What's New?
This page is about the more significant recent changes to the site, comments about what I'm currently working on that will effect it in the future, and anything else that might be of interest to users of Windows Movie Maker, Photo Story and Expression Media. The info is for a rolling one year period.
PapaJohn's Products and Services
Although this site is in English and I live in the Kalamazoo, Michigan (USA) area... almost half of the visitors are from other countries.
Here are some of the statistics that help me understand who visits this website... as of 3/10/10 the previous 12 months show:
What's New and Where's the Website Going?
PapaJohn's blog... where I screen comments to control SPAM.
July 31, 2010 - I published the first draft of the new article about Working with Text in Windows Live Movie Maker (WLMM).
July 27, 2010 - To followup the recent article about working with audio in WLMM I started one about text. Here's a little video trailer for the demo to illustrate it...
There's much to like about the text features of WLMM.
July 14, 2010 - The tutorial I referred to on July 8th ended up being an article about Working with Audio in WLMM
July 8, 2010 - I'm learning more about WLMM and how best to use it. Today I started a tutorial about making a project starting with audio/music...
You need to have at least one picture or video clip in the project before you can add audio, so I started with a single still picture with a 5 second default duration.
I was surprised to find I could then add a full album of MP3 files to the project... 17 tunes with an overall playing time of over an hour. Although the project was packed with music, I could only see and hear the first 5 seconds of the first tune. My learning experience started there, how to best edit the music in a project that I couldn't see or hear.
That's the kind of experiential learning I enjoy. I'll publish the tutorial in a few days.
July 1, 2010 - This is my first video made fully with Windows Live apps... from capture thru publishing
June 15, 2010 - after my first week using dueling laptops, one older low end Toshiba Satellite with 32-bit Windows 7 Ultimate (upgraded from Vista) and the other a new HP 64-bit laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium.... here's what I see.....
I haven't developed the Windows 7 section of the website much.... I've now explored it enough to work on it. Lots of things work on it and some don't. WLMM is developing further but anyone beyond a starter user will want to use other video editing apps. And doing video work still requires walking through codec hell.
June 9, 2010
I received my Father's Day gift yesterday... a new 64 bit HP Pavilion dv6-2150us running Windows 7 Home Premium. It came preloaded with the Windows Live suite but notably without Windows Live Movie Maker.
June 5, 2010
Windows Live Movie Maker (WLMM) doesn't have as many features as MM2.1 in XP or MM6 in Vista, but what it has under the hood is starting to shine. It's like the 'little engine that could'.
Earlier today I published this blog article on Bright Hub about how well it publishes complex movie projects
Then I used it to convert a couple MPEG2 files of 1 and 2 hours in duration... odd ball sized files that most of my players had difficulty viewing properly. WLMM imported and previewed them fine, and saved to high quality wmv files in half the time it took for my all purpose Xilisoft converter, and the output file looked better.
It can handle more source file types and publish more complex projects than classic versions of Movie Maker.... yes, the editing features included are not yet on a par with other versions, but they might get there in future revisions. Don't sell it short.
June 2, 2010
The next version of Windows Live Movie Maker was announced.... features include
May 18, 2010
I used GSpot to make lists of the 519 codecs installed on my main movie-making system, an XP laptop... and the 560 on my Windows 7 desktop running 5 versions of Movie Maker.
I sorted them by name and put the lists side by side in an Excel spreadsheet to study the differences. If you want to compare it to yours, here's a copy.... List of PapaJohn's Codecs
May 8, 2010
I wrote a new article about which versions of project files can be opened by other versions of Movie Maker. Here's the link.... Movie Maker Project Files
May 4, 2010
Microsoft is phasing out newsgroups to consolidate online support in their growing Microsoft Answers and Windows Live forums.
April 25, 2010
Over the years most of the names of my 500+ website pages have remained the same while Movie Maker has moved from MM2 to MM6 and Windows Live Movie Maker.
I just started renaming my files, something that will break many URL links around the world.
April 21, 2010
I studied the video and audio differences among DV-AVI and WMV files produced by the 5 versions of Movie Maker running on my Windows 7 systems.
All were good except for the broken audio of the DV-AVI file made by MM2.6 and the unacceptably low volume of the WMV file from WLMM. Click this image to read the article.
April 16, 2010
'What Frames Do You See?' has always been one of my favorite topics... here's my first article about it for Windows Live Movie Maker running on Windows 7.
The bottom line.... yes you see each frame of a DV-AVI source file, but not of a WMV.
April 9, 2010
Here's a mix of family pix with some animated backgrounds from givemefreeart.
April 8, 2010
Logan Kenesis of GiveMeFreeArt.com provides high quality art work... free to use in your movie projects.
Most of the animated backgrounds are in .mov format, the kind that Movie Maker doesn't usually work with. But they are worth converting as you can see in this sample video that uses two of them in an MM2.1 project.
March 28, 2010
Sony's Vegas Movie Studio 8 works well on XP and Windows 7. There's much to like about it as you consider options to classic versions of Movie Maker.
March 26, 2010
Digital images are made from lots of little pixels... and videos from a series of pictures. With the free tools you have or can download, there's infinite variety in what you can do to spice up your home-made movies.
In this sample I took one of my standard URL overlays and animated it.
March 23, 2010
The free version of Pinnacle's VideoSpin v2 runs well on my Windows 7 laptop. Here's my first test project.
It has a classic timeline, great text features, and audio 'rubber-band' volume controls like on high-end video editing apps.
March 18, 2010
In this Most Unusual Movie Maker Tech Support Session we resolved the issue with a project hanging/freezing when trying to publish by replacing the wmv source files with Divx encoded AVI files.
March 14, 2010
Someone asked today about using graphical visualizations in movie projects. It was a good time to try the screen capture feature of Expression Encoder 3. Here's the results of my first checks.
March 9, 2010
There are lots of times when using my camcorder I'm torn between staying focused on the audio or following the visual when it moves to a different place.
My new gadget will resolve it by recording the sounds while I'm free to capture the visual and marry them during the movie editing.
March 6, 2010
I added the full Microsoft Expression 3 Studio to my XP system and the free version of Expression Encoder 3 to Windows 7. Great stuff!!!
March 4, 2010
Here's a new video of our local Civil War Reenactment in 2008.
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February 27, 2010
For Windows 7 users who couldn't download, install or use Photo Story 3... it's back.
Microsoft tweaked the compatibility check that was blocking it. I installed it on both 32 and 64 bit Windows 7 systems. If you haven't been able to use it, try again.
February 21, 2010
There's lots of things I like about Windows 7 but the new Windows Live Movie Maker (WLMM) isn't one of them. Here's a small test video I made using MM2.1 on Windows 7... using source files on networked external drives attached to my main Windows XP computer.
My goal is to continue using classic versions of Movie Maker that I know best and satisfy my movie making needs.
I'm in the middle of a making a new website page with detailed step-by-step instructions about how to setup your networked XP and Windows 7 computers to do movie projects like this little test clip. Here's the link:
Bridging the Movie Maker gap between XP and Windows 7... using MM2.1
February 16, 2010
This video mixes scans of my old 35mm slides with other source files.
February 13, 2010
Most of my studying Windows 7 had to do with setting up Movie Maker, starting from scratch and ending up with 5 versions from MM1 to the newest WLMM. Windows 7 has lots of good features and it's time to start exploring the making of movie projects, starting with how to manage a large collection of source files.
Click this new 'How To' button to see a 5 minute video showing how I use my existing collections, hundreds of hours of video clips and thousands of music and graphics files, reaching them across my home network.
February 11, 2010
My slide scanning is now routine on one hand and extremely complex on another. Getting great pix for Facebook albums is quick and easy...
At the other end of the spectrum is the high quality scan for large prints at 20x30 inches. Chuck Bentley and I are testing to see how my new scanner compares to the best lab he could find in the country. We can do lots of easy post-processing tweaks, so the key comparison points are image resolution and the effectiveness of dust removal.
Chuck wasn't happy with the dust removal on about 35 of the 175 slides he sent away to the lab. Nor was he pleased with my scans of the 35.
My highest rez scans are at 9,600 dpi, resulting in images with pixel dimensions of 12,832 by 8,608 (that's 110 megapixels). Chuck's computer can't handle that size, so I give him quarter-sized JPG files slightly larger than 27 megapixels.
9,600 dpi is the software enhanced resolution. The highest optical resolution of the CanonScan 8800F is 4,800 dpi. Images at that quality are 6,416 by 4,304 pixels in tif, bmp or jpg format.
Back to scanning and studying.
February 5, 2010
I'm checking my 5 versions of Movie Maker on Windows 7 to see which ones can produce HD720 sized WMV files acceptable to FlipShare's v5.0 software. So far MM.1, MM2.6 and WLMM can do it.
February 2, 2010
January viewing stats of my website pages and articles at Bright Hub show strong interests in using Movie Maker on Windows 7... and getting video files from Flip cameras to Movie Maker.
January 26, 2010
Starting with Vista's MM6, and on into WLMM, you could lower the volume of a video clip but not raise it.
One user found that, by adding a background music clip and using the video/audio mix slider of WLMM to minimize the volume of the music, the video's audio increased, and it stayed that way after he removed the background music clip from the project.
January 23, 2010
Since Christmas I've been doing lots of 35mm slide scanning, sharing the pictures on Facebook. Tucked away in boxes in closets, the slides haven't been seen in decades, so it's like refreshing faint memories or finding long lost ones. I know a number of people who are using today's technology to get their slides back in the open.
I'm working on a new page of the site about the scanning process.
January 13, 2010 - expanded the Import Movie Source FIles > Video > Recorded TV page to include the new WTV file type. Windows 7 includes a feature to easily convert a WTV file to a DVR-MS.
January 4, 2010
I just published the Anatomy of a Windows Live Movie Maker Project File... it's text based and easily tweaked with Notepad.
January 1, 2010 - Happy New Year!!
At the end of a year or decade, it's traditional to relect on the past, assess the present, and take steps to go down the next paths into the often foggy future.
The decade was mostly about classic versions of Movie Maker. I'm now at the crossroads of those versions and the Windows Live Movie Maker future.
The steps to the future are most important. For a starter here's the link to my new PapaJohn's BrightHub Hubfolio, about Making Movies with Windows 7. What's a Hubfolio? Click it and find out.
December 30, 2009
I'm changing my position about installing Photo Story 3 in Windows 7. Based on reports from other users, it's now a bit more positive... "it works on some and not others". Try it and let me know if it works for you.
December 28, 2009
We're playing with new digital gadgets... a couple of our Christmas gifts were:
My first high quality slide/film scanner. I started with a few slides from 1971... making 25 megapixel sized digital pictures which are instant family hits on Facebook.
I'm supporting Bernadette's cross-over gift, an iPod Touch, by converting recorded webinars from Camtasia produced wmv files to MP4 files which sync to the iPod Touch. It's our first gadget with an apple flavor.
December 20, 2009
With today's release of Mediashare 4.5, neptune.com will transition to a new domain mediashare.com. They are a long time online host for users of Movie Maker.
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December 19, 2009
Unwanted SPAM in comments to my Windows Live blogs is already enough to not allow comments. Sorry to those who have good comments to contribute. Catch me in other places like forums and BrightHub.
December 18, 2009
December 13, 2009
My first pass checking video editing apps on our new Windows 7 64-bit system shows they work fine, including MM1, MM2.1, MM2.6, MM6, WLMM, VirtualDub, and avisynth.
December 10, 2009
We have our first 64 bit system, an HP desktop running Windows 7 Home Premium. One of the first things I learned was vimeo can't be viewed with the default 64-bit Internet Explorer... because it needs a 64-bit Flash player. Adobe is working on a 64-bit version but it's not out yet.
The work-around is to open the 32-bit version of IE and use it to for sites that play Flash videos... about all of them I know of. I'm looking forward to learning about how the various versions of Movie Maker run on it.
December 7, 2009
As Windows 7 and Windows Live Essentials add some great new tools and features, they also increase the complexity of working with video files. Codec issues are not gone.
It's been a while since I added another codec to my list of problem ones (on the Problem Solving > Software Modules page)... but I just added one.
Windows Live Photo Gallery crashed last night on my XP system. The event viewer pointed to emp4demux.ax - Elecard MP4 Demultiplexer v1.3.2.50803 - in one of my Roxio folders. Restarting Photo Gallery provided a message about the issue happening when trying to check an MP4 file in my library. Renaming the .ax file extension to .ax-removed resolved the conflict.
December 1, 2009
As users move to Windows 7, which Photo Story 3 won't run on, I've been exploring other options for making slideshows. CyberLink's PowerDirector 8 is an app I've spent the last month checking out... it's a keeper.
Here's an album on vimeo showing its 8 styles.
Here's a link to PowerDirector 8.
November 29, 2009
For many users the enjoyment of using Movie Maker comes from making custom effects, transitions, titles and using them in new creative ways. Microsoft provides 'hooks' into the app to let the user community use their new creations.
The first custom effect for Windows Live Movie Maker was made by monkman828, a red effect. He provided the .wlmx code in this forum thread . It'll be followed by a new library of user developed custom items.
November 19, 2009
I can now get analog video into Windows 7 via a USB port. Here's my setup:
I'm sure there are and will be many ways to do it. This is the first one that worked for me independent of a mini-DV connected by firewire and doing 'pass-thru'.
The DV from the camcorder is widescreen 16:9 720x480 pixels, but the MPEG-2 file is standard 4:3 720x480 pixels... that's the next hurdle.
November 10, 2009
I received an email today from someone who purchased the Digital Image Suite 2006 from Amazon and installed it on his Windows 7 system, where it runs fine... including the Photo Story 3.1 version bundled in it.
November 1, 2009
As Photo Story 3 doesn't install on Windows 7, I'm exploring other slide-show making options. Here's an album of test files made with CyberLink's Power Director and Power Producer.
October 27, 2009
Photo Story 3 doesn't install on Windows 7 but Photo Story 3.1, the version included in the Microsoft Digital Image 2006 suite, installs and works fine.
Microsoft no longer supports the Digital Image Suite 2006, and the compatibility options in Windows 7 are too difficult for the average user of Photo Story 3. I consider Vista the end of the road for Photo Story 3. Plan to use other slide show software when you move to Windows 7.
October 26, 2009
Today I put copies of MM1, MM2.1, MM2.6, and MM6 on a thumb drive and plugged it into my Windows 7 laptop for some testing. Here's a link to the first video production, one made with MM6.
October 22, 2009
Today is the official Windows 7 release date. It's time to pack my things for the party at Barnes & Noble tonight.
Here's a copy of my speaking notes and handout... click the image to read or print it.
October 19, 2009
My welcome party for Windows 7 on Thursday will be dampened a bit by having to say farewell to Photo Story 3.
I activated my Windows 7 laptop last night, and tried the download/install of PS3 again. This time it let me download it, but with the same end result, a message saying 'Photo Story 3 for Windows cannot be installed on this version of Windows...".
October 15, 2009
Windows Live Movie Maker saved my day!!!
Chuck Bentley premiered his latest and possibly longest (3 hours with an intermission between two parts), movie 'Kalamazoo Stories' on Sunday evening. For the big screen showing, he connected his tape deck to the theater's projection system. His path to getting it online was to hand me 3 mini-DV tapes.
I used the Windows 7 import wizard to copy the tapes from my mini-DV camcorder to DV-AVI files. While there I used MM2.1 to combine the files from the 3 tapes into two larger DV-AVI files for parts 1 and 2.
I then used MM2.1 to save the DV-AVI files to custom sized WMV files for online viewing, but ran into a significant video/audio sync issue.
This image shows the issue. Using the DV-AVI files as sources I first saved the movies to WMV files with MM2.1 in Windows 7, using one of my custom profiles when heading to online video hosts. You can see the obvious mis-match at about an hour into the first part.
The files start off with audio aligned and drift apart over time. At the one hour point shown here the mis-match is about 3/4 of a second.
I tried it with MM2.1 on my XP system and it was the same, so it wasn't a Windows 7 issue.
I then moved things to my Windows 7 laptop and saved it with Windows Live Movie Maker (WLMM), using the same custom profile. That resolved it... this image shows the audio patterns of the new WMV file over an hour into the movie, compared to the same point in the original DV-AVI file. Syncing remains perfect throughout.
Click the image to view the first act on Vimeo. I'll be adding more info about this experience in the diary of the Windows 7 laptop.
October 13, 2009
The diary of my Toshiba laptop being upgraded from a Home Basic computer to Windows 7 Ultimate moved from my blog to this website page
October 13, 2009
to FRAPS users... it installs and runs fine on Windows 7, and the AVI files compressed with the FRAPS video codec can be edited in Windows Live Movie Maker.
October 9, 2009 - click the Toshiba laptop to read the ongoing diary of its upgrade from Vista Home Basic to Windows 7 Ultimate...
...and using it to prepare for and play with at an upcoming Windows 7 party.
October 9, 2009
Avid/Pinnacle responded to my question about the Dazzle 80 not capturing analog video on my Windows 7 system. They are not planning to develop a new driver for it and suggested I get a Dazzle 100. My quest for analog capture devices via USB continues.
My Windows 7 party package arrived. I'm taking a big leap,'upgrading' my only Vista system, a low-end Toshiba Satellite laptop with Vista Home Basic to Windows 7 Ultimate.
In the past I always reformatted the hard drive as I installed a new operating system. This time I'm checking the 'upgrade' route first, a much longer setup that will let me roll the system back to Vista if it doesn't work well enough.
Up front the compatibility check said things would be OK with the exceptions of iTunes, Skype and upgrading the ATI Catalyst Installation Manager. It's 3 hours into it with no projected time to completion.
If the upgraded system runs fine and I decide not to have it revert to Vista, I'll probably do the installation again, reformatting the hard drive first.
I'll start a blog entry with more specifics...
October 7, 2009
Our daughter Joanne married Jeff on Saturday, merging families in an extremely small, private and informal affair. Of course I was the video guy.
Here's my first draft of the opening clip of a wedding video... on Facebook.
It's my first test of VirtualDub making a video from an Avisynth script running on Windows 7. I made it HD720 sized and added the music in MM2.1 in XP, where I then saved it using my custom profile for HD720 sized movies heading to YouTube (it works for Facebook and vimeo too).
Avisynth made it to my Windows 7 toolbox.
October 4, 2009
More exploring Windows 7
October 1, 2009
Just in!!
"Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2009 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Digital Media Experience technical communities during the past year."
It's my 8th MVP award, spanning the years of Movie Maker 1, 2.0, 2.1, 6.0, 2.6 and Windows Live Movie Maker.
September 24, 2009
Microsoft email Support for Windows Live Movie Maker
September 22, 2009
Where's the best place to ask a question or make a comment about making movies? It's where your item is read and answered by caring and knowledgeable people. There isn't any 'best place'.
I posted links to the newest place, Microsoft Answers, in my entry of 9/12/09. It's good for Windows Live Movie Maker (WLMM) running under Vista... but not so for WLMM on XP or Windows 7.
Newsgroups are still in use but with a dated interface and dwindling attendance... and there isn't one for Windows 7.
Some MVP and privately run forums exist... use any of them but don't expect anyone from Microsoft to read or respond.
The Online branch of my website has links to available newsgroups forums, blogs and other online resources. And, at the end of the day, if you havn't resolved your issue and want to pop me an email, you're always welcome. I respond to all of them in my in-box about 2 am Eastern time... I may or may not know the answer, and for now I may not even know where to refer you to for more help.
September 15, 2009
I finished another round of checking Windows Live Movie Maker (WLMM) and adding info to pages in the website's Windows Live > Movie Maker (WLMM) branch... my latest blog entry is about how I see it fitting into my usual movie making process.
The 3 images are links...
As the internet grows, so does the challenge of finding a place to ask a question and get a good answer. I'm online all day long, visiting lots of places and responding to posts.
I join new places and ignore older ones as they die from inactivity or spammers...
My newest place is the Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, and FrameIt section of Microsoft Answers, where real Microsoft people sometimes provide answers.
I have two user profiles, one to ask questions and the other to answer.
Newsgroups are being used less and forums more. Blogs, tweets, social places like Facebook, comments on videos at YouTube and vimeo are some of the other places I respond to questions and comments.
September 8, 2009
It's often the little things in the editing room that make the difference between a professional and amateur production.
If you want to fade your custom image overlays in and out smoothly over time rather than having them go abruptly on and off, here's a new 'How To'.
'How To'... Fade an overlay image in and out from PapaJohn on Vimeo.
September 4, 2009
The buzz about Windows® 7 is positive. The Barnes & Noble I go to every night already carries 3 books about Windows® 7, obviously written from early beta versions. A quick look at the index of one shows no Movie Maker, as expected.
I applied to host a...
I'll know by mid-to late September if I'm selected. If so, I'll hit Barnes & Noble up to host it there so attendees can buy their own drinks, and B&N can sell their books... and clean-up.
September 2, 2009 - things change
My Outlook Express stopped receiving hotmail yesterday... until I tweaked it with the new settings.
Blogging with today's newer software is easier and better, so I'm back to trying it again after a number of false starts with earlier software. The Windows Live blogging interface is better than I expected so I'm off and running, putting things there that I don't do here... such as my latest blog post about my holding the wrong end of my monopod on yesterday's walk.
If you noticed the 'PapaJohn at Windows Answers' link that was on this page for a couple weeks.... it's gone (my link, not 'Windows Answers'). I keep trying different things and so does Microsoft. We're not too sure what each other is going to do next but we cross paths at times. I've enjoyed being an MVP for many years now.
Frank Delaney wrote yesterday to tell me he's recycling a couple of our NPR radio sessions (out of Spokane, Washington) about Movie Maker and me ... I informed him that, over the year, classic Movie Maker versions are now evolving into the new Windows Live Movie Maker.
Change is a good thing.
August 29, 2009
Photo Story 3 won't download or install on my Windows 7 system. The download site requires validation of the system to verify it's genuine, and that process won't work until after the official release of Windows 7 on October 22, 2009.
Downloading the installation .msi file on XP and trying to install it on Windows 7 results in a message saying 'PS3 won't work on Windows 7'.
Looks like I'll be sitting someplace between 'activated' and 'validated' for a couple months. I used my Windows 7 product key to activate but validation won't work until after Oct 22. Until then I won't know if PS3 will work on Windows 7.
August 28, 2009
I'll routinely refer to versions of Movie Maker before Windows Live Movie Maker (WLMM) as 'classic' versions. WLMM is so different.
As I introduce WLMM and 'classic' versions of Movie Maker to each other in the Windows 7 environment, I'm seeing some interesting things. For example
August 26, 2009
I've explored issues with DV-AVI files made by Movie Maker over the years... including the infamous dropping 27th frame. I've never been able to pinpoint the problem, which lies somewhere between Movie Maker and the Microsoft DV codec.
The issue is still there in Windows 7, at least with MM2.1. Only after 29 generations of DV-AVI file savings does it stop dropping that frame. By then all frames from the 27th to the 56th are gone.
August 23, 2009
Two of today's findings about Windows Live Movie Maker: (1) importing a mini-DV tape to a set of DV-AVI files based on scenes works fine if you do the whole tape, but not if you import a segment of it, such as the 22 minutes I took at the zoo yesterday. (2) The frame shown in the player of Windows Live Photo Gallery doesn't change when you manually move the seek or position indicator under the player window. It does in Photo Gallery on XP and Vista systems, but not in Windows Live Photo Gallery on Vista and Windows 7 systems.
As I wrestle with the future structure of my website, I just added another major branch, this one for Windows Live Movie Maker, which will cover installations on both Vista and Windows 7.
August 20, 2009
I enjoy digging into the details of a new app, finding things no-one tells you about. This is expecially fun with things as significant as the new Windows Live Movie Maker running on Windows 7. If you're interested in the techie details, check the Setup Movie Maker > Windows 7 and Windows Live Movie Maker pages, and the more detailed section about Windows 7.
One interesting finding today is about custom profiles.
On a Vista system Windows Live Movie Maker, in its options to save a movie to your hard drive, includes custom profiles in your MM6 profiles folder. It doesn't check the MM2.6 profiles folder. On Windows 7 the same custom profiles can be used if copied to the Video Profiles folder under Photo Gallery.
August 19, 2009
The final release of Windows Live Movie Maker arrived.
I did a fresh installation of Windows 7 Ultimate, followed by the latest of Windows Live Essentials... nothing else, no added codecs, no conversion utilities.
My first check was to import some test files into Windows Live Movie Maker... MOV, High Def AVCHD, MP4, Motion JPEG, Xvid encoded avi... etc. They imported and previewed fine.
This begins the next era of Windows Movie Maker... for Vista and Windows 7 users... it doesn't run on XP.
August 16, 2009
I rounded up copies of the neat animation clips in the subfolders of Windows DVD Maker on Windows 7 (pretty much the same as those in Vista) and put them in my video library.
Here's a new video on Facebook that uses a few of them.
August 14, 2009
Movica is an open source utility that can combine WMV files, including Photo Story 3 videos... without re-compressing them through other software such as Movie Maker. Here's a link to a sample file made by combining an opening scene of 300 pictures in one story with the feature story of another.
I'll be adding full details and a download link to the Photo Story 3 section.
August 13, 2009
Here's a blog entry by Cheryl White, a Program Manager on the Windows Live Movie Maker team... about Building Windows Live Movie Maker: user research and how we use it.
August 12, 2009
The subfolders of Windows DVD Maker contain lots of neat images and video clips... as I explore the files in Windows 7, I've been thinking about how you can use the files in movie projects, even if you don't make discs. Click this image for a sample made with a few wmv files from the Pets style folder... mixed with my own files.
August 10, 2009 - I'm focusing on fleshing out the new Setup Movie Maker > Windows 7 page. While I wait for the final version of Windows Live Movie Maker, I'm able to capture video clips from my mini-DV camcorder, and music from internet radio, using a copy of MM2.1 from XP, the first thing into my new Windows 7 toolkit.
Maybe it's the second thing in the box... the first being IrfanView to take screen shots. Windows 7 has a neat 'Snipping Tool', which might be better than IrfanView for some things.
August 9, 2009 - OK... I'm finally ready to explore Windows 7 in depth and share what I find. I downloaded the final release to manufacturing and installed the 32 bit Ultimate version a few times to be sure my only problem is consistent. It is.
What problem? Over the 7 months of beta testing Windows 7, its Media Center changed my way of watching live TV... from a television beyond my monitor to front and center on it. Each of the beta releases worked fine and had me looking forward to the long run, able to press the pause button at any time... to eat dinner, take a walk, whatever... and unpause it when I returned.
The final release installed drivers for the TV Tuner, but at system startup says 'Driver blocked due to incompatability'. I'll live with it while I wait for a compatible driver... I don't need a TV Tuner to make movies.
As a home for the new Windows 7 info, I added a Setup Movie Maker > Windows 7 page, and a new section for details about Windows 7.
I'm start by showing you how I tweaked the Windows 7 settings so I can use MM2.1 to capture the audio playing on my computer. I can use the Stereo Mix option of my sound card to rip audio from anything playing on the computer... from iTunes, internet radio, audio CDs, DVD, internet TV, etc... to a high quality wma narration file.
None of the versions of Movie Maker come with Windows 7 so I copied MM2.1 from my XP system. It has lots of features, such as the audio ripping one, that will come in handy.
August 5, 2009 - I'm exploring Movica, an open source utility that can do a number of things with video files, including the joining of multiple wmv files made by Movie Maker or Photo Story 3... without re-encoding... and the extraction of movie segments to new files, again without re-encoding.
If you're a Photo Story user who is constrained by the limit of 300 pictures, this utility will help. I'm thinking of using it as a tool to quickly and easily add leading or trailing clips to existing videos.
Without the re-encoding, the splitting or combining of existing clips takes just a few seconds.
August 1, 2009 - The new 'Critter of the Day' series on Facebook led to a new Style > Nature page on this website.
July 30, 2009 - Shooting critters with my camcorder is a normal part of our daily walks. It hones your video taking skills with scenes not as critical as a bride and groom exchanging vows.
My critter shots usually get filed in my library of clips... with notes about them often off-based as I don't know what the critter is. I started to upload 'critter of the day' clips to Facebook, which supports embedding them into websites like this one.
For titles on these new clips I'm exploring Pixelan's TitleFX PRO Wizard. This critter is the first to use the Pixelan titles.
July 28, 2009 - I finished copying 200 of my mini-DV tapes to external drives attached to my XP laptop, using MM1 collections as the 'table of contents'. See the July 21st entry for details.
Over the last few days I got a chance to exercise that setup as I made a set of music videos from Microsoft's MVP parties in Seattle over the last few years. They're the 9 Fan Videos at the The Official Microsoft MVP Community of Facebook.
Making music videos is a great way to enhance your Movie Maker editing skills. My library on the set of hard drives supported quick and easy access to anything I wanted from my full library of clips.
When shooting a video with music I leave the camcorder running as I move around to get different scenes. The tape ends up with the complete audio but parts of the visual track that are pretty poor (sometimes frequent, sometimes accidental and sometimes deliberate).
I start with 2 copies of the full clip. The first goes as usual to the timeline's video track, and the 2nd to the audio/music track where Movie Maker treats it as an audio file. Using the 2nd copy for the audio lets me carve up the visual, as needed to replace the blotched up poor visual sections with other scenes. It's at this point in the editing session that the full library being instantly available shows its merit.
The 'Country Road' tune had poor parts replaced by rolling hills and deer scenes from our recent trip to Virginia. The 'New York - New York' piece was accented by a couple clips from Times Square. 'Marguerittaville' reminded me of some footage of a neat ghost town outside Phoenix. It just took seconds to go from a quick rememberance of appropriate footage to having it mixed in the project and being ready to move on.
July 21, 2009 - I received an email today from MSN Soapbox... informing me "... MSN will no longer offer Soapbox, the user generated video service within MSN Video, as of August 31, 2009. Beginning on July 29, you will no longer be able to upload videos to Soapbox. People who have uploaded videos to Soapbox will have until August 31, 2009 to download them..."
July 21, 2009 - Another summer is passing and I'm busy adding more video footage to my ever-growing libary of mini-DV tapes. Vacations, family events, festivals, even daily walks... anything that moves is a possible subject, as is anything that sounds good.
With the ever-lower cost of external drives it's economical to copy my 200+ tapes to external drives to have them immediately available for reviewing. The perennial challenge is organizing them to easily and quickly find a clip I'm thinking of.
For detailed info about what's on each tape, my personal database continues to be the most convenient tool. All I have on the tape itself is the tape number... from 001 to 204. They're stored sequentially in boxes in my office, close at hand.
I capture the tapes to external hard drives using MM2.1 in XP, putting each tape in a single 13GB file... I tried using Vista to capture a few tapes as multiple files but gave up and redid the tapes as a single large file per tape.
Once on an external drive, I'll import the file into MM1 collections (yes Movie Maker 1 from the original days of XP). I'll manually split the clip for each tape into the major subjects, usually just a few per tape. I don't want the number of clips to grow so large that it'll bog down MM1 when it opens. I name each clip to start with the tape number and followed by the subject... an example is '151 - Boating at Jeff's'
One nice feature of MM1 is that, as you close it down after making changes to the collections it offers to backup the collection database... and I do. Another is it opens with the view of the collection tree fully collapsed, easy to expand as needed.
I usually do my movie projects in MM2.1, keeping the collection area relatively clean so Movie Maker opens quickly. I'll keep MM1 open at the same time, using it to browse my clip library. Both versions of Movie Maker can be open at the same time, even using the same clip(s).
The properties of a clip in MM1 includes the drive, folder and file name. It acts as my table of contents as I import files into MM2.1. Once in MM2.1 I'll subdivide it to suit my project needs, considering the collection area as if it's a temporary chalkboard. Most of the times I manually split the large clips into selected segments, and then use the auto-split feature of Movie Maker for a segment.
What I've described is my collection of higher level full library info. I also maintain more detailed MM1 collections for selected items, such as a trip to Europe... and my music libary. When working on a project in MM2.1 in XP, or MM2.6 in Vista I can import any of the MM1 collections. The music collection database is the the one imported the most.
MM1 shows each frame of a video as you preview it. When Microsoft introduced special visual effects and transitions in MM2, they changed to a 'rough draft' project preview mode that shows every other frame to keep the preview playing smoothly. MM6 in Vista, using enhanced video technology, brought back the previewing of each frame...
I'll elaborate in a blog entry.
September 12, 2009
