Windows 7 / Getting Started

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Windows Live Movie Maker

Live Movie Maker

Windows Live Movie Maker is software that lets you create and edit videos. It replaces the Vista Windows Movie Maker and is not compatible with versions of Windows prior to Vista. However, when its beta version was released in January 2009, user reactions were negative enough that Microsoft decided not to release further versions until the full release of Windows 7.

Windows Live Movie Maker lets you create effects, transitions, titles/ credits, audio track, and timeline narration. You can create new effects, make transitions, and modify existing ones. It also has a basic audio track editing program and can apply basic effects, such as fade in or fade out, to audio tracks. You can export the audio tracks in the form of a sound file instead of a video file.

To start, you pick either a storyboard view or a timeline view. When in storyboard view, the video project appears as a film strip showing each scene in clips.

The strip consists of one video (with accompanying audio bar), one music/audio bar, and one titles/credits bar. In each bar, you can add clips for editing (for example, a .wav music file will belong on the music/audio bar). You can import still images into the timeline and multiply it into any desired number of frames. You can cut the video and music/audio bars into any number of short segments, which will play together seamlessly when assembled. However the individual segments are actually isolated so that, for example, you can lower the music volume briefly while someone is speaking.

When importing footage into the program, you can either choose to capture video (from a camera, a scanner, or some other device) or import into collections to copy existing video files into your collections.

Tip One limitation of Live Movie Maker is that the importing and editing process depends on the amount of file fragmentation on your hard disk: the more fragmented your hard disk, the slower the process. If you plan to do a lot of importing and editing, plan to add an extra hard disk dedicated to scratch storage, and regularly reformat/defragment it.

After capturing a clip, you can drag and drop it anywhere on the timeline. After they are on the timeline, you can duplicate or split clips, and you can use the standard Windows keyboard shortcuts to delete, copy, or drag any of the split sections to another position. Right-clicking any clip brings up the range of editing options.