Step 1) Open Movie Maker and name your project



Using Microsoft Movie Maker

Movie Maker is extremely easy to use. There are essentially only five steps, outlined below. The trick is in learning the different features and settings of the program which is not at all difficult. There are tutorials available online, and I have included links to some below as well as other resources.

Step 1) Open Movie Maker and name your project

File> Save project as (F12)

Step 2) Import pictures, sounds, videos into Movie Maker

A) Tools> New Collection Folder

B) File> Import into Collections (control-I)

Step 3) Place pictures, video, and sound into your project

Drag each element from the collection folder to the timeline. You can change the duration of each element (how long it appears on the screen) by pulling on the ends of it’s frame on the timeline, stretching it longer to make it stay on the screen longer or pushing it back to compact it into a shorter timeframe.

Step 4) Insert effects and transitions

These are found in the tools menu or in the collections folder. You simply drag them onto the frame of the timeline you want to use them on. If you want to remove them, you click on the transition which appears in a frame on it’s own timeline under the video’s timeline and hit “delete.” With effects, you have to right click the frame in the video timeline and open the video effects window to remove it.

There are 26 effects and 20 transitions that come with Movie Maker. You can add more- some are free, other you can buy. You can preview what each effect or transition does simply by clicking on it and looking at the preview window. A lot of learning Movie Maker is simply figuring out which of these effects and transitions to use most effectively.

Tip: You cannot combine transitions, but you can combine an effect WITH a transition, and you can add more than one effect (such as “fade in from black” AND “Ease in.”)

Warning- the more of these you use, the more likely you are to have difficulty with the program (they use a lot of processing power and memory).

Step 5) Export your finished movie.

“Control + P” will open up a wizard that will guide you through a process that will allow you to save your movie to one of 5 formats: for playback on your computer (big file, high quality can be burned to a DVD), for email (lowest quality, highly compressed), for posting on the web (as for YouTube), to be burned on a video CD, or to a digital camcorder (highest quality). The process is pretty much self explanatory, but if you want to eventually burn your movie to a DVD, choose the movie setting “DV-AVI (NTSC)” when you save your film. To export your film to powerpoint, save it as a windows media file (.avi extension) using the “playback on your computer” option.”

That’s it. Really!

Online Resources:



Pretty comprehensive, basic, and straightforward instructions from the friendly folks at the evil empire.



A very comprehensive set of instructions, tips and tricks from a non-microsoft source.



Online video clips showing screenshots for those who prefer demonstrations and don’t like to pour through web pages.



TONS of resources here. Especially check out “Papa John” and his work. Also includes some special effects that can be purchased and added on to Movie Maker.



Rehan is some guy who I imagine lives in his mother’s basement and spends a lot of time fiddling with computers. He put together some pan and zoom effects for Movie Maker that I think work really well. You can download them and try them out but you have to pay him $8 in order to get them to work completely. I think it’s worth it. The other stuff on his site is WAY too technical for most people.



Free effects that will allow you to do fast motion or slow motion.



“Fraps” (an acronym for “Frames per second”) is a program that captures still and moving screenshots. Often used by video gamers, but useful for putting together instructional videos or, for instance, with Google Earth. Free to download and try, you can buy it with enhanced features.

[tip: to create a still screenshot in Powerpoint, simply press the “Alt” and Print Screen” keys simultaneously, and then when you are in Powerpoint just press “control +V” or “Paste” from the edit menu.]

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