Monday, November 30, 2009

Digital Story-telling With Windows Movie Maker - The Basics

Digital story-telling is an effective tool to show a project with images and short videos. It also does not require a heavy dose of audio/video skills and expensive and complicated editing software.

Windows Movie Maker (WMM) is one popular tool for simple video editing. It can be easily used for digital story-telling and similar projects. Here I show you the WMM interface and how to create and share a very simple WMM project.

Always start off by creating a folder that will house all your files for the project – audio, video, images, and the WMM file. This will keep your project organized and will make moving the project simple, if the need arises.

Open WMM and save the new project in the folder mentioned above.
The WMM interface consists of 4 panes: 1) Tasks 2) Collections 3) Storyboard (or Timeline) 4) Preview

Click on image above for details.

1) The Tasks Pane has a list of various tasks related to the project e.g. capturing video, editing movie, etc.
2) The Collections Pane consists of the Video Effects and Video Transitions. In addition, all the files (video, images, etc) that your import for your project are housed and listed here before you actually use them.
3) Storyboard/Timeline Pane
The storyboard view shows the videos and images along with any transitions that you actually use in your project (from the collection)
The timeline view has nore details than the sory board view and includes – Video, Transitions, Audio/Music, and Title overlay.
4) The Preview Pane lets you preview your movie.

MAKING A SIMPLE MOVIE
(This is a very basic 4-step movie making process. Additional tutorials will cover other topics)

i) Add a video (or an Image) – Go to the Task pane. Under Capture Video, click Import Video (or Import Pictures). Find the video file in your project folder and click IPMORT. The video is imported to the collections pane. YOU ARE NOT DONE. Drag the video down to the Storyboard. Add another video or an image.

ii) Add Video Transition (or Video Effect) -In the Collections pane drop-down window at top, click on Video Transitions. Select a Transition that you like. Drag transition onto the timeline
You can preview any transition by double-clicking on it and watching in the Preview Window. NOTE – Transitions can only be added between videos or images.

iii) Add Title Overlays - Go to the Task Pane. Select Make Titles or Credits. Select the clip or image first, then proceed with instructions on screen for placement and text format. You can also add End Credits from this location.

iv) Saving to view- Go to the Task Pane and click Finish movie (or Ctrl-P). Choose your location (My computer, CD, etc). This may take several minutes to render, so make sure it is ready to finalize.

NOTE: Your WMM movie can be enhanced with a narration, additional audio, editing of the clips and other effects, but the steps above will get you started and on your way.

Technologies discussed: Windows Movie Maker, Video, Audio, Editing
Thanks: Rebecca Bias, Assistant Director, FLC, Ohio State University

Contact me:
Sujan Manandhar
Technology Integration Specialist,
Foreign Language Center
Ohio State University

1 comment:

  1. I had my students follow this, and they liked it. Very simple.
    An advanced veriosn will also help.

    ReplyDelete