LEARNINGS OF THE WEEK (Laraflyn B. Camay)

This week, i learned about Movie Making using the Windows Movie Maker.

Our past lessons are the Premechanical Period, Mechanical Period, Electromechanical Period, Electronic Period, and the First-Fourth Generation of Computers.

In making a video of these lessons, we downloaded and collected pictures and videos about these periods and ages.

Windows Movie Maker is video creating/editing software bundled with the Microsoft Windows operating system since Windows Me. It contains features such as effects, transitions, titles/credits, audio track, timeline narration, and Auto Movie. New effects and transitions can be made and existing ones can be modified using XML code.

In the timeline view, the images can also be stretched to any desired number of frames.

Using a microphone, you can narrate a timeline and also put in on the timeline. You can also cut it.

When importing footage into the program, a user can either choose to Capture Video (from camera, scanner or other device) or Import into Collections to import existing video files into the user's collections. The accepted formats for import are .WMV/.ASF, .MPG (MPEG-1), .AVI (DV-AVI), .WMA, .WAV, and .MP3. Additionally, the Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate editions of Movie Maker support importing MPEG-2 Program streams and DVR-MS formats. Importing of other container formats such as MP4/3GP, FLV and MOV ,MIDI, AIFF, AAC and SWF is not supported.

After capture, any clip can be dragged and dropped anywhere on the timeline. Once on the timeline, clips can be duplicated or split, and any of the split sections deleted or copied using the standard Windows keyboard shortcuts or clicked and dragged to to another position. Right-clicking any clip brings up the range of editing options. An AutoMovie feature offers predefined editing styles (titles, effects and transitions) for quickly creating movies.

Video can be exported back to the video camera if supported by the camera. Movie Maker also allows users to publish a finished video on video hosting websites.

The efficiency of the importing and editing process is heavily dependent on the amount of file fragmentation of the hard disk. The most reliable results can be obtained by adding an extra hard disk dedicated for scratch space, and regularly re-formatting/defragmenting it, rather than simply deleting the files at the end of the project. Fragmented AVI files result in jerky playback on the editing screen, and make the final rendering process much longer.