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Editing Digital Video with Windows Live Movie Maker (part 3) - Importing Content

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1/27/2014 3:22:48 AM

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.)

Figure 6. Protected and incompatible movie files can't be edited in Windows Movie Maker.

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.

Figure 7. The simplest way to get content into Windows Live Movie Maker is good ol' drag and drop.

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.

Figure 8. It's subtle, but you can only add one song to a project, and that song is used as the video's soundtrack.

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.

Figure 9. After you've assembled the pieces that will make up your video, it's time to start editing.
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