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Aislynn's Practical Vidder's Guide To Windows Movie Maker
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Aislynn
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Joined: 03 Feb 2005
Posts: 35782
Location: Sawyerville, USA

PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:04 am    Post subject: Aislynn's Practical Vidder's Guide To Windows Movie Maker Reply with quote

First of all, I'm certainly no expert; I'm just somebody who's been working with (and fighting with! ) WMM versions 1 and 2 since January 2005 or thereabouts. I decided to compile all of the things I've learned by trial, error and research along the way.

Note: All of this information was for the XP version of WMM, so some of it may not apply at all or may not work in the same way with the Vista version. But hopefully it can still be of some small help!

If you're getting ready to make your first vid, I've included some hopefully helpful info in The Basics to get you started. If you've been vidding for a little while and are ready to try to get a little more fancy, then maybe More Advanced will have some things of interest. Just about anyone who's worked with WMM will need Troubleshooting at one time or another. Then there's Extras to round things out.

As I said, I'm no expert. If the way that I do something doesn't work for you, then by all means do it the easiest way for you. And hey, drop me a line and tell me about it so I can include it here to hopefully help other WMM users, won't you?

I tried to be specific but not to the point of outrageousness. However, feel free to ask for more details if anything's not clear.


Table of Contents
(Click the headings to jump to that section)


The Basics:

Finding Clips

Starting A Vid

Saving As A Movie/Rendering


More Advanced:

Audio Editing

Adding Audio Clips

New Transitions, Effects And Titles

Reversing a clip through use of an animation program by Jo New! Thanks so much to Jo for your answer!


Troubleshooting:

Checking The Essentials: Version Number, RAM, And Hard Drive Size

Aspect Ratio Problems and Music Problems

When WMM Freezes


Extras:

The Making Of A Vid: Behind The Scenes Of Aislynn's "Saving Sun" and New! Achieving Different Looks With WMM's Fade In/Fade Out To White Effect

Links

Final thoughts


Last edited by Aislynn on Thu Oct 23, 2008 11:09 pm; edited 6 times in total
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Aislynn
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Joined: 03 Feb 2005
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Location: Sawyerville, USA

PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Basics

Finding Clips

To make a video with WMM, you need 3 things: video clips and/or still pictures, music, and a lot of patience.

To get clips, you'll need to find a site that has some available for download. Here are some places to try:

http://lostvideo.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=3793

WMM should work with any clips that are in the .WMV or .AVI format. It absolutely won't work with .RM (Real Media), which unfortunately seems to be found in a lot of places. As I understand it, there are programs that will convert .RM into something that WMM can import. If there's any interest in this, I'll research this further.

The thing to remember is to NOT take your source material from other people's vids. This is called Clip Theft and will not make you any friends. More info on Clip Theft can be found here:

http://lostvideo.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=1888

If you get an error that WMM can't import your clips because of a codec error, you probably will need to install the DivX codec package (which will also usually make sure that you'll be able to watch .AVI vids in Windows Media Player at the same time). The codec package IS free, though it might not look like it is at first glance. You don't have to take the free trial it will offer you, just uncheck the box during installation and you won't owe anything later.

http://www.divx.com/divx/codec.php


Last edited by Aislynn on Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:08 am; edited 1 time in total
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Aislynn
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Starting A Vid

Once you've downloaded your clips, all you have to do is click File - Import Into Collections, then browse to the folder you put the clips into, select the clip and click import. I recommend doing this one at a time rather than trying to import a batch of clips at the same time. As with most things WMM, it's best to keep things as simple and easy as you can.

You import the song you want to use in the same way. WMM will allow songs with the .WMA, .MP3, and .WAV extension. .WMA or .MP3 have always worked well for me and are much smaller in size than .WAV.

You can also drag-and-drop both clips and songs into the Collection files from their folders instead of using the File - Import Into Collections method.

From your Collection files, you simply drag-and-drop the song onto the Audio/Music line (it will basically come to you as you move the song down). You also drag-and-drop the video clips to the Video part of the timeline. From there, you can trim the clips (by grabbing the "handles on the left or right side of each clip, then clicking and holding the left mouse button as you drag it the way you want it to go), add transitions (the Video Transitions menu is at the top of your Collection Files; you just chose a transition and drag it in between whichever two clips you want), and effects (also available at the top of the Collections files or by right-clicking a clip on the timeline and clicking Video Effects). To add titles, click Tools - Titles and Credits and follow the directions it will give you.

Also, the Set Audio Level button (see the red arrow) is set as a default to let you hear the sound from the Audio/Music track and the Audio from Video at the same time. Unless you're planning on using dialog or sounds from the show, slide it all of the way over to the Audio/Music side.



If any of this is needed in greater detail, feel free to ask.


Last edited by Aislynn on Sun Jun 10, 2007 5:44 am; edited 2 times in total
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Aislynn
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Saving As A Movie/Rendering

Once you've finished your vid, it's missing one final step before it's ready to be uploaded and shared with others. It needs to be saved as a movie (also known as rendering).

Here's what to do:

1) Click File, Save Movie File, then save movie to My Computer, and Next.

2) Enter the name you want for your vid or accept the one that it's going to offer, which is the name you gave the .MSWMM project file. You can delete the extra numbers it adds at the end of the file name if you want. Click Next.

3) Usually the best quality for the smallest size can be found under Other Settings, Video for Broadband 512 kbps. Or you can also pick Best Fit To File Size if you want to make sure that your vid is under a certain megabyte size, such as 10 MB or whatever. If you don't like the way it looks with one, then play around with them until you find one that you like.

Once you click next, the rendering will begin. Depending on how long your vid is, it will probably take anywhere from a few minutes to up to 15 to 20. Once it's done, it'll give you the option to play the movie when you click Finish.

Now you'll have a finished vid with the Windows Media Video extension (.WMV) that's ready to be watched by others. For free hosting places, see Hobbes's Free Video Hosting Guide:

http://lostvideo.net/hosting_guide.php


Last edited by Aislynn on Thu Jul 06, 2006 6:09 am; edited 2 times in total
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Aislynn
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

More Advanced

Audio Editing

If you have a song that's too long or has something in it that you'd rather edit out than have to try and vid (repetitive repeats, lyrics that don't fit the vid you're doing, that sort of thing), then you actually can try to fix it with WMM.

The thing is to put the song on the timeline first (or save your project file, then delete the video while you're working on the music). You can make cuts in the audio track in the same way that you cut the video clips. Just find a place in the song at the part that you'd like to remove, cut it, then trim the ends. Don't forget to move the second piece of audio back over to the left until it touches the first so you won't have a gap of silence trapped in there. The audio doesn't "pop" over to the left like the video does.

You'll have to play around with trimming both ends until you get it as smooth as you can. If you zoom in all of the way then slightly fade the two pieces together that helps avoid gaps of silence or other such weird audio things. Don't fade them too much or you'll end up with it sounding like two songs playing at the same time.

Also, you can right-click the song and get the option to fade in, fade out, and to control the song's volume. If you have a song whose end has a long instrumental part or an endless number of repeats that you don't want to deal with, you can trim it and place a fade out on it, so that it doesn't come to a jarring stop.

This doesn't always work well for every song: sometimes you just have to do the best you can. But at least it's an alternative to having a song that's otherwise not very vidding-friendly!

If you're looking for a more comprehensive audio editor, check out this link:

http://lostvideo.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=4293


Last edited by Aislynn on Sat Oct 04, 2008 8:33 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Aislynn
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Adding Audio Clips

There are two ways to add audio clips:

1. Using the audio that is already on the clip (that is, basically the scene with its dialogue as it aired on the show)

2. Using audio that is not from the clip (showing one scene but hearing the dialogue from another)

To use the audio on a specific clip: leave the Set Audio Levels in between the Audio from Video and Audio/Music (you can play with this later to try and get the best mix of dialog and music that you can). Then right-click the audio part of all of the clips that you don't want to hear and click "mute." When you get to the clip you do want to hear, you can right-click it and click "volume." If it's much louder than your music, lower it and vice-versa if it's too soft. It's usually best to try and place audio in instrumental parts of your song, rather than over the lyrics as they're being sung. That makes it much easier for you viewer to follow what you're trying to tell them.

To use audio from a different clip: you actually need to complete and render the vid first, so that all that's missing is the audio clips you want to add. Make sure not to render it at a low setting (I still recommend good ol' 512 kbps but it's whatever works best for you) because you're going to have to render it again to attach the extra audio. Import your rendered vid and make it a new project. Make sure to leave the Set Audio Level where you can hear both the Audio from Video (which is now your song) and the Audio/Music (where your extra audio is going to be). Then you can grab the video clips you want and drag them onto the Audio/Music line. You won't see them but you'll be able to hear them. Drag them to where you want the audio clips to be and trim as needed. Then render the whole thing again and you'll have a vid with music and extra audio clips.


Last edited by Aislynn on Sat Oct 04, 2008 8:33 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Aislynn
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Adding New Transitions, Effects And Titles

New Transitions, effects and titles can be added to WMM through the use of XML code.

Once you've found an XML effect that you want to add, you need to start by creating a new folder called AddOnTFX along this path:

C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared\AddOnTFX

Sometimes you find the code written out. In that case, you copy and paste the XML code into Notepad then save as a file with the extension .XML into the AddOnTFX folder. Then restart WMM for it to take effect. (I recommend just not having WMM open at that time.)

Other times, the effect is prepared as a download, which will put itself directly into the AddOnTFX folder. A word of warning: there's always a slight risk any time you accept code from somebody. Just be careful. If it feels wrong, don't do it.

Also, as tempting as it is to add all of the effects and such that are out there, WMM will become even more unstable the more that you add. So I suggest just taking the ones you really want at first and adding in more with a bit of caution.

All that said, here are some places where you can find the XML code transitions, effects and titles:

http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/Forums/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=28

http://www.rehanfx.org/ (some effects/transitions are freeware, others are trials that require you to pay for them to keep them after the trial expires)

http://www.danielfx.moo.no/

http://lostvideo.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=4503


Last edited by Aislynn on Sat Oct 04, 2008 8:34 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Aislynn
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Troubleshooting

Checking The Essentials: Version Number, RAM, And Hard Drive Size

Some problems can be avoided from the start if you know a few basic things about your computer and what version of WMM you have.

Version Number

As of this writing, there are two versions of Windows Movie Maker available: version 1 and version 2, both of which work only with Windows XP. At some point, Windows Vista is expected to be released, which is supposed to include WMM 3. I presume it will be just as neurotic as the previous versions.

As for now, you definitely want to know which version you have. The easiest way to tell version 1 and 2 apart is the fact that version 1 has absolutely no transitions or titles and can only do a basic fade (by pulling one clip back over another). But if you want to check to be sure, just click Help - About Windows Movie Maker and something like this should come up:

Quote:
Microsoft Windows Movie Maker
Version 5.1 (Build 2600.(a bunch of letters and numbers ) : Service Pack 2
Copyright 1981-2001 Microsoft Corporation
Windows Movie Maker Version 2.1 (a bunch of other numbers )


If you still have version 1 and want to upgrade to version 2, check out this link:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/moviemaker2.mspx

This will give you all the specs for WMM 2. Here's the link to order the Service Pack 2's free CD:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/sp2/cdorder/en_us/default.mspx

There's a link on the CD's page where you can also download the Service Pack 2.

You have to have the Service Pack 2 to have WMM 2. WMM 2 won't work with the Service Pack 1. Upgrading your Service Pack (which contains a bunch of security patches for XP) is something that most people have already done by now. However, it took me a LONG time before I was brave enough to do it but I was glad that I did.

RAM

RAM is Random Access Memory and it's one of the most important parts of the computer when it comes to making and rendering vids. This is how you can check to see how much you have:

Click Start - right-click My Computer - click Properties

Somewhere in all of the info it will show you, it'll say something like 256 MB of RAM. That was what I started out with and I nearly crashed the computer with every vid I tried to make. 512 MB is just about as low as you can go and vid without a lot of trouble. I increased mine to 1 GB and now it doesn't give me any trouble at all. Plus you get the added benefit of being able to have multiple applications open at the same time. If you possibly can increase your RAM, I highly recommend it. You won't be sorry.

Hard Drive size

Lack of space on the hard drive can be one of the reasons why you can't get a vid to render. Here's how you check how much you have left:

Click Start - click My Computer - right-click whichever drive is your main hard drive, usually it's C: - click Properties

A chart should come up, showing how much used space, free space and total capacity you have. If you're within a few gigabytes (GB) of filling the hard drive, WMM might refuse to render. Then your only option is to do some serious hard drive cleaning, removing or deleting enough things to free up some room. Or you'll have to add on an extra drive for storage.


Last edited by Aislynn on Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:20 am; edited 2 times in total
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Aislynn
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Aspect Ratio Problems

Aspect ratio refers to the size of the image of your clips. 16:9 is widescreen, which means the picture is wider than it is tall. 4:3 is full frame, which means that the picture is basically square. Often when you take clips from many different places, some of them will be 16:9 and some 4:3. When you mix those together in a vid, it causes the picture to seem to go from larger to smaller and back again.

Many people don't care about that at all, so it's up to you whether you want to try and correct it or not.

The thing that I decided to do was to add an effect that widescreens clips, which made the couple of 4:3 full frame clips seem to be 16:9 widescreen to better match the rest of them which were in 16:9.

Here's where you can get the XML code:

http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=28889

Use the instructions for Step # 2. (Don't worry about PIP+, that's a program that you have to buy but is not needed for this particular effect.) The second option is for creating the XML effect. Once you've added the XML code into your AddonFX folder and restarted WMM (if it was already open), then you'll find this effect in with the titles, not with the effects, strangely enough.

So what you do is click the clip you want to change from full frame to widescreen, then go to Tools - Titles - Add title ON the selected clip in the timeline - don't worry about writing any words in the title field and click Change the title animation - scroll down under Two-line titles to "Widescreen bars (16:9 > 4:3) Blackout top and bottom. Then click Done and you should see that the clip now has the widescreen bars at the top and the bottom, hopefully making it more in line with the other widescreen clips.

You'll have to do this for every full frame clip that you want to look widescreen. You can also take all of your full frame clips, put them on the timeline, apply the effect to all of them and render them like that. Then you can import them back into WMM and use them instead of your original full frame clips.

Something to keep in mind, if you apply this effect to a full frame clip, then fade that clip into one that was already widescreen, it's tricky to get the effect lined up just right (you can click the effect and then trim or stretch it to fit the clip). If the effect crosses over into the already widescreen clip, it will squash it into a flat line. If you cut the effect off right before the two clips fade together, then the clip will "pop" back out into full frame as they fade together. So, it takes a bit of working to get it the way you might want it. (In this case, it's probably easiest to just not try to fade those particular clips together.)

It's a lot of work to render all of your clips with that effect on it (and will cause the quality of those clips to go down a bit, unfortunately) but will save you from having clips that pop in and out of full frame if you want to fade them with a widescreen one.

It's worth noting, that you do have the option of selection the ratio that WMM will render your vid in. Go to Tools -- Options -- Advanced. You can chose 4:3 or 16:9 and click Save. However, if your clips themselves are of all different ratios, you'll probably still find that they won't line up. It can be a very frustrating thing.

Often the easiest solution is to just do your best to group the widescreen and the full frame ones together as much as possible to try to keep from flipping quickly back and forth between the two sizes. Also, fading widescreen and full frame clips together tends to call attention to their differences in size, so it's usually best to try not to do that anymore than necessary. Fades in and out to black can also help hide differences in aspect ratio.

Music problems

Sometimes you'll import a song that plays just fine in Windows Media Player and discover that in WMM it seems to be many times its actual length. A 2 and a half minute long song might show up as being 9 or 16 minutes long! AND you can't just cut the extra length off of it.

There are a couple of different ways to fix this. First you can try putting the song back on the computer again. If there was just a bit of a glitch from where you ripped or downloaded it, then a new version might take care of the problem.

If that doesn't work, then burn the song off onto a CD (a rewriteable CD-RW works well for this case so you don't waste a whole CD-R on one song ), then rip it back onto the hard drive again. That should take care of the problem.


Last edited by Aislynn on Fri Sep 15, 2006 2:32 am; edited 2 times in total
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Aislynn
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Freezes, Crashes and Refusal To Render

Let's start with some definitions of terms you'll be hearing about a lot in this section...

Freezing: When WMM stops responding to any commands and will just hang there until you use Task Manager to shut it down. (Right-click the blue area on the bar at the bottom of the screen, click Task Manager, then Applications, click Windows Movie Maker, then click End Task. It will warn you that you'll lose any unsaved data. Since you don't have a choice about that, click End Task again. Then in a few seconds, it'll give you the option of sending an error report. That's up to you whether to send it or not; it doesn't really matter. After WMM closes, you can launch it again. And hopefully fix whatever caused it to freeze in the first place! )

Crashing: WMM will either suddenly disappear or you'll get a message saying there has been an error and WMM has to close, then it will disappear.

Refusal to render: There's a variety of error messages WMM can give you if it refuses to render all of the way or refuses to render at all. Always make note of what it says in the error message. If it says there's not enough space to save the movie, for example, then you know that you're going to need to free up some room on the hard drive.

Over-Complexity: The most common cause of freezing; it refers to having too many clips, transitions, effects (remember, even basic fades and fades to white or blacks count as effects), and titles in your vid. The more WMM has to "remember," the more likely it is to freeze or crash.

Codec conflicts: Codec stands for compressor/decompressor (or sometimes coder/decoder ) and they're basically the way a program shrinks the audio and video down during the rendering process. Every computer uses slightly different codecs and if your clips are coming from many different sources, then they're full of many different codecs, each often "competing" for dominance inside of WMM. (Who knew there was so much going on in there? )

Here's how to tell Over-Complexity and codec conflicts apart:

If you're doing a fairly simple vid with very few effects or transitions and not a lot of clips then WMM starts freezing not long after you've added a new clip (and often freezes on the same clip each time when you try to preview your vid) then more than likely the codec in that clip is jostling around with the codecs around it. Sometimes you can just replace that clip with another one and WMM will start behaving again. If that doesn't do the trick, however, keep reading...

If your timeline is very crowded with clips, effects, transitions, titles and such, then Over-Complexity is probably the problem.

As it turns out, Over-Complexity and codec-conflicts can be solved by the same solution: rendering the video clips without the music then importing them back onto the timeline and using that to replace the original clips. Rendering solves the problem in two ways: the clips now have only one codec -- yours -- and it "sets" all of the effects, transitions and titles so that it no longer has to "remember" them all as you're working on your vid. They're now just another clip to WMM.

Note: It's not necessary to keep rendering the same sections over and over. Remove the music and any already rendered pieces, render the section you were working on, import it, replace the original clips, then continue working from there.

To see this method in action, please see The Making Of A Vid: Behind The Scenes Of Aislynn's "Saving Sun" where I walk through the steps I used with my latest vid to try and keep WMM from dying on me.

The downside is that this extra rendering step can cause you to lose quality (like making a copy of a copy of a copy...). But that can be a small price to pay to keep WMM from freezing and crashing every two seconds.

If none of this seems to be helping your particular problem, I recommend you visit Windows Movie Maker.NET, a very comprehensive site. They have a large forum board and a ton of information available.

http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/

Something I HIGHLY recommend is to get into the habit of saving your project every time you make an edit that would be a lot of work to redo if WMM should crash or freeze. I actually try to hit save with just about every move that I make.

You can always undo (CTRL+Z or you can use the arrow going back on itself to the left right under View OR you can get it from the Edit option as well) what you just did if you don't like the way it looks. But, trust me, if you've just spent a long time searching for a particular clip and it turned out to be in the middle of a very long piece that you've had to cut and trim and cut and trim to get the way you want it, you DON'T want to have to do that all again if you don't have to.

Yes, WMM does have an automatic saving system that backs your file up every few minutes (the time can be changed by clicking Tool - Options - General - Save AutoRecover Info Every... and specifying however minutes you want it to perform a backup). The problem is that I've often found that things happened in this order: WMM performs an AutoRecover backup, I save my project myself, then WMM freezes or crashes. When I launch it again, it says it found a project that was AutoRecovered, I accept the project, give it back the name of the original project, THEN realize that I had made some changes that were done after the AutoRecovery and were in the MSWMM file that I just overwrote with this one!

I've found it easier to just save the project myself every few minutes rather than hoping the AutoRecover will save it for me in the inevitable event of a crash or freeze. But, of course, this is all up to your own personal preference...


Last edited by Aislynn on Tue Oct 17, 2006 1:44 am; edited 3 times in total
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Aislynn
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Extras

The Making Of A Vid: Behind The Scenes Of Aislynn's "Saving Sun"

It's one of WMM's little peculiarities that you'll never really know how long it's going to take before either Over-Complexity or a codec conflict causes it to freeze or crash. I've made 4 minute long vids that didn't start having trouble until I was almost done with them. And I've had 2 and a half minute long vids that had trouble in the first 4 seconds.

In the case of "Saving Sun," I was able to vid 25 seconds before WMM began to have trouble previewing. That's usually the first sign that trouble is looming: when you try to preview what you've done and the video freezes but the audio keeps on going and it takes a long time for it to respond after you hit the stop button. My advice: the FIRST TIME IT ACTS UP, stop and render what you've done, then import it again before you try to continue. It'll save you heartache in the long run.

Here's what the first 25 seconds looked like before I rendered it (since I was just getting started, I hadn't decided on a title yet so the project name reflected the song's title, "Blow Me Away"):



Then here's what it looked like after it was rendered:



I continued on in that same manner, vidding until WMM acted up again. I saved "Blow Me Away 2.MSWMM," then deleted the already-rendered clips and the music, then rendered what was left. Once it was done, I opened "Blow Me Away 2.MSWMM" again, imported the second rendered clip and replaced the original clips with their rendered counterparts, then immediately saved the project as "Blow Me Away 3.MSWMM."

I always rename the project as soon as I've replaced a section with new, imported clips. That way the original clips are preserved in case I need to go back and make difficult changes. I can then render them again and swap them out with the first version.

I ended up with rendering 10 sets of clips for this vid. Here's a composite of what all of those original clips would've looked like on the timeline at the same time:



Here's what the final project looked like with the rendered clips in place:



As you can see, rendering the clips in pieces gives WMM a lot less to "think" about. I decided to add in an XML effect just before the 1 minute mark. Since it was at an easy place to add it in, I opted to just cut the rendered clip and add in a still pic of Sun with the Split Screen: Star transition (from Rehan's Split Screen package of XML effects) to let it show through the moving water. Then, once I was satisfied with the way everything looked, I rendered the project as a whole.

If you'd like to see the end result, here's the link for "Saving Sun":

http://lostvideo.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=4925


New! Just added!


Achieving Different Looks With WMM's Fade In/Fade Out To White Effect

While talking about different ways to get different looks with WMM's fade in/fade out to white effect, I came up with this short "vidlet" to see exactly what sort of effects you can get. The vid pieces and effects were all done with WMM2, though I added the titles and did final assembly with Sony Vegas Movie Studio because, well, it was easier!

2 links, in case one place doesn't work for you, then hopefully the other will...

Zshare: http://www.zshare.net/video/2958269fdbbb30/
Badongo: http://www.badongo.com/vid/224025

Now, I know the "call-outs" go fast at the end but here's what they said and what sort of look I feel each gives:

Fade out/fade in - putting a fade out on the first clip, then fade in on the second, gives a softer glow that builds into a white flash, then softly fades away

Fade in - a fade in on the second clip, gives a "burst" then a softer fade out

Fade out - a fade out on the first clip, gives a soft build, then a "burst"

White image - best achieved by screencapping one of your clips so the ratios match, then using a graphics program (even a basic one like Paint) to "color" everything white, then import it in as a still pic and fade back into the first clip and fade the second clip back into it, gives control over the length of the white flash and can be used to create a very "long" soft white flash

Also remember that the shorter the cuts between clips, the "shorter" and more dramatic the white flash bursts. The fade ins and fade outs are almost indistinguishable from each other when they're applied to very short clips.

Anyway, I hope that's helpful in giving you some variety in your white flashes!


Last edited by Aislynn on Thu Aug 02, 2007 7:42 pm; edited 6 times in total
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Aislynn
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Joined: 03 Feb 2005
Posts: 35782
Location: Sawyerville, USA

PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Links

Here are all of the links mentioned throughout this guide, collected in one handy place...

Some places to find clips:

http://lostvideo.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=3793

Explanation of clip theft:

http://lostvideo.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=1888

DivX page for downloading codecs to get AVI files to work in WMM (you don't have to take free trial, just uncheck box during installation to not have to pay later):

http://www.divx.com/divx/codec.php

Guide to some free hosting places:

http://lostvideo.net/hosting_guide.php

Info about Audacity, a free audio editing program:

http://lostvideo.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=4293

Some places to find XML code:

http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/Forums/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=28

http://www.rehanfx.org/ (some effects/transitions are freeware, others are trials that require you to pay for them to keep them after the trial expires)

http://www.danielfx.moo.no/

http://lostvideo.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=4503

Specs for upgrading from WMM 1 to WMM 2:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/moviemaker2.mspx

To order the free Service Pack 2 CD from Microsoft:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/sp2/cdorder/en_us/default.mspx

XML code for correction aspect ratio problems:

http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=28889

A ton of WMM info, also check out their user forum (link is at top of the page):

http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/
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Aislynn
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Final thoughts

My sincerest thanks to Marcus, MovieGuy, Warren and SuperKC for the tips and short-cuts they shared with me. You guys rock!

To learn more about making vids in general, I highly recommend the Training vids done by Hobbes and crazymol4588, found here:

http://www.lostvideo.net/beginners.php

WMM often gets bad press for being unstable and limited. But I've found that if you just have patience with it, move slowly, and make the effort to understand what it can and can't do, then you can still create interesting vids. The most important element of ANY vid isn't the program that was used to create it. The most important element is your own creativity and imagination.

Happy vidding!


Last edited by Aislynn on Sun Mar 26, 2006 6:07 am; edited 1 time in total
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marcus
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Joined: 28 Jun 2005
Posts: 4541

PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Awesome guide, Aislynn! I've only had a quick look through it, it'll take me a while to read the full thing. But it's got pretty much every problem I've come across on there! I'm sure it'll be a great help to newbies.

And exactly when did I give you tips/shortcuts on WMM?
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Aislynn
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Joined: 03 Feb 2005
Posts: 35782
Location: Sawyerville, USA

PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I didn't know that you could drag a clip onto the audio line to get just the audio from it until you and KC told me how to do it! Credit where credit is due, you know...



And thanks! I really hope that this can be of help to somebody!
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