FileMB

This tutorial assumes you’ve recorded video on to your computer using a screen capturing program like Fraps. It does not cover importing video from a camera — but that’s pretty easy to figure out.

So you’ve got some cool footage that you recorded with a program like Fraps, but now you want to make something cool with music and titles and transitions. It can take hours to make a good movie and days or weeks to get good at it – or even months before you’ll be doing the kinds of movies that get front page attention. But it only takes a few minutes to learn the basics.

First, make sure you have recorded some video clips to work with – just a few are fine, maybe two or three 30 second clips will work nicely. Next, close any programs you don’t need running since Windows Movie Maker uses a lot of system recources (as do all video editing programs). When you’re ready, click Start >> All Programs >> Accessories >> Entertainment >> Windows Movie Maker. If it’s not there or it’s an old version, see if you can get it from windowsupdate.com and make sure you’re running Windows XP. It looks something like this:

Lets take a moment to become familiar with the layout. The black box on the right is the preview window – thats where you watch your videos and see what you’ve edited. The white box in the middle is where you see your video files just like viewing a folder on your computer. The window at the bottom with a blue background is called the Timeline; this is where the magic happens. The Timeline is a two dimensional method of representing your movie, the scenes, and the music in the order that they’ll be played. The menus on the left may or may not show up depending on what version of Movie Maker you have, but they list common tasks such as titles and transitions.

So now that you can recognize each area of Windows Movie Maker, lets do something fun. Click File >> Import Into Collections, then select a video file you recorded with Fraps. If you prefer, you can also drag and drop the file into the white box in the middle of Windows Movie Maker. It will import the clip and you’ll see it in the window — it might be a thumbnail or an icon. Double click on it and you can watch it in the preview window.

Drag and drop the file from the white box to the blue Timeline. You’ll see a long white box appear with a thumbnail of the video clip.

To be continued….

Next: Share your videos online!