Windows Movie Maker(formerly known as Windows Live Movie Maker, codenamed Sundance) is a freeware video editing software by Microsoft. It is a part of Windows Essentials software suite and offers the ability to create and edit videos as well as to publish them on OneDrive, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr.
The layout consists of a storyboard view and a timeline view, collections for organizing imported video, and a preview pane. When in Storyboard view, the video project appears as a film strip showing each scene in clips. The storyboard/timeline consists of one ‘Video’ (with accompanying ‘Audio’ bar), one ‘Music/Audio’ bar, and one ‘Titles/Credits’ bar. In each bar, clips can be added for editing (e.g., a .WAV music file will belong on the ‘Music/Audio’ bar).
Still images can also be imported into the timeline and “stretched” to any desired number of frames. The Video and Music/Audio bars can be “cut” to any number of short segments, which will play together seamlessly, but the individual segments are isolated editing-wise, so that for example, the music volume can be lowered for just a few seconds while someone is speaking.
When importing footage into the program, a user can either choose to Capture Video (from camera, scanner or other device) or Import into Collections to import existing video files into the user’s collections. The accepted formats for import are .WMV/.ASF, .MPG (MPEG-1), .AVI (DV-AVI), .WMA, .WAV, and .MP3. Additionally, the Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate editions of Movie Maker support importing MPEG-2 Program streams and DVR-MS formats. Importing of other container formats such as MP4/3GP, FLV and MOV, MIDI, AIFF, AAC and SWF are not supported even if the necessary DirectShow decoders are installed.
In the Windows XP version, import and real-time capture of video from an analog source such as a VCR, tape-based analog camcorder or webcam is possible. This feature is based on Windows Image Acquisition. Video support in Windows Image Acquisition was removed in Windows Vista, as a result importing analog footage in Windows Movie Maker is no longer possible.
When importing from a DV tape, if the “Make Clips on Completion” option is selected, Windows Movie Maker automatically flags the commencement of each scene, so that the tape appears on the editing screen as a collection of short clips, rather than one long recording. That is, at each point where the “Record” button was pressed, a new “clip” is generated, although the actual recording on the hard drive is still one continuous file. This feature is also offered after importing files already on the hard drive. In the Windows Vista version, the “Make clips on completion” option has been removed — the clips are now automatically created during the capture process.
The efficiency of the importing and editing process is heavily dependent on the amount of file fragmentation of the hard disk. The most reliable results can be obtained by adding an extra hard disk dedicated for scratch space, and regularly re-formatting/defragmenting it, rather than simply deleting the files at the end of the project. Fragmented AVI files result in jerky playback on the editing screen, and make the final rendering process much longer.
Although it is possible to import digital video from cameras through the USB interface, most older cameras only support USB version 1 and the results tend to be poor — “sub VHS” — quality. Newer cameras using USB 2.0 give much better results. A FireWire interface camera will allow recording and playback of images identical in quality to the original recordings if the video is imported and subsequently saved as DV AVI files, although this consumes disk space at about 1 gigabyte every five minutes (12 GB/Hr). Alternatively, most DV cameras allow the final AVI file to be recorded back onto the camera tape for high quality playback. Some standalone DVD recorders will also directly accept DV inputs from video cameras and computers.
- License: Free
- OS: Windows
- Size: 1.18 MB.
- Publisher/Developer: Microsoft Corporation.
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