Editing Videos in Windows Movie Maker

FILE MANAGEMENT
Before you start editing you should think about your file management...I know it sounds boring but it’s actually really important.

When you’re dealing with video projects, you’ll end up with multiple files in different formats: scripts, live footage, voiceovers, animations, screencasts, and credits.

If you’re working on the project on one computer, you might get away with having the files scattered across your hard drive, but if you are working in a group, switching between home or school computers, or if you want to revisit the project at a later date, you're going to need a really well-organized project folder.

1.	Start by creating your project folder and giving it a unique name.
2.	Then copy all of your footage into the folder. Don’t start editing your footage while it is still on the camera or memory card, because once you remove it, you will have lost your footage.
3.	Create all of your new files in your project folder.
4.	Replace the generic names that camcorders give video files with more descriptive names.
5.	As you’re dealing with multiple files and file types, try to include the type of file or footage in the filename.

EDITING
1. If you don’t already have Windows Movie Maker already on your computer, you can download it for free from the Microsoft website. 

If you’re used to using Microsoft office, the layout should look very familiar to you. There are tabs across the top, giving you access to specific tools. 
2. You begin the project by importing all of your footage, you do this by clicking on the large white area and selecting the appropriate files. It may take a few minutes to prepare the footage for playback, so wait for the clock icons on the footage to disappear before you get to work.

3. Click and drag on the individual clips to reorder them, and once they are in order, you are ready to trim the clips. This is where your count-downs come in handy! Play back the clips and right after the count of three set your start point using the video tools menu.

To set the endpoint of your clip, drag the playback bar toward the end and listen back, leave about two beats of silence after the last spoken words, the click on “set end point.”

Continue this process on all of your clips: your live footage, animations, and screencasts.

4. Next you will need to add a title slide, transitions, and credits. The good news is that you can do this all with the click of one button: The Auto Movie Theme.

Hovering your mouse over the auto-movie themes previews how it will look. When you find one that works with your footage, click on it.  A title slide, credit slides and transitions will all appear.

5. To modify your title, click on the box underneath the black title slide, a text box will appear in your preview screen. You can enter your title text and adjust the size, colour and type of font in this box, just as you would in PowerPoint or Word.

6. If you want to add text over the top of your clips you can do this using the caption function. Simply move the black playback bar to the point in your clip where you want the text to appear, click on caption and add your text, adjusting the location.

7. The small triangles at the beginning of each clip represents the transition - how one clip moves into the next. If the transition between clips is too fast or too slow, you can adjust the duration in the animations tab.

8. Next you’re going to add your credits. But first we need to talk about why credits are so important.

You’re probably used to adding citations and a bibliography at the end of a research paper but you’re also required (by law!) to credit your sources in videos and digital projects too. That means crediting images, audio and video clips, as well as quotations and any research cited. Your sources need to be legitimate copies of the material and you also need to meet some specific conditions outlined in Canadian Copyright Law.

It’s a little complex but we do have a copyright guide on our website that outlines what you can and can’t do in your project. The laws are there to help protect copyright holders but also to protect you as a creator of something new.

OK…back to to the video editing.

You’ll notice that movie maker added some black credit slides when you selected your auto movie theme.  You can enter all of your credits into the text boxes and select how you want the credits to move across the screen.  It helps to keep track of all the images, music, websites and research in a word document as you are creating your project. That way you just need to copy and paste the info into your credit slides in Movie Maker.

9. Saving your video is a two-step process - not only do you have to save it as a video file, you need to save the project file so you can go back and make changes.

To save the project, go to file, save project as and select your project folder as your destination. This is a quick save as the file does not contain any of the footage. To work on this project on another computer or at a later date, you will need all of the files in the project folder.

To save your final video go to save movie as...and select “Recommended for this project.” This file will take longer to save - if your video is five minutes long, it could take up to five minutes for it to save.

Remember, your original footage is safe inside that project folder, so feel free to experiment with different themes, transitions and edits - you can always go back to the originals.