PapaJohn's Newsletter #30 - Dec 4, 2004

Movie Maker 2 and Photo Story

Movie Maker Basics

4 of the last 7 newsletters were about Photo Story... let's turn to Movie Maker for couple issues, this week stepping back and reflecting on the basics. A good understanding of them takes you a long way. Next week I'll cover the current state of a common issue 'Help, I can't save a movie'; resolution starts with a good understanding of fundamentals.

Two pages of the website cover what I consider the basic building blocks. The Setup > MM2.0 page outlines them to the new user of Movie Maker 2. The Managing > Intro page covers them again when facing such topics as organizing the files and backing up.

I'll assume you have a good understanding of the basics; I'll cover tham on a higher level.

Source Files - come in all types, formats, sub-types... and new ones are rolling out regularly. At one extreme are new high-definition camcorders. At the other extreme are phones with built-in camcorder features.

Closer to home, Photo Story 3 video-like files are another sub-type.. a wmv file rendered with the image v2 codec.

Collections - some days I work with an empty collection database, deleting clips in it as quickly as I bring in new ones. It's just a processing area that I clean up after a processing session. Other days, I'll treat the clips in it as more important than a project, fine tuning the clips and backing up the database file after each session.

Clips - clips can be a Jeckel and Hyde thing... acting one way in a collection and another way in a project. Of course they are both linked to the same source files, but the filters and codecs that Movie Maker 2 uses to play them in the collection differ from those used when the same clip is on the timeline.

To the non-programmer, there are lots of mysterious things that happen when playing and using clips. Filters and codecs are some of them.

Projects - many newbies have a hard time understanding the nature of a project file... for good reason.

Some think the source files can be deleted once they are imported into the project file.... the word 'import' sets them up for that. And the Photo Story approach doesn't help, as source files imported into it actually get copied into the project file.

Others think the project (MSWMM) file can viewed by others, or imported into their DVD software, not understanding the difference between a project file and a saved movie.

Saved Movies - the quest for the best quality at the smallest file size goes on. Playback/distribution options continue to expand... today's saved movies become tomorrow's source files, if not for you, then for someone else.

At one end of the quality scale, I'm using my Creative Zen Portable Media Center to show movies during dinner instead of afterwards.

At the high end, my desk has a few less monitors than computers... some monitors are doing double-duty. I've been looking at all the newer, bigger, more expensive high resolution widescreen monitors... do I want it to play high definition 1080i? widescreen? LCD or plasma? Many of the choices weren't there the last time I shopped for a monitor... so far the ones I like the most are those at the Apple stores.

... before getting deeper into the newsletter, here's a few items of interest...

... I found this item interesting and I'm doing some followup about it.

"The video transitions and effects already in Windows Movie Maker are based on DirectShow. However, Windows Movie Maker will quit unexpectedly if more than 100 DirectShow video transitions or video effects are installed on your computer. If video programs that contain additional DirectShow video transitions and video effects are installed on your computer, this may exceed the allowable amount.

Programs that install additional DirectShow video transitions and video effects include Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition, Windows Movie Maker 2 Winter Fun Pack 2003, Pixelan SpiceFX Packs for Windows Movie Maker, and InterVideo WinDVD Creator 2... To work around this issue, remove one or more of the programs".

• Maximum PC's quarterly Winter Edition will hit the newsstands Tuesday, December 7th. Look for the 6 page tutorial 'Making a Killer Movie with Movie Maker 2'.

• Everyone loves the Picture-in-Picture (PIP) effect, including me... here's a video collage for the main page of the wedding website - with 8 embedded videos:

I haven't told anyone... if you look closely at it, you can see the big black border on the right edge, and the little videos are closer to being square then they should be... something was wrong with my pixel dimensioning.

To take another closer look at counting pixels, and with one of my goals being to show the use of Photo Story 3 and Movie Maker 2 together, I started another sample, something I can use as a new opening clip for my movies... working in 720x460 DV-AVI mode as I lay each layer on top of the previous ones... here's links for two different quality versions:

The file sizes are 11.7 MB and 23.6 MB... I'm thinking of another newsletter in a few weeks about this PIP topic, using this example for the tutorial....

....on to the topic of the week

Source Files

One trend in source files is their ever-growing complexity... more sources, companies, versions of software and codecs, etc. No-one can maintain an in-depth knowledge of them all, so don't try. Learn more about your usual sources and how best to handle them. They might work directly in Movie Maker or they may need conversion before use.

It's a big learning area for those new to digital video editing. How do you tell someone that an AVI file might have been encoded with any one of dozens of codecs, that you might not know which one, that you might not be able to know which codecs are on your computer, or which ones are used with which source file?

Even in our own area, Photo Story 3 gives us another sub-type of source file... a video-like wmv file rendered with the image v2 codec... a codec revision that is substantially different enough that it effects which software can play them.

Source files either work or don't work in Movie Maker... the MPEG-2 and Divx encoded AVI files work just enough to get your hopes up, but if you get sucked into editing a project with them, you'll usually run into hangs, freezes, audio and video issues... all related to codec issues. You'll wish you had converted them to other files before you finish your project.

And if you have a lucky day and they work perfectly, some software change will come along to effect the balance.

Marc Liron, one of the MVPs, just developed a new Sherlock - Codec Checker utility to help you assess codecs on your system. It's a free download from http://www.updatexp.com - add it to your other codec listing utilities such as GSpot.

As I look around I see new source files and new challenges to get them into Movie Maker. One of my sons has a new Game-Boy renderer/viewer and he's starting to collect Game-Boy video and audio files. He just started using Movie Maker with a custom profile to help him make the Game-Boy format files... there are others at the receiving end who will be trying to figure out next week how to get the Game-Boy videos into Movie Maker.

In addition to converting and prepping source files, there's the forever need to organize and save them. The image to the right shows how I organize my source files... I use a folder that is accessable to any user on my computer, and ones that I can reach across to on other computers in my network. I don't need to copy them to another computer to use in a new project. Reach accross a network and use a source file on another computer. It'll work.

On the days that I'm creating, organizing or clip-splitting in an important collection, I'll treat the database file as I do an important project file, backing it up when I'm finished a session. Collections

How I treat it depends on how much effort I put into splitting, renaming and organizing the clips.

The figure at the left shows a tree-view of my library of collection databases, started in the days of MM1 and still ongoing....

I'll primarily use Movie Maker 1 collections for the library of clips that I easily import into my working project in MM2.

Movie Maker 2 is used mostly for project-specific collections.