May 5th, 2009 by admin

When i first started using movie maker, i never really took any notice of the
special effects that you can use with it, i have only been making and editing
videos for a 2 years now and i have learned a lot, i want to tell you about the first basic effects (transitions) that windows movie maker can do and then over time i will go further into detail of movie maker,  many things i my self will learn along the way, watch the video and read below for more information.

There is no beginning or end in using special effects but i will show you some of the more easy to understand things to start with.
I will be making another puppy movie with about 100 photos and i will be using pictures of cute jack Russell’s, as i have 2 myself.
I will change the duration time to 4 seconds,

you can do this by clicking on Tools then Options, then click on Advanced TAB and change the picture duration time.
Then i can drag all the photos onto the video time line, for editing.

Now i will be adding the fade effect or (transition) to every photo in the video, you do this by selecting the Tools then Video Transition’s icon, you will then see a large number of transitions which you can use in your video.
Right mouse click on the Fade icon then on your keyboard hold Ctrl and press c to copy the transition, then click on first picture then hold Ctrl and press v to paste that transition onto the picture, you can then press Ctrl v on the next picture and so on to repeat the process on all the photos until you have finished, i am going to add some music into the video as well, after that you can save your movie and its ready to be uploaded to YouTube or your website, lets see how the video of the cute jack Russell puppies turned out.

May 4th, 2009 by admin

One reason why i still use windows movie maker is because its free and its good for what it is and i am only uploading videos to YouTube and other video sharing sites, many people can`t aford to buy high end movie editting software, besides its good to learn with as its rather easy to use.
The first thing you need to do is determine if you already have movie maker on you system, you can find in “C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\moviemk.exe” if its not there then you will need to download it at

http://www.microsoft.com
If you get sick of trying to find it you could make a short cut to your desktop or putting the icon on your quick Launch bar (how to Display the Quick Launch Bar)
http://www.microsoft.com/quicklaunch

Basic System requirements:

Personal or multimedia computer with a 1.5 gigahertz Processor

Operating System:
you will need Service Pack 2 for
Windows XP Home Edition
Windows XP Professional
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition

Memory or (RAM)
256 megabytes or higher of RAM

Hard disk (IDE or SCSI)
At least
2.0 GB of available hard-disk space or higher

Display (your video card)
•XGA (1024×768) or higher resolution monitor
•256-color video card
•3-D graphics acceleration
•DirectX 9 or later graphics support
•Video adapter must be compatible with Windows XP

Audio (sound card most are built into motherboard)
Windows XP-compatible sound card and speakers or headphones

Mouse (The little thing that collects dust, and can be cordless)
Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device ( A Mouse, no it don’t eat cheese)

Internet connection:

may be required for some updates, you will need this for
uploading any video clips or movies you make.

Now the system that i use is a lot faster than those specs and its still a bit
slow for for me, i need to update, especially when i have other programs running like Photo shop, FireFox etc.

My system Specs and what i use:
Personal or multimedia computer with a 2.80 gigahertz Intel Celeron

Operating System:
Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2 (build 2600)

Memory or (RAM)
1024 Megabytes Installed Memory
Slot ‘A0′ has 512 MB
Slot ‘A1′ has 512 MB

Hard disk (IDE or SCSI)
490.05 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
250.39 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space
DVD DUAL GO-W1616B [CD-ROM drive-writer]

Display (your video card)
NVIDIA GeForce 6200 256 MB [Display adapter]{Video Card}
Delta 17.7 [Monitor] (17.7″vis, January 2000)

Audio (sound card most are built into motherboard)
Windows XP-compatible sound card and speakers or headphones

Main Circuit Board:
Board: P4M266A-8235
Bus Clock: 133 megahertz
BIOS: Award Software International, Inc. F4 09/17/2004

Mouse:
Microsoft USB Wheel Mouse Optical

After downloading movie maker and installing it you might want to get used to the layout and feel of it, there is a lot of menus and such but don’t worry you will get the hang of it if i can, i dropped out of school when i was 14 years old, so if i can use it, then just about anybody can

Movie and video formats i will be doing a article about this very soon.

May 2nd, 2009 by admin

There’s a lot of videos i see without sound or a jingle, it is boring watching
something without sound you can add sound or music very easy to videos using movie maker 2, here is one way i add music to a video,  i will also show you how to mute the audio on the video as well.

Start by importing a video you would like to edit, i will choice the car video i want to delete my voice and put some music on it.

First you will need to import some audio or music that you like or have made.

Then we will need to import the music track into the work area.

The next thing we need to do is left mouse click on the music file, hold and drag it down into the Audio time line which is under the video time line,

I’m guessing that you would have put the video in there before you add the audio, now drag the music file so that it matches the video file so you don’t end up with just music playing after the video is ended, you can do this by left mouse clicking the end of the audio file and dragging it to the left position at the end of the video.

The next thing we need to do is mute the original video so you don’t have mixed audio, me talking over the music lol, you can do this by making sure the video clip is selected, then click on Clip/Audio/Mute which is located in the menu bar up the top.

Zoom the time line out so you can see the whole video, this setting is a user based thing some people like to have it zoomed out some don’t.

So now you have added some music to your video now all you need to do is save it and upload it to YouTube or your favorite video sharing site.

Here’s what my video turned out like, take a looksie

April 30th, 2009 by admin

In this post i will show you a video that i have done, but this video is unedited so i will need to cut out the parts that are no good and reduce the size of the video.
Thus making it smaller and much more quickly upload to YouTube or your favorite video sharing website.
Take a look at the video you will see many errors and even some Aussie Slang, then i will show you how i edit it.

Now as you can see there is a few things in that video that need to be cut out.
Below shows you how i have done that in a step by step easy guide using windows movie maker 2.
First thing you will need to do is boot up Movie Maker 2, then you need to select import video.

Then click on the down arrow in the Look in: folder (up the top) this will open up a directory tree of your Hard Drives, find your video, mine is saved in the c:/Videos     folder as i had created this folder earlyier before.

Now click on the import button, then you should see the clip on the time line area.

Now drag that clip or clips onto the video time line like this see pic, you can select multiple clips by holding down the Ctrl button.

You can start the edit process.
play the video to see what it looks like then you will be able to choice what you like and not.
Click on the Zoom button to stretch the video time line this helps as it will be easy to select a clip zone and cut it.

When you find the part you want to split (cut) you will need to have the video in the sample viewer, to be able to do this and have the video time line selected, once you find the spot click on the Clip then Split

after doing that play the video to see if you like it, and do the same thing again (split it) just b4 you want the video to resume onto a good part, then you should see a separate tiny clip that you can just delete from the time line, right mouse click on the part you don’t want and delete.

After you have cut out all the parts you don’t want its time to save your video,

click on File, then Save as movie, i choice My computer

as i will upload it later and keep the video on my hard drive if i ever need it again some day, give the file a name for your video so you will know where it is and where to find it, i also leave it as Best quality for playback

on my computer (recommended) i will talk about other formats and that in future posts, it may take a little while to save the video depending on your system, mine is slow.
Now let take a look at the final video and see what it looks like, I’m not the best at this lol i am a complete novice hehe.

April 29th, 2009 by admin

Watermarking your videos means putting your name, domain or logo onto your video, this helps a lot from people stealing your videos, protection, it also lets other people know about your site (more traffic to your website)

Many People share there videos over the Internet, there are people which hijack your videos and copy and re-distribute your work. In some cases such copying is illegal, so a watermark is good to stop them. Finding the thieves is very hard. You can protect your video with a professionally looking custom logo or watermark, in windows movie maker there is already a set list of watermarks, but if you want something nice like your domain logo.

To edit these files we need to go to the folder,
C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared\AddonTFX
this is where the logos and watermarks are keep ed, you should see something like this.

1. Make a logo and save it as logo.png in photo shop, here is one of my logo`s, notice it has a transparent background.

2. Copy the logo.png file into,

C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared\AddOnTFX\logo.png

3. Copy this .xml code into your .xml file, so you will need to make a file from .txt and change the file name to logo.xml then put the code into the logo.xml file below.

C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared\AddOnTFX\logo.xml

<TransitionsAndEffects Version=”1.0″>
<Titles>
<TitleDLL guid=”{353359C1-39E1-491b-9951-464FD8AB071C}”>
<Title name=”@logo.png” iconid=”13″
comment=”http://www.movielcd.com”>
<Param name=”InternalName” value=”TitleMultiTitles”/>
<Param name=”Description” value=”Puts logo.png in top right corner”/>
<Param name=”LogoBitmapFilename” value=”AddOnTFX\logo.png”/>
<Param name=”LogoRect” value=”0.6 0.0 0.4 0.1″/>
<Paragraph>
<Param name=”IsOneLine” value=”true”/>
<Param name=”BoundingRect” value=”0.3 0.075 0.8 0.15″/>
<Param name=”MaxCharacterCount” value=”32″/>
</Paragraph>
<Paragraph>
<Param name=”IsOneLine” value=”true”/>
<Param name=”BoundingRect” value=”0.5 0.90 0.8 1.0″/>
<Param name=”MaxCharacterCount” value=”32″/>
</Paragraph>
</Title>
</TitleDLL>
</Titles>
</TransitionsAndEffects>

3. Now start Movie Maker.

4. Add a title to the title overlay track of your project timeline using your customised Logo title, first click make titles and credits, then click title at the beginning just put a space as the text, then click change the title animation, then scroll down to select the @logo, then click done, add this title to movie.

5. Extend the title over the whole length of your movie.

6. Watch the video i will show you how

You can adjust the position of the logo by modifying the LogoRect <Param name=”LogoRect” value=”0.8 0.8 0.2 0.2″/>
Here 0.8 0.8 is the X,Y relative coordinates of the top left of the logo where 0 0 is the top left and 1 1 is the bottom right.
0.2 0.2 is the length in the X and Y direction.

This video shows you how to put the logo watermark in the video in close up view, when i click on “title at the beginning”
just put a space here, as in the video its hard to see that.

April 28th, 2009 by admin

In this next part i will show you how to make a movie from photos its very easy once you know how and they look really cool, you can even automate the process if you like, you can arrange the photos to which ever way you like.

I will show you how i make a movie with some puppy photos i have, adding music and tittles.
OK the first thing to do is make a directory on you hard drive with the photos you want to use, i have mine set to c:\

you can delete this folder later on if you don’t need it but you might want to make more movie later on.

Next step is to find the photos you want to use, i put them in order in the folder so when you import them into movie maker you don’t need to arrange them, then copy and paste them into our folder called c:\
Oh and you will need some nice music this is optional but people like that, you can get heaps of free music just do a google search for free music, this will stop any copyright issues when you upload the movie, once you have found a mp3 save it into the same folder just so you know where it is.

After you have done that we start movie maker, then click on Import Pictures from the Menu here’s a movie i made that might help.

April 27th, 2009 by admin

There are many ways you can make a movie weather it be recording a movie from a video camera, screen capture, or making a movie from your favorite photos and putting in some nice music.

OK the first and most common way form is from a video camera, when we upload the movie to the computer where is it and why are the files so large ?

Well normally when you connect your video camera via the USB cable the camera will act like a Hard Drive (Memory Stick) which you should be able to find under folders mine looks like this Sony Memory Stick (G) now you can click on this and browse its contents and select what you want, you can just copy and paste them into the folder we made earlier the “Unfinished” one. I made a short video of how to do this and what it looks like see below.

OK now we have our movie file but its rather large but don’t worry too much about that as when we edit the file will get smaller as for the movie file will upload faster.

OK at the moment we have a unedited movie, in the next video i will show you how to edit a puppy video i made

April 27th, 2009 by admin

When you upload videos to YouTube you need to use keywords and the proper tags other wise its really hard for people to find your video, if you don’t want to share your video to the world this is OK, but if you want many views and even if you have a video which you want to market maybe ?

A Lot of people i chat to don’t know what i mean, when i tell them to use keywords so i thought i would write a small page about them, so here goe`s 90% of websites use Titles, Keywords and Tags without them nobody would find them, whats all this mean you ask well lets have a look at a common websites source code to show you what i mean
The website i am showing you here is www.runescape.com

Now the title is in green, the description is in pink and the keywords are in yellow, now the same goe`s for each video you upload lets take a look at a video on YouTube and its keywords etc.

Another great way to find good keywords is to use the Google Keyword Tool

this will help you find the keywords you might need for your videos or website it also shows you the amount of searches people make on each keyword.

April 27th, 2009 by admin

Ok the first thing i will talk about is very simple, i just want to make sure you know what i am talking about when i chat about folders and files, i allways use Windows Explorer to make folders and edit stuff, you can find.

Windows Explorer in Start/All Programs/Accessories/Windows Exploreror or you can just type in explorer and run it from Start/Run

When it loads up you will see many folders and files, now watch the video to see how i make folders which can make life very easy as many people are not sure or don`t even know where files go on a computer.

April 27th, 2009 by admin

Ok there is many programs that can capture games, i use 2 of them and find they are ok for the stuff i do, Hypercam and Fraps, Hypercam is what i will talk about in this artical.

I find that Hypercam is really good recording windowed games it does have many settings and i will tell you the settings that i use, which i find are suitable
I find these settings are very good with no lag or jerky mouse stuff and 5 mins of game time is only around 30mb compared to Fraps which would be about 500mb.

Here are the settings i use below.

With recording sound you have to make sure that you enable this in volume control, heres a video to show you what i mean
How To Record Sound In Hypercam and Camtasia Studio 5

See how i have Record Cursor selected, in some games you need this as the cursor will not show up, this only applies if the game has custom cursors.