and you will see the error message shown in Figure 6. (This same error occurs when you try to use AAC or H.264 files.)
Another obvious source for video content is DVD
movies. After all, wouldn't it be cool to include portions of your
favorite movies in your own video creations? Maybe so, but Windows 7
doesn't include any way to acquire content from DVD movies, whether
they're protected (as are Hollywood-created DVD movies) or not (as are
most homemade DVD movies). Before you can use content from a DVD movie
in Windows Movie Maker, you need to copy that content to your hard
drive in a format that Windows Live Movie Maker understands.
NOTE
The WTV (Windows TV) format is new to this
version of Windows Movie Maker and replaces the DVR-MS format from
previous Windows versions. This is the format Microsoft uses for its
Media Center recorded TV shows. That's right: with a lot of work, you
can use Movie Maker to edit TV shows. So if you'd like to save a movie
or show you've recorded, or edit out the commercials or dead time at
the beginning and end of the recording, you can now do so, though the
process is somewhat mind-numbing, as explained in the next section.
There is one copy-protection caveat to this
capability as well. Shows recorded on certain channels, such as HBO and
Cinemax, cannot be edited (or, for that matter, copied to a PC other
than the one on which it was recorded). That's because these shows are
protected by so-called Broadcast Flag technology, which television
stations can use to restrict copying. Currently, this technology is
used mostly on pay cable channels in the U.S. market, but it will
become more and more common going forward as the television industry
looks to digital services like the iTunes Store, Amazon On Demand, and
traditional cable On Demand to distribute their wares to paying
customers only. (Free Web services like Hulu.com also fall into the "paid" category, of course, because they are ad-supported.)
You can import digital media content into Windows
Live Movie Maker in a variety of ways. The easiest, however, is drag
and drop: simply locate the photos, music, and/or video files you want
to include in your project and drag them into the Storyboard pane as
shown in Figure 7.
Or, you can use two different Add buttons in the
application's ribbon. (For some reason, you can add videos and photos
with one button, but must import music with a separate button.) Looking
at the Home tab, you'll see two different Add buttons, one in the
Videos and photos group, and one in the Soundtrack group. To add video
or photo content to your project, click Add in Videos and photos. To
add a music file, click the Add button found in Soundtrack. In both
cases, you'll be presented with a standard Open File dialog (that's
been appropriately renamed), allowing you to navigate around the file
system and find the file(s) you want.
NOTE
While you can add as many video and photo files
as you'd like, you can only have one music file per project. This
music, literally, will be used as the sound-track of the entire video,
and cannot be selectively applied to portions of the video. Therefore,
if your project consists of both photos (in a slide show) and video
content, the soundtrack will play during the entire presentation, and
that's true even if the video content has its own audio (as video
typically does). In this case, the audio from the soundtrack and the
audio built into the video will play simultaneously. You can mute the
video's audio on a per-clip basis (see below), but you cannot mute the
soundtrack on a per-clip basis. Instead, the soundtrack is either there
or it isn't.
Audio content that is added as the project's
soundtrack appears as a textual note below the video preview display in
the Preview pane, as shown in Figure 8.
Photo and video content is added to the Storyboard pane. Each photo and each video is considered a clip,
and you can drag and drop these clips to achieve the desired running
order. That is, the resulting video you will create from this project
will consist of the content shown in the Storyboard pane, and that
content will play in order, from left to right, and from top to bottom.
You can mix and match photos and videos as you see fit, using standard
drag and drop.
In Figure 9,
you can see a variety of media types located in the Movie Maker
Imported Media pane, including JPEG photos, a WMV movie file, and a WTV
recorded TV show.
NOTE
Remember, when you import content into Windows
Movie Maker, you're only telling Windows Live Movie Maker where to find
that content. In other words, Movie Maker doesn't make a copy of the
content; it only displays a shortcut to the original content. If you
were to delete or move a file that Windows Live Movie Maker needs for a
video project, it won't work properly anymore.
