Windows Movie Maker Help

[Tekster]

I just need to get some clips done for free sites from a few movies, so after reading the board, I guess Movie Maker is the easiest way to do it, but I have no idea where to start.

I loaded a new project (a movie) but it shows up as it is made of about 40 clips ranging from 1 sec to 50 sec. Where do I go from here? Do I have to join the clips and then split the movie? I am totally lost.

Anyone has a quick and dirty tutorial on how to do this?

[ponygirl]

Tek, are you loading one whole movie or a bunch of clips?

If you're importing a selection of clips, it will show up as a selection of clips. I work a lot with whole movie files, so what I do is open it up, go File > Import into Collections, select the movie I want and it imports as a whole movie. Then I can go along the timeline and cut the clips the way I want them.

how are you loading the projects? If you tell me which buttons you're pushing I may be of better help

[Tekster]

I think I figured out what I did, when I loaded the movie, I had the create clips for video files checked. I started over and now I have one whole movie showing up.

What do I do now? I drag the movie to the timeline and then what?

[Tekster]

ponygirl, I know you do a lot of movie free sites lately, do you prefer 15 or 20 sec clips?

[Lemmy]

Originally Posted by TekAngel

What do I do now? I drag the movie to the timeline and then what?

You can do that and split it up manually, or get something like Easy Video Splitter if you just want to chop a movie into any number of clips. I use it for all my freesites and it works great. It also looks like it's now free (I think I paid about $30 dollars a few years back).

[ponygirl]

Originally Posted by TekAngel

I think I figured out what I did, when I loaded the movie, I had the create clips for video files checked. I started over and now I have one whole movie showing up.

What do I do now? I drag the movie to the timeline and then what?

yep, drag the movie down to the bottom timeline. Basically, here's what I do with full movies:

once I have a rough idea where I'm taking a clip from, I zoom out far enough so I can cut a rough clip, about 1 minute for a 20-30 sec clip, just makes it easier to handle. Then I zoom in all the way in to do the final cuts. If you mouseover the beginning and end of the movie in the timeline, your cursor will change to a double sided red arrow. Drag this arrow to the spot where you want to cut the movie.
I find when you're cutting from the beginning of the movie in (left to right), it isn't very easy to cut beyond what you can actually see in the timeline, so that's why I zoom out for a rough clip, then fine tune it. When you're cutting from the end back (right to left), it's a lot easier. That may not make much sense, but it will once you start playing around with it

Once you have the clip cut, click File > Save Movie File. This opens up a dialogue box for you to choose your settings.
Choose My computer for the movie location, then Next
Enter the name of the clip (eg: sponsormovie3-clip1), and where you want to save it, then Next

The next box is the quality. You'll probably want to compress the clip, so if you only have one choice showing on this screen (it will be 'best quality for playback on my computer'), click the 'show more choices' link. Then choose 'Best fit to file size' and you can control the quality. For a 20-30 sec clip, I usually go to 2mb.

After you set that, click Next, and it will save the clip to the place you specified.

Then I go back, delete the clip from the storyboard, drag the full movie back in again and make my second clip, then repeat all the steps until you have all the clips you want.

One thing I learned was to take the screenshot of the clip just after saving it, I used to forget that one and have to import the clip to take the screenshot. Unfortunately that makes a shitty screenshot because you've already compressed the video. So now after I save the clip but before deleting it, I grab the screenshot - there's a camera icon just under the viewing screen, click that and it will grab whatever scene is showing on the viewer.

Someone else may have some different ways to do it, but I've been doing this for almost every movie freesite I do and it works great for me. Gives the clips a bit of individuality rather than just grabbing from the hosted galleries.

Originally Posted by TekAngel

ponygirl, I know you do a lot of movie free sites lately, do you prefer 15 or 20 sec clips?

I'm leaning towards 20 second clips, because I'm really particular about the beginning and ending of my clips, and a lot of times it doesn't fit into 15 seconds. The last one I did ended up with 3 30ish second clips on each gallery for just that reason. Plus I'm starting to find anything less than 20 seconds annoying because they're so short, but I guess that's the tease factor lol. No offense to everyone who uses 10-12 second clips

whew, that's the most I've talked in a long time

[ponygirl]

Originally Posted by Lemmy

You can do that and split it up manually, or get something like Easy Video Splitter if you just want to chop a movie into any number of clips. I use it for all my freesites and it works great. It also looks like it's now free (I think I paid about $30 dollars a few years back).

I tried a bunch of video splitters (free and paid, including Easy) and went back to Movie Maker, it was easier to make the exact clips I wanted (not just arbitrary cuts) and control the quality. But a lot of people really like some of the splitters available out there.

edit - actually, now that I think of it, I tried the other ones because WMM only saves in .wmv format and I wanted to try mpg due to the hotlinking issue. But I've never had any problems with my movies being hotlinked, only my pics so go figure

[Tekster]

Wow, thanks ponygirl. That is what I was looking for, some detailed instructions on how to do this. I have to do a few and I am sure I will get the hang of it.

Can you save (convert) the wmv files as mpeg files? (To prevent hotlinking)

[ponygirl]

Originally Posted by TekAngel

Wow, thanks ponygirl. That is what I was looking for, some detailed instructions on how to do this. I have to do a few and I am sure I will get the hang of it.

well, I hope it helps It didn't take me long to get to know it, now I can whip up unique clips in no time.

Originally Posted by TekAngel

Can you save (convert) the wmv files as mpeg files? (To prevent hotlinking)

as far as I can tell, they only save as wmv. There are programs you can use to convert them to mpg, but I haven't had any luck with those, quality wise the clips turn out really crappy. There's a few things you can do to lessen the risk of hotlinking - make sure there's an index.html file in your images folder (even a fpa will do), make sure you have a good htaccess file (although I know it apparently doesn't work for wmv files), don't name your clips 1,2,3 etc. I always make sure to check my bandwidth usage during the day as well, I've headed off some nasty bandwidth surprises that way.