How many of you have a camera that takes video.  A bunch, right?  Now, how many of you ever put that video together with pictures and music and made a movie that you can enjoy showing to others?  Not so many, huh? 

Let’s give it another shot OK?  Windows MovieMaker 2012 is really quite simple if you take it slow.  Don’t try to import 2 hours of video and edit it down to a 5 minute movie right away.  Start by learning how to do slide shows with your pictures.  Windows MovieMaker is a free program from Microsoft, it is part of what was called Windows Live Essentials, now it’s just Windows Essentials.  If you don’t already have it,you can download MovieMaker here.  Even if you do have it, check the version, it was upgraded and improved in August of 2012.  It is now version 2012.

1. Import the pictures with the ‘Add Photos and Videos’ button
2. Drag the pictures into the order you want
3. Set your timing.  Each picture can have it’s own duration, or you can select all the pictures and enter the duration for all of them.  The easiest way to select all is with the Ctrl-A shortcut.  If you don’t set your own duration, the default is 7 seconds – much too long.
4. Set your transitions.  Same thing, you can do them one at a time, or all at once by clicking ‘Apply to All’.  Transitions are on the Animations tab. Just hover over each one and you’ll see what it does.  Once you click it, the selected picture will show a gray triangle on its left side indicating the transition.  The transition can have a specified duration as well.
5. Add music by clicking on the Add Music button on the toolbar.  You can select something that’s on your computer or you can download from the suggested sites.  You can also add multiple music selections, just position the playhead by clicking on the slide where you want a new piece of music to start, then choose Add Music, and then Add Music at the Current Point.
6. You can also add beginning and ending title slides and credit slides and captions on individual slides, but you don’t have to. 
7. Save your project, then Save your Movie – use the setting ‘Recommended for this Project’ or you can ‘Burn a DVD’ if you want to be able to watch this movie on a DVD player that is not a computer.

You now have a movie of your slideshow, aren’t you proud?!

Video clips work exactly the same way but with one extra editing piece – trimming.  Just bring in one clip and experiment with setting the Start Point, End Point, Trim, and Split.  My recommendation is to bring in each video clip, trim it how you want and Save Movie so that you end up with several clips that are already properly trimmed.  Now you can easily combine them with your pictures and go thru steps 1-7 above.  That’s what I did to create this video of a day we went scuba diving in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.  Then I added one more piece … narration.  Check it out and see what you think.  The entire process for creating this video – starting with reviewing the raw footage – took me about 3 hours.

Have fun!  And, stay tuned for some Geeks on Tour ‘Show Me How’ tutorial videos on using MovieMaker.