The Importance of Photos: Making Freeze Frames in Windows Movie Maker

The Importance of Photos: Making Freeze Frames in Windows Movie Maker
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Pictures

A single image often has more power than a quickly moving video clip. When looking over the video you recorded yourself or found on stock, you may see pictures that you would like to isolate and use as photos in your project. This is called taking a Freeze Frame of the image.

Taking a Freeze Frame

You can do this when the desired video clip is either in the Content’s pane or in the Timeline or Storyboard, depending on the selected view. The first way to do this is to move the playback indicator to the specific frame in the video that you would like to capture as a single image. This can be done when you open the specific video clip or if it is in a sequence in the Timeline. The second way to do this is to go to the Play menu and select Play Storyboard or Play Timeline, depending on view choice. Then you pause the playback once it hits the frame of video that you want to freeze. Once you have done one of these two options, you go to Tools in the task bar and then select Take Picture from Preview. You also have the option of clicking the Take Picture button that is on the monitor, which is a nice tool if you will be taking a number of Freeze Frames. Once you have done one of these a window will ask for you to enter a title into the File Name box that will identify the name of this new picture file. Now you can just hit save and you will have a saved image that saved on your hard drive as a picture and will appear in your project as a single image.

The Final Image

The size and quality of the image will depend on the location of it in the project and any altercations you may have made on the original video clip. If you take a clip individually and take a Freeze Frame from it the resulting picture will be the same size as the video. If the size is altered and in the Timeline then the size of the Freeze Frame will reflect that alterations. Likewise, if a video effect has been applied to the video clip then the resulting picture will have that effect as well.

Be Careful

Freeze Framing is a great way to put a picture in your project when it is necessary and you do not have one outside of your video clips. Make sure to not overuse this, especially if the following video images have similar framing and images as the Freeze Frame.

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This post is part of the series: Windows Movie Maker

This series of articles cover the different tools in Window’s on-board editing program, Windows Movie Maker, teaching you all you need to customize your video production.

  1. Introduction to Windows Movie Maker
  2. An Overview of Windows Movie Maker
  3. Seven Functions of Windows Movie Maker
  4. How to Import Video Into Windows Movie Maker
  5. How To Alter Audio in Windows Movie Maker
  6. Using Keyboard Shortcuts in Windows Movie Maker
  7. Organizing Your Editing Projects in Windows Movie Maker
  8. How to Make Freeze Frames in Windows Movie Maker
  9. Editing Clips in Windows Movie Maker
  10. Video Effects and Transitions in Windows Movie Maker
  11. How to Back Up Collections in Windows Movie Maker
  12. How to Use AutoMovie in Windows Movie Maker
  13. File Types Supported by Windows Movie Maker
  14. Video Export Options in Windows Movie Maker