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Essentials of Producing a Movie:
Adding Videos and Photos:
Add videos or photos by clicking on the “Add videos and photos” options in the Add group and selecting the file of your choice by navigating to the folder with your collection. You can select multiple photos or videos by holding the [Ctrl] key, and then selecting the respective files.
You can quickly add photos and video files to the WLMM project by dragging the files from its folder location.
Trimming Video:
If you want only some sections of your video to be retained in your project, you can trim the beginning and end of a video so your project shows only the part of the video you want. For example, you can remove the blank frames in a movie by trimming. Trimming a video in WLMM environment does not affect the original file.
Trimming can be done by selecting the ‘Trim Tool’ from the ‘Editing’ group of the ‘Edit’ tab on the ribbon. You can set the exact start and end points for the segment you want. Remember to ‘Save trim’ before exiting.
When you edit a video file in WLMM, the original video file isn’t affected. All the video footage remains in the original video file. You can quickly trim the video by pressing the ‘I’ key which makes the current point as the start point on your project, pressing ‘O’ makes it the end point. ‘Split’ option breaks the video at the pointer location, you can also use keystroke ‘M’ for splitting a video into two segments.
Clear any new start and end points in Movie maker to make the entire video to play from the Trim Tool by dragging the start trim handle to the beginning of the video to make it play from the beginning, or the end trim handle to the end of the end; from the point of trim.
Integrating visual effects:
You can add visual effects to still pictures and video clips from the ‘Visual Effects’ tab on the ribbon of the WLMM workspace. All you need to do is hover over the choice available and get an instant preview of the effects.
You can also add multiple effects from the ‘Multiple Effects’ options of the bottom of the expanded ‘Effects’ Section. In this section you can add/remove effects from a set of available effects.
Adding Animation:
You can use the ‘Animation’ tab on the ribbon to provide transitions between clips. As in hover actions of Visual Effects, the Animation transitions also show a simple preview of effect to expect. The animations on the ‘transitions’ section are applicable to videos and photos. Specific to Photos only, you can add Pan and Zoom animation effect.
Adding Music:
You can add music to your project from a sound file in your collection to act as a sound track for the movie. This you can do by selecting the ‘Add Music’ option in the ‘Add’ section on the Home tab of the WLMM ribbon. After adding song duration time will be automatically adjusted by WLMM to coincide the length of the song with a certain number of photos. In case your movie is longer than the duration of the music clip added, you can choose the ‘Add music at the current point’ option from the Add music option, which automatically appends the new track after the previous one.
Music Tools:
You can make the audio fade in at the beginning into your movie soundtrack, and smoothly fade out towards the end to make the audio editing sound professional. You can do this from the Music Tools on the Options tab of the WLMM ribbon after selecting the audio clip you want to apply the effects for. You can select the fading speeds between Slow, Medium and Fast.
You can use the same tools to changes the start and end points of the music or to change the audio volume.
AutoMovie Themes:
Use the auto movie themes from the Home tab of the WLMM ribbon to make a video in just a few clicks. All you need to do is pick your photos and videos, and apply a theme followed by the required transition effects to get your ready-to-go movie.
Miscellaneous:
The Add section provides options for Webcam capture for video footage, captioning and crediting. You can choose aspect ratio of your choice between Widescreen(16:9) and Standard(4:3) for the video, an Audio Mix to balance the volume levels between audio and the video and an option to make the Video ‘Fit to music’. You can share the movie online on Facebook, YouTube, SkyDrive, Windows Live Groups and Flickr. You can add more plug-ins from http://plugins.live.com/movie-maker. To connect more services to your WLMM, you need to sign in with your Live ID and add the service you desire.
Saving the Movie:
You can save the movie in various formats by selecting the ‘Save Movie’ option from the Share section of the Home tab. You have option to select from a set of pre-sets available, or customize the format for yourself.