Discover Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 in Screenshots

In September 2010, Microsoft released a suite of 10 free programs called Windows Live Essentials 2011. Bundled with Windows Live Essentials is Windows Live Movie Maker 2011, which is a complete rewrite of Windows Movie Maker, the video editing software that came bundled with Windows Vista. Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 is geared towards general users with little to no background in video editing and production. As such, theres a high priority on user-friendliness, particularly for beginners. This intuitiveness, while widely appreciated, comes at the cost of a pared down feature set that strips the functionality down to, well, the essentials. In this article, well show you all of Windows Live Movie Maker 2011s key features, using mostly screenshots.

Importing Photos and Videos

Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 allows you to create near professional looking home movies from the photos and videos you already have in your Windows Live Photo Gallery or on your digital camera or phone. Click the Add videos and photos button to get started.

AutoMovie Themes
With AutoMovie, it takes literally seconds to create a complete movie--including transitions, a title clip, and credits. Choose an AutoMovie Theme template from the Home ribbon and Windows Live Movie Maker will automatically insert transitions, dates and captions according to the tag information on your photos and video clips. All you have to do is put your name in the credits section.

Editing Video
Video editing features in Windows Movie Maker 2011 are rudimentary, yet sufficient for most home movies. You can speed up or slow down videos as well as split and trim them. You can also rearrange them by dragging and dropping them on the timeline.

Add Music
Add suspense, sentimentality or levity to your movie by adding music from your Library. Click Add music to choose a song. Then, you can have it fade out, fade in or start/stop at key points in your movie.

Animations and Visual Effects

Bring your photos to life with animations. Choose from over 75 Transitions from the campy throwback Star wipe to artsy dissolves that carry viewers from one clip or picture to the next in style.

You can also choose from over 25 Pan and Zoom presets that create a cinematic or dynamic effect for viewing individual photos.

Visual Effects allow you to apply effects directly to your photos and video clips. Give it a touch of nostalgia with a Sepia tone or get artsy with an edge detect or posterize effect.

Titles, Captions and Credits

You can add text to your movie using Titles, Captions or Credits. Click the appropriate button on the Home ribbon to insert it into the timeline.

Once you insert a caption or title or credits clip, you can add custom fonts, colors and effects.

Preview and Share

While creating your movie, you can see how it looks by playing it in the preview pane on the left. Or, you can see it in full screen by clicking the Preview full screen button or by pressing F11.

When youre ready to share your movie, you can save it as a .WMV, burn it to a DVD or upload it directly to Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Windows Live Group or your Windows Live SkyDrive.

Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 has a number of presets to optimize the quality and file size for the device youll be watching on.

Conclusion
That about wraps up our tour of Windows Live Movie Maker 2011. As you can see, making, editing and sharing movies with Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 is incredibly easy. Stay tuned for more in-depth guides of all the Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 features we introduced in this article. Creating movies from pictures and videos is a breeze with Windows Live Movie Maker 2011. Once you have your pictures and video clips imported into Windows Move Live Movie Maker 2011, you can get right down to applying AutoMovie Themes, creating title clips and credits, setting your project to music and adding animations and transitions. But before you can begin, youll have to import your multimedia. In this first part of our series on Windows Live Movie Maker 2011, well show you just how to do that.

Import Photos and Videos into Windows Live Movie Maker 2011
Creating movies from pictures and videos is a breeze with Windows Live Movie Maker 2011. Once you have your pictures and video clips imported into Windows Move Live Movie Maker 2011, you can get right down to applying AutoMovie Themes, creating title clips and credits, setting your project to music and adding animations and transitions. But before you can begin, youll have to import your multimedia. In this first part of our series on Windows Live Movie Maker 2011, well show you just how to do that.

Importing Photos and Videos

Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 lets you create movies using photos and videos imported from Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011, a DVD, a digital camcorder or a smartphone. Start by connecting your camera or device to your computer. Launch Windows Live Movie Maker 2011. Click the Movie Maker button in the top-left corner and choose Import from device.

A message notifying you that the Photos and videos will be imported into Windows Live Photo Gallery will appear. Click OK.

Select the device youd like to import and click Import. In my case, Im going to be importing from my iPhone, which Ive named Phoney Baloney for whatever reason.

Next, youll see the Import Photos and Videos dialog. Here, youll have an opportunity to meticulously sort through and tag your photos before importing them, but for the purposes of this tutorial, lets just choose Import all items now. You can give this set of photos and videos a name to help keep us organized. Click Import.

Sending Photos and Videos from Windows Live Photo Gallery to Windows Live Movie Maker
After importing your photos and videos, theyll appear in Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011. You can find the photos and videos you just imported by selecting their folder in the Navigation Pane on the left. Select which videos and photos youd like to send to Windows Live Movie Maker. Next, click the Create tab and choose Movie.

Your videos and photos will now be opened in a new project in Windows Live Movie Maker 2011. Now youre ready to begin creating and editing your movie.

Adding Other Photos and Videos to Windows Live Movie Maker

If you want to add additional photos and videos to Windows Live Movie Maker that are on your hard drive but arent in your Windows Live Photo Gallery, you can click the Add videos and photos button in the Home ribbon of Windows Live Movie Maker. From there, you can browse to the media files youd like to add.

Supported file types in Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 include:

Windows Media Video files: .wmv, .asf and .wm; AVCHD files (from digital camcorders): .m2ts, .m2t and .mts; Apple QuickTime files: .qt and .mov; MPEG (1, 2 and 4) files: .mp4, .mov, .m4v, .mpeg, .mpg, .mpe, .m1v, .mp2, .mpv2, .mod, vob and .m1v; .AVI files;

Recorded TV shows (Microsoft): .wtv and .dvr-ms; Photos and images: .jpg, .jpeg, .tiff, .tif, .gif, .bmp, .png, and .wdp; Audio files: .wma, .asf, .wm, .aif, .aiff, .wav, .m4a and .mp3.

Conclusion
As you can see, its incredibly easy to import photos and videos into Windows Live Movie Maker 2011. Its even easier if you have Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 installed, which you should, since it comes bundled with Windows Live Essentials 2011 and is free. Stay tuned for the next part in our series, where well show you how to create an AutoMovie in Windows Live Movie Maker. Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 is all about ease of use, and when it comes to adding background music to your videos and photo slideshows, that theme remains the same. Windows Live Movie Makers audio editing features are very basic and mostly limited to fading in and fading out, changing the start and end points and adjusting the volume for the entire clip. But if all you want is a little mood music for your home movie, then Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 lets you add a soundtrack from your music collection in seconds. In this tutorial, well show you how to add music to your Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 and edit your audio clips.

Editing Video in Windows Live Movie Maker 2011

The next step is to begin editing your video clips in Windows Live Movie Maker 2011. Windows Live Movie Makers video editing tab lets you split and trim video clips and adjust their speeds. In this tutorial, youll learn how to use all of these tools and functions.

Arranging Clips on the Timeline

When you import video clips or photos, they are automatically inserted into the timeline after the clip you currently have selected on the timeline.

You can easily re-arrange the order of the video clips by dragging and dropping them.

Surrounding clips will automatically get shifted on the timeline accordingly. Note that Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 doesnt allow any blank space" on the timeline - every second of the timeline must be filled by a photo, video, transition or title card. Likewise, when you remove a clip from the timeline, the surrounding clips shift to fill the gap left behind and shortening the overall length of your movie. You can remove clips by rightclicking them and choosing Remove or by selecting them and pressing Delete on the keyboard.

You can also cut, copy and paste the clips using the corresponding commands in the contextual menu, or by selecting a clip and pressing CTRL-X, CTRL-C or CTRL-V, respectively. An even faster way to duplicate clips is to hold CTRL while dragging and dropping a clip. An exact copy of the clip will be placed where you release the mouse, and the original clip will remain in place.

Splitting and Trimming Clips

In addition to re-ordering clips on the timeline, you can also trim them or split them into separate clips. Both of these tools are on the Edit ribbon.

To split a clip, position the play cursor at the point where youd like to split the clip. To do this, click the long black vertical cursor and drag it into the middle of a clip.

Or, you can click Play on the preview pane and hit Pause when you reach the point in the clip where youd like to split it. Once you have the cursor positioned correctly, click Split.

This creates two separate clips, which you can now re-arrange, trim and apply effects to independently from one another. There are two ways to trim video clips. The easiest way is to set the start point and end point. When you set the start point, Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 deletes the clip footage that precedes the cursor. When you set the end point, the clip footage after the cursor is removed. To set the start and end points, position the cursor as you did above and click Set start point or Set end point.

Alternately, you can use the Trim tool. To open it, select a clip and click Trim tool in the Edit ribbon.

You can set the start point and end point either by dragging the sliders underneath the preview or by entering the times in manually. You can do multiple trims by clicking Set start point and Set end point. This updates the clip with the new start and end points so you can trim it again. When youre finished, click Save trim.

If you make a mistake, you can press CTRL-Z to undo or delete the clip and re-import the original and start over. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to join clips or combine clips in Windows Live Movie Maker 2011. If you absolutely need this function, you can create a project with the clips you want to combine and export it as a .WMV and then import it back into your main project.

Speeding Up or Slowing Down Clips

To change the speed of a clip, select it and choose a speed from the drop-down menu next to Speed.

Note that when you change the speed of a video clip, Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 removes the audio from it. This is because the audios pitch will be effected by the change in speed. If you want to retain the audio, you can extract it using a program like Audacity or AoA Audio Extractor, but when you add it back in, it will be out of sync. Well cover working with audio in Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 in a later tutorial.

Changing Video Volume

You can alter the volume of each video clip by selecting it and clicking Video volume and dragging the slider. You can also have the audio fade in or fade out at three different speeds: slow, medium and fast. Simply choose your fade in/fade out speed from the drop-down menu in the Audio pane.

Adding Music to a Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 Project

Once you have photos or video clips added to your Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 timeline, you can begin adding music to play behind it. The easiest way to do this is to click the Add music button in the Home ribbon.

From there you can browse to any compatible audio file to import it into your timeline. Supported file types include .WMA, .MP3, .WAV, .M4A, .AIFF and .AIF.

By default, when you add a song, it will be placed at the beginning of the timeline.

Moving Audio Clips in the Timeline

If youd like to add music elsewhere in the timeline, you can click the text of the Add Music button rather than the icon. This opens a drop-down menu that reveals the Add music at the current point option.

Click this to insert an audio clip at whatever point the playhead is in the movie.

Alternately, you can click and drag the audio clip to reposition it along the timeline.

Editing Audio in Windows Live Movie Maker 2011

The Options ribbon under Music Tools gives you access to the limited range of audio editing tools in Windows Live Movie Maker 2011. In order to reveal the Music Tools Options, you must have a music clip selected or have the playhead positioned at a point along the timeline that has music.

In the Music Tools Options ribbon, you have the following tools:

Music Volume: Adjusts the volume of the entire clip.

Fade In/Fade Out: Allows you to fade in or fade out at the beginning or end of the clip at three speeds: slow, medium or fast.

Split: Splits the selected audio clip into two clips at the current position of the playhead.

Set start time: Moves the beginning of the clip to the position of the playhead on the timeline, or the time entered into the field on the right. Does not alter the clip itself.

Set start point: This changes the point within the song at which the clip begins playing. For example, if you want to skip through a 30-second intro or a few seconds of silence in a song, you could change the start point. You can either pause playback at the point in the audio where you want the clip to begin or type in the start point manually. Unlike Set start time, this does not change the position of the clip.

Set end Point: This sets the end point of the clip. If youve selected a fade out, this is the point where the clip will be completely faded out.

Conclusion and Limitations

Unfortunately, this is the full extent of Windows Live Movie Makers audio editing features. While you can have music clips and video audio playing back (i.e. audio that is included in the video file itself), you can not include two audio tracks on top of each other. Also, theres no ability to record narration in Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 - youll have to record your voiceover in another program and then import it, just like you would music. However, given the limitation of one audio track at a time, this means you wont be able to put music behind your narration, unless you first export a completely mixed down" version of your Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 project with only video and music and then create a new Windows Live Movie Maker project using your produced and saved clip. Furthermore, you dont get a volume pan for smooth fading in and out at arbitrary points in the audio clip. Instead, you have to split clips and have them fade out or fade in completely, if you want to carve out a space for narration. Overall, theres a lot to be desired in Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 - including some features that were not included from the previous version of Windows Movie Maker. But again, Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 is all about ease of use. Its about getting your photos and videos into professionally looking slide shows or home movies within minutes. And to that end, it still delivers.

How to Add Animations and Visual Effects in Windows Live Movie Maker 2011
Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 lets you easily create photo slideshows and home movies without any technical knowledge. You can give them a more professional look and feel by adding transitions, pan and zoom and other visual effects. In this tutorial, we will explain the differences between each of these animations and effects and show you how to use them in your Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 project.

Animations
The Animations pane contains two different kinds of animations you can add to video clips or photos: Transitions and Pan and zoom.

Transitions - Transitions are applied to the beginning of the selected clip. To apply them, select a photo or video clip and choose a transition from the gallery in the top-left. You can mouse over a transition to preview it.

Once youve applied a transition, the clip in the timeline will have a washed-out diagonal region that shows where the transition begins and ends.

You can alter how long the transition takes by altering the Duration to the right of the Transitions gallery. After applying a transition to a clip or photo, select it and enter a duration between 0.04 and 10.00 seconds. The washed-out region will shorten or lengthen accordingly.

If you want to apply the same transition to all of you clips and photos, you can click Apply All after selecting a transition. This, however, is a surefire recipe for a repetitive video or slideshow.

One other thing about transitions: you cant add a transition to the end of a clip. So, if you want to have a clip fade to black, you have to apply a dissolve transition to the clip immediately after it. A bit of a roundabout way to do things, but it accomplishes the same effect. Pan and Zoom - On the right-hand side of the Animations tab is the Pan and Zoom gallery. These are applied the same way as transitions. Select a photo, and then choose a pan and zoom setting from the gallery.

When pan and zoom is applied, there will be an icon in the top-left of the clip. You cannot alter the duration of a pan and zoom effect. As with transitions, you can choose to Apply All with your selected pan and zoom. The best use of this feature is to select Automatic and then Apply All. This will apply a random pan and zoom effect to each photo, which helps change things up a bit.

NOTE: You cannot add pan and zoom effects to video clips. This only works with still photos.

To remove an animation, simply choose None from the respective gallery.

Visual Effects
Visual effects can be applied to still photos and video clips. You can find them in the Visual Effects tab and apply them by choosing a clip and selecting an effect from the gallery.

You can preview the effect in the preview window on the left. The original clip appears as normal in the timeline. In the Visual Effects tab, you will also find the setting that lets you adjust the Brightness.

You can brighten or darken any clip or photo regardless of any visual effects that have been applied.

One thing thats unique about visual effects is that you can apply multiple effects to a single clip. To do this, click the arrow to expand the gallery and choose Multiple Effects.

In the Add or Remove Effects dialog, you can choose which effects to apply to your selected clip. To add an effect, highlight it in the Available effects menu and click Add. To remove it, select it in the Displayed effects column and click Remove.

You can also choose the order in which the effects are applied. Depending on which effects you choose, this may impact how the video is ultimately displayed. Click Apply when you are finished.

Conclusion
Thats about all there is to adding transitions, pan and zoom and visual effects to your Windows Live Movie Maker project. Feel free to experiment with different combinations -- there is no risk of overwriting the original, and you can always remove an effect as easily as you applied it. For more tutorials about Windows Live Movie Maker 2011, check out some of our related articles listed below.

How to Add Titles, Captions and Credits in Windows Live Movie Maker 2011
A pictures worth a thousand words--but sometimes, your home movie or photo slideshows can benefit from just a bit more. Thats where titles, captions and credits come in. Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 allows you to add these textual elements in a snap. You can even give them a professional look and feel by tweaking the font and style and adding cinematic effects. In this tutorial, well teach you the differences between titles, captions and credits and when to use each of these. Here are the definitions for each in a nutshell:

Titles are standalone clips meant to precede your movie. Credits are standalone clips meant to follow your movie. Captions are text areas that are superimposed on top of clips or photos.

Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 provides buttons for each of these but, in practice, Titles and Credits clips behave exactly the same, once you move them around on the timeline. Youll see what I mean once we dive into the details.

Adding Titles Clips in Windows Movie Maker 2011

All the text clip buttons are tucked away in the Home ribbon to the right of the Snapshot button. The first one is the add Title button. Click it and Windows Live Movie Maker will insert a new Title clip at the very beginning of your movie.

As soon as you add a Title clip, youll be taken to the Format tab.

The first thing youll want to do here is change the default text from My Movie" to something more meaningful to you. If the text isnt already selected, click it in the Preview window.

In the Format tab, you can format the text as you see fit. If youve ever used Word, this should be familiar to you. You can see your changes in the preview window below.

As youll notice from the screenshot, Ive also changed the background color. To do this, click the Paint bucket and choose a color. This can only be done with Title and Credit clips.

You can also change the Transparency by moving the slider. This will be more useful for Captions, which well talk about next.

But before we move on, lets take a look at changing the duration of the Title clip. This can be a little bit confusing, because there are two durations to deal with: the Video duration and the Text duration. The Video duration refers to the time that the entire clip is displayed. To change this, you have to first click the Edit tab beneath Video tools. Here, you can specify how long the entire Title clip will be.

The Text duration and start time changes how long the text will appear on the title clip. Normally, the Text duration is equal to or less than the Title/Video clip. If the duration is shorter than the Video duration, then the text will fade away before the Title clip disappears and transitions to the next clip in your timeline.

You can also bump the start time forward, so that the text appears shortly after the Title clip is displayed.

An easier way to alter the start time is to simply drag and drop the text element on the timeline.

Note that the text item is independent of the Title clip - you can move it to another clip, or have it overlap and spill over to another clip.

Adding Captions in Windows Live Movie Maker

Captions are text elements without a dedicated clip or colored background. Instead, they are applied to existing photos or video clips. The add Caption is on the Home ribbon, just below the Title button.

Clicking the Caption button will insert a text element wherever the playhead is.

You can edit, format and position your caption just like you did with the text element that was associated with the Title clip.

You cant, however, set a background color for Captions. Thats because the background of the caption will always be the photo or video clip beneath it.

Adding Credits in Windows Live Movie Maker

The last button in our set is the add Credits button.

Once your Credits clip is on the timeline, it functions exactly the same as a Title clip. The Credits button, however, differs from the Title clip button in that it adds the Credits clip at the very end of your movie and automatically adds preceding text for Credits," Director,"

Starring," or Location" based on which option you choose after you click the arrow next to the button. For example, when you choose Credits, it creates a text element with the word CREDITS" and a space for you to enter names.

Or, if you choose Director, it inserts DIRECTED BY" and leaves an area for you to enter your own name.

This text behaves no differently than it would if you would have simply typed it yourself.

Working with Text Effects

Text effects can be applied to Titles, Captions and Credits. Simply select the text element on your timeline and choose an Effect from the gallery in the right-hand section of the Format tab under Text Tools.

There are 24 different text effects, from the classic Scroll to the more ornate Cinematic style.

Note that if you choose a Text effect where the text fades in, flies in or is otherwise not visible at the very beginning of the animation, you wont be able to see it when your playhead is right at the beginning of the text element. This isnt a bug--simply advance your playhead to see the text, just as it will appear in that point of time in your movie.

You can still edit the text at any point in the timeline, however, and the changes will apply to the entire text element.

Tips and Limitations

While adding Captions, Credits and Titles in Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 is incredibly easy, the feature is somewhat limited. For one, you cannot have more than one text element at any given point in the timeline. This means that you cant have different two or more text styles in any clip. For example, if you wanted the word Credits" to appear in bold, but the rest of the text to be in italics or normal font weight, this simply isnt possible. Also, if you wanted a caption on top of a Credit or Title screen, this is likewise not possible.

On the plus side, you can add as many Title or Credits clips as you want. You can also move them around to anywhere you want in the timeline, including in the middle of your movie. In this way, you can use them to divide sections in your movie.

Also note that you can add transitions from the Animations tab to Title clips, just like you would with normal video clips.

Conclusion
As you can see, adding a bit of explanatory text to any point in your movie is incredibly easy with Windows Live Movie Maker 2011. While you wont be able to create advanced call-outs such as speech bubbles, drawings or text boxes - nor can you include multiple text elements on the same clip, you can add text effects and transitions to them to give them a more professional look and feel. For more tips on jazzing up your photo slideshows and home movies with Windows Live Movie Maker 2011, check out some of our related articles.