In WLMM the timeline and storyboard of previous classic versions have been integrated into a storyboard which sort of acts like a timeline also, but the time dimension might not be as evident as in classic versions of Movie Maker. It'll be a learning experience.
The visual effects and transitions in WLMM are not as many as in classic versions of Movie Maker. For example, you can't speed up or slow down a video clip. Third party add-on packages from Adorage and Pixelan are not yet available, and info about how to make custom effects and transitions isn't available yet.
There are five tabs on the main working window,
- In the Home tab you add images, video clips and music files, along with titles, captions and credits. If you would rather turn over the bulk of the editing decisions to a wizard, select AutoMovie. If a project consists only of still pictures, there's an option to have Movie Maker automatically align the picture durations with the length of the background music... use the 'Fit to music' option.
- The Animation tab provides the transitions from one clip to the next.... WLMM is great at showing you quickly what the transition will look like. All it takes is to hover over the different options to see them in action. Note the pan and zoom animations only work for still pictures, not video clips.
- Visual Effects let you apply special effects to still pictures and video clips. As with animations, briefly linger over any of the choices and you'll get an instant preview of what the effect will do. To add multiple effects to a clip use the drop down at the right to expand the view and the 'Multiple effects' choice at the bottom of it.
- The View tab provides zoom in and out icons for the quasi-time view of the storyboard, some thumbnail size choices, and the most important choice of standard 4:3 or widescreen 16:9 for the project.
- The Edit tab has features for fading the video volume in or out, changing the background color and the duration of still pictures, and splitting and trimming video clips. Unlike earlier versions of Movie Maker, the Windows Live version lets you make changes to the durations of multiple pictures.
The project accepts multiple tunes but doesn't let you overlap them to mix the fading out of one with the fading in of the next. There are no audio volume adjustments but there's an 'Audio mix' volume slider in the Home tab to adjust the relative volumes of the audio of the video clips and the music track.
Use the Home tab or the drop down icon at the left of the main menu when you're finished editing and ready to share your video on YouTube, other online hosts, or save it for use in a DVD project.
This has been an overview of the editing process. I'll be digging into specific features in other articles.
