|
Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Wednesday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week 11/14
/2007 With those family holidays coming up, you need to make some good movies
... When I
returned from my Mississippi research trip last Summer, I had hundreds of
photographs I had taken, and dozens of interviews and movies I had shot with my new
digital camera... I knew I
needed a good video editing program and did a google search and found several
freeware or shareware movie editors, and tried them out, but none were
satisfactory. Then I
recalled reading something about the Movie maker program that’s a
standard part of windows XP and Vista. It was right there on my desktop,
and I started reading through the help, which is actually pretty good, I
found the online Microsoft
moviemaker forum which is monitored both by other users, and Microsoft
professionals, of which there are many, some as good or better than the
online Microsoft help. So in
reading all this information, I was able to understand that Windows moviemaker
had the capability of
editing videos, to take
out the gaps and pauses, titling capability so I could add titles,
explanation screens, credits, etc., scene transition capability so that you
can do fancy fadeouts or wipes or page turns between scenes, special video
effects like shooting in that old time sepia color, psychedelic colors,
rotation and other graphics tricks, and sound capability so that you can add
a soundtrack to your movies. In other words, it had the whole enchilada. I started
working with Moviemaker, and found it pretty intuitive, and was soon editing
the videos I had shot exactly to the frame where I wanted to cut them, and
then I could add a fancy transition to the next scene. Another great capability is the
ability to take a screen shot of any part of your video, and then save that
as a new picture to be used somewhere.
You open
up moviemaker, and then you start importing what you want, the raw video you
shot, pictures you want, and mp3 files you might want to use in the sound
track. Then you start editing and splicing, playing back what you’ve
done so far to see how it looks, and then continue editing until you’ve
got it right. Then you save it as a Movie project in the program, then you
save it to your computer as a .wmv file (Windows movie file), and then upload
it to your website. Then the whole world is watching; theoretically of
course, but at least your friends and family members you want to share your
movie with. Movie
maker is tremendously forgiving. If you shoot a movie in low light, it has
the capability of brightening your original movie to an acceptable level. The
same on audio, if your original audio was too low, you can boost the audio to
fix the problem. I’ve
put an example of a movie I’ve shot using everything I’ve talked
about on my Raw Bytes website along with this transcript. I’m
really happy with moviemaker for making movies, and next week we’ll talk
about more of the Windows Movie Maker features you have waiting for you to
use, right there on your own computer. |
|
|
For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2007 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa 99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
|