Digital Story Telling with Windows Movie Maker Step by step · Digital Story Telling with Windows Movie Maker – Step by step PAGE 7 ©Superhighways 2013 INSERT AN AUDIO FILE INTO

Digital Story Telling with Windows Movie Maker – Step by step

PAGE 1 ©Superhighways 2013

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CONTENTS

Before you open Windows Movie Maker (WMM) .................................................... 3

Organising your digital assets............................................................................... 3

Windows Live Photo Gallery .................................................................................. 3

Your First Project in WMM ...................................................................................... 4

Adding Audio ....................................................................................................... 6

Overview .............................................................................................................. 6

Different ways to capture audio .......................................................................... 6

Tools for editing audio .......................................................................................... 6

Insert an audio file into your movie: ..................................................................... 7

Edit an audio file in WMM to fit your images ........................................................ 8

Simple sound editing – option 1. ......................................................................... 8

More complex editing – Option 2 ........................................................................ 8

Editing Images and Video in WMM ..................................................................... 10

Overview ............................................................................................................ 10

How to refine the display of photos and video .................................................. 10

Animations and Visual Effects – don’t overdo it ................................................... 11

Overview ............................................................................................................ 11

Visual Effects ...................................................................................................... 11

About Animations............................................................................................... 12

How to Apply Transitions ..................................................................................... 12

How to Apply Pan & Zoom ................................................................................. 12

Titles, Captions & Credits .................................................................................... 13

Overview ............................................................................................................ 13

Step by Step Titles .............................................................................................. 13

Step by Step Captions ....................................................................................... 13

Step by Step Credits........................................................................................... 14



BEFORE YOU OPEN WINDOWS MOVIE MAKER (WMM)

ORGANISING YOUR DIGITAL ASSETS

This is a very important stage – if you have collected a group of digital assets

(video, photos, sound) from a number of different places on memory sticks etc.,

you need to save them on your PC in the relevant music, photos and video folders.

Until you have published your video, Windows Movie Maker (WMM) needs to keep

track of each of these digital assets from their respective folders, in order to play

your movie as you create it. If you don’t have your USB plugged in at all times – it will

just show a file missing icon.

FIGURE 1: WMM FILE WHERE THE IMAGES HAVE NOT BEEN CORRECTLY SAVED THROWS UP THIS ERROR

WINDOWS LIVE PHOTO GALLERY

Begin your video by importing all your assets into Windows Live Photo Gallery

1. Open Windows Live Photo Gallery

2. Select Import

3. Browse to your USB and select the folder where you have your assets stored

4. WLPG will analyse the different types of files

5. Follow prompts, including adding Tags (TAGS enable the search engine on

your PC to locate quickly all the files you have tagged in a certain category.



FIGURE 2: IMPORT VIDEOS AND PHOTOS INTO WINDOWS LIVE PHOTO GALLERY – ADD TAGS (BEST PRACTICE TIP)

YOUR FIRST PROJECT IN WMM

1. Select WMM from the start button (choose

All Programmes if you can’t see it on the list)

2. Choose New project from the drop down

menu

3. Your new project window invites you to

browse for photos and videos

4. Click on the words ‘Browse’ and by default

you will be taken to the libraries section of

your PC where you will see Music, Picture

and Video folders where you have saved

already saved your digital assets.

5. You can select individual or multiple files of

the same type i.e. all images



1. The individual files appear on the main stage. Files can be dragged and dropped with the main stage area

2. When you select a file/asset it is highlighted in the Preview Window

3. A video file has a film strip graphic border

4. The Timeline is important later on when you start editing the individual assets

Preview Window Main Stage

Timeline – this image appears 0.07

seconds into the video which is

now 4:16 minutes long

Image file

Video file



ADDING AUDIO

OVERVIEW

Adding sound to a video is what turns your video from a glorified PowerPoint into a

digital story. You can use sound to:

Set the mood of your story – upbeat, jazzy ditties or somber and reflective –

you decide

Tell the story through the eyes of your service users by capturing their words

and thoughts

Move the story on through a narrative voice-over to pass on key messages

DIFFERENT WAYS TO CAPTURE AUDIO

As already mentioned in the presentation you can:

Capture sound with Dictaphone / smart phones which you can download to

PC via cable

Or use the online tool Audio boo. This involves downloading the App to your

smart phone / tablet, set up an Audio boo account, recording your audio

files, which the app will automatically publish {upload} via a wireless network

to your online library. Once the Audio is online you can perform basic editing

on it. When you are finished – right click on the title of your audio and save

file to your PC

Download royalty free music clips from the net

Use WMM to record your narrative directly into the video (You will need a

headset with a built in microphone for this and somewhere quiet)

TOOLS FOR EDITING AUDIO

WMM offers a reasonable editing tool which allows you to control the length of the

sound file, whether the sound fades in at the start of the track. It also allows you to

split the sound file – which is useful if you want to reuse a section somewhere else or

remove it from the video by deleting.

Alternatively, you can edit your sound file in a separate editing programme. We

used the open source application – Audacity which can be downloaded free from

the internet, for the ‘Year in the Life of Community Connected’ video.

Ease of Use: Medium [http://audacity.sourceforge.net which has a free creative

commons licence]



INSERT AN AUDIO FILE INTO YOUR MOVIE:

1. Click on the Home Menu Tab

2. Position your cursor before the photo where you want your audio

3. Select Add Music

4. In the Add Music dialogue box , browse to your audio file, if you cannot

see it in the My Music Folder

5. Select your sound file and click Open

6. Note if your file is on a USB, WMM will automatically ask if you want to

import it to the Sound Library which it uses to keep track of all the sound

assets

FIGURE 3: INSERTING AN AUDIO FILE

FIGURE 4: SCREENSHOT OF RECENTLY ADDED AUDIO FILE – TITLE “WHY AM I HERE...”



The audio file shows up as a green bar with its file name on top of the image assets

(Video and/or photos).

TIP 1: captions are displayed at the bottom of the image assets in pink bar

TIP 2: Your sound file is imported in its entirety – unless you have squeezed it in

between two other audio files. It is then a case of shunting all the other

audio files along to create room for them. Try to avoid this at all costs

EDIT AN AUDIO FILE IN WMM TO FIT YOUR IMAGES

To get the fine grain editing you need for your files you will be using the Narration or

Music Tools Options Tab. From these menus you can set a start point; set an end

point (same way as demonstrated in Audio Boo) and you can use the Split tool to

edit cut your audio into two halves. Splitting gives you the option of deleting the

unwanted half or reusing it somewhere else. You can also adjust the volume for your

track and determine whether it fades in or out.

SIMPLE SOUND EDITING – OPTION 1.

Edit the image to fit the sound. This is the quickest way to add sound to an image or

a piece of video without any sound pre-recorded on it.

Import your sound file and then adjust the duration (play length) of your images to

match the length of the audio file.

The music/sound will only play when there is an image

attached to it. So if you track stops mid-way through, you

need to select the Project Tab and click on the Fit to music

button. Consideration: You will see from the screen shot

that you need to select standard or widescreen viewing for

this fit to music option.

MORE COMPLEX EDITING – OPTION 2

Option 2 is where you add your sound file and edit its duration to fit your images.

The screen capture (below) is taken from ‘A year in the life of Community

Connected’ and the file we are adding is a recording we made of Janet at St.

Peter’s church called lunchboo.

1. Insert the audio file - lunchboo

2. Click on the green bar with the title lunchboo to select the file

3. The Music Tools opens at the top of your window, with the format options

available to you



4. You have the options to set the volume of the entire track at this point by

clicking the Music Volume Icon. You can set also set Janet’s audio sound to

fade in and to fade out.

5. The Set start time function shows you where in the timeline of the video your

sound file is going to start playing – in this instance it is going to play on 148.

28 seconds into the video. You could alter this to play the entire track x

seconds earlier or later in the video

6. Set start point allows you to set the point at which your audio begins to play

– which means you can mute the first part of the audio in the track

7. Set end point allows you to set the point at which your audio stops playing –

which means you can mute remaining audio in the track

8. Note both set start point and ‘set end point affect the length of the audio file,

which has an impact on any audio and/or images/video that come after it.

If you are working by adding your assets chronologically, it is not a problem. It

is only an issue if you are tweaking your video as everything else from this

point will be out of synch.

9. Split Audio (see screen capture below) enables you to cut your audio into

two parts. To do this you need to select the audio track and drag the

Timeline to the point where you want to split the audio. You can then click

on the split icon which will no longer be greyed out

FIGURE 5: MUSIC TOOLS FORMAT TOOL BAR HIGHLIGHTING THE POSITION OF THE TIMELINE AND SPLIT TOOL

Timeline



EDITING IMAGES AND VIDEO IN WMM

OVERVIEW

Once you are happy with the order of your visual assets (video and photos), you

can next step is to refine how long the assets are displayed for in the video. WMM

has a default display of 7 seconds.

FIGURE 6: YOU CAN EXTEND THE DISPLAY FROM THE DURATION DROP DOWN MENU

HOW TO REFINE THE DISPLAY OF PHOTOS AND VIDEO

1. Select video/image and click on the Video tools tab at the top

2. Using the Edit tab you can extend the length of time you display a photo

3. When you have a video file selected, you can also adjust the volume,

control fading in and out and speed of the video



FIGURE 7 USING THE VIDEO TOOLS OPTIONS TO EDIT IMAGES AND VIDEO

ANIMATIONS AND VISUAL EFFECTS – DON’T OVERDO IT

OVERVIEW

There are a range of visual effects and animations you can apply to both video

and individual images. But as the title suggests it is very easy to get carried away –

less is more.

VISUAL EFFECTS

1. Select the file you want to change

2. Click the Visual Effects Tab

3. Choose your effect

4. Notice the effect does not affect your original file

To split your video you need to

move the Timeline an exact

location. Do not use this when

your video has a voiceover!



5. To apply to all visual assets select the apply to all tick

FIGURE 8: VISUAL EFFECTS CAN BE APPLIED TO ANY FILE AND DO NOT AFFECT THE SOURCE FILE ONLY THE WAY IT DISPLAYS

ABOUT ANIMATIONS

Animations have two functions

1. To control how the video moves from one slide to the next – TRANSITION

2. To control how each image is viewed on screen - PAN & ZOOM

HOW TO APPLY TRANSITIONS

1. To apply a transition between image 1 and image 2, click on image 2 to

select it

2. Select the transition from the menu on the left

3. On the screenshot below there are only 9 transitions listed, click the arrow to

reveal more

4. The transition between slide 7 and 8 is ‘Contemporary - wide 2’

HOW TO APPLY PAN AND ZOOM

1. To apply a pan & zoom on image 3, click on the image to select it

2. Select the pan & zoom style from the menu on the right

3. On the screenshot below there are only 6 styles shown, click the arrow to

reveal more

4. Slide 4 has a Pan & Zoom to the right



FIGURE 9: SCREEN CAPTURE TO DEMOSNTRATE PAN & ZOOM AND TRANSITION OPTIOSN

TITLES, CAPTIONS & CREDITS

OVERVIEW

Titles and captions provide a valuable anchor point in the visual multimedia fest you

have prepared. They give the brain another practical activity aside from processing

audio and imagery – reading. This gives you the opportunity you structure your

theme and highlight the key points of your message.

STEP BY STEP TITLES

1. Place your cursor in front of the slide where you want a tile slide to structure

the following section.

2. Click the Home Tab and select Title from the Format menu

3. Type your title into the Preview Window.

4. Apply an animation style

5. Set the duration on the slide

STEP BY STEP CAPTIONS

1. Select the image or video what you require a caption

2. Click the Home Tab and select Title from the Format menu

3. Type your text into the Preview Window.



4. Apply a pan and zoom style

5. Set the duration on the slide

STEP BY STEP CREDITS

The final slide of the video gives you the opportunity to thank everyone who

contributed to your project. This is a great opportunity to thank your funders. The step

by step is similar to Captioning a slide. You have a special set of animation styles to

choose from

Our video ‘A Year in the life of Community Connected ‘ uses PowerPoint slides,

converted to images for its Title and Caption Slides.

DON’T FORGET TO SAVE!

As you go along – keep saving your movie as a Movie Maker Projects file.

Save the final version as a movie - the ‘Recommended for this project’ option.

This is likely to take some time and you may need to go back and make some final

edits.

You might also want to save a number of versions (always keep the MMP file in

case) e.g. different lengths and files sizes.

You can also share directly with social media & other apps / tools if you have a

Windows Live ID.

Documents

Digital Story Telling with Windows Movie Maker Step by step · Digital Story Telling with Windows Movie Maker – Step by step PAGE 7 ©Superhighways 2013 INSERT AN AUDIO FILE INTO