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In computer news this week 11/28/2007

With those family holidays coming up, you need to make some good movies ... Part 3

Here’s some more tips from a Pro – PapaJohn, whose book Microsoft Windows Movie Maker 2 – Do Amazing Things – is published by Microsoft press and is available on Amazon and other bookseller websites.

PapaJohn:

3. The common mistakes people make when using MM, over-done effects, etc.

It's not a slide-show making software... it's for movies. Slide shows are just still pictures and tend to have different neat transitions between each pair of pictures. A high quality movie is about 1/3 of a megapixel, so your 5 megapixel still pix won't look good anyway. Get and use slide-show software such as Photo Story 3 if you want to make videos from only still pictures. It'll be easier and better.

(Frank personal note) I do use Moviemaker for slideshows. Everything I shoot with my camera is for the web with moviemaker in mind. So even though I have a 6 Megapixel Camera, I have the default resolution set down to 1 Megapixel, which seems to work fine in Moviemaker.. For movies, I have my camera set to 640x480 Resolution, which is the highest it can shoot.

PapaJohn:

Movie Maker is an entry level video editing tool and making too complex a project can result in you needing more computer memory than you have in order to save it to a movie file.

Unfortunately, there's no meter in Movie Maker that tells you when your project is getting too complex. It'll only be when you try to save it and you can't that you'll learn about the issue. It's best to keep your projects to less than about 15 minutes long.

Movie Maker is only one part of the overall process; somewhere between you getting images and sound and then uploading the final movie or burning it to a disc. Before investing lots of time in a special project, try a small easy one, going all the way from the beginning to the end... a pilot project that just checks your overall process to be sure each step will work and you'll be pleased with the result.

4. Camera specs to buy; features, memory, etc.

The mini-DV camcorders with the tapes, when connected to the computer with a firewire or iLink cable are the ones that are easiest to work with when editing. The DV-AVI files (Windows) or DV files (Macs) on the computer are the same data files as on the tape.

Camcorders that record on DVDs, little internal hard drives, or memory sticks use formats that are meant for easy turn-around viewing, but are often difficult to move into editing software such as Movie Maker.

( Frank personal note) My Samsung Digimax I6 camera is similar to many digital cameras; it has a USB cable to connect to my computer, and it shows up in windows as just another storage device. I will go out and shoot pictures and movies, and then upload them to my computer and then import them into Moviemaker. Like many digital cameras you can buy today, the default picture type is .jpg which is fine, and the default moviefile type is .avi, which is fine too for working with moviemaker.

Next week on Raw Bytes – more tips from Papa John, and we’ll start going though how to actually use Movie Maker.

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