Windows Live Movie Maker - Editing

Selecting standard 4:3 versus widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio is a critical first step when starting a project. It you don't align WLMM with your intended output, it'll make things look OK but letterbox your movie as needed, embedding black borders at the top/bottom or sides.

Use the view tab of the main menu to select the Aspect ratio of standard 4:3 or widescreen 16:9.

Windows Live Movie Maker supports the opening of project files made in previous (classic) versions of Movie Maker. They are files with .mswmm extensions. If the project uses special effects or transitions not supported by WLMM, they won't be implemented. You'll get an error message informing you about the issue, but it won't point to the specific effects or transitions it can't do.

A WLMM project file (with a .wlmp file extension, which I guess stands for Windows Live Movie Project) isn't encrypted like a classic .mswmm file. It's a text file you can edit with Notepad. Power users, geeks and hackers should love it.

I've not had a hang or freeze yet when editing with Windows Live Movie Maker, but my usual rule of caution applies "... save the project file early and often...". And back it up regularly when your investment in time becomes significant.

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 six 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. Come back to the home tab when you're finished and ready to share your video on YouTube or other online hosts.
• 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.
• Visual Effects lets 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.
• The View tab provides the very important choice of standard 4:3 or widescreen 16:9 for your project.
• The Edit tab provides features for text overlays, trimming video clips, and setting the duration of still pictures. Unlike earlier versions of Movie Maker, the Windows Live version lets you make changes to the durations of multiple pictures.
• The Options tab provides an assortment of audio and visual settings. You might not expect to find the split or trim clip features there, but they are.

The project accepts multiple tunes but doesn't let you overlay them to mix the fading out of one with the fading in of the next. There are no audio volume adjustments, but there's a relative volume slider in the Home tab to mix the audio of the video clips with that of the music track.

This has been an overview of the editing process. I'll be digging into specific editing features in other articles.