Windows Movie Maker was
first introduced as part of a service pack for Windows XP, and quickly
proved to be very popular. It made creating videos very easy, so much so
that many people didn’t even need to read the directions. (Like me—I
created a couple of silly parody videos with the Windows XP version.) Windows Movie Maker was also included in Windows Vista, but with the advent of Windows 7, Microsoft removed it and made it part of theWindows Live Essentials package.
To me, the latest version seemed just as easy to use, while I was
creating my third silly video without reading the directions. Was I
missing out on something by doing it that way? I was very interested to
see what Getting StartED with Windows Live Movie Maker could tell me. (Yes, they capitalize ED in the title, because it is a "friends of ED" book.)First impressions
I must say I was put off by the cover of the book, which looks very amateurish and hastily thrown together.
Still, remembering the old saying about not judging the book by its
cover, I passed it by and dug into the contents, only to encounter more
ugly pencil-drawing graphics on every single page. While a whimsical
approach can work spectacularly well (see my review of Cooking for
Geeks) this book’s design is just not in the same league.
OK, so, not judging the book by its pages, what about the content?
The author, James Floyd Kelly, uses plenty of illustrations, which I
always consider to be a plus in a technical book. There are sidebars
headed "NotED" and "ExplainED" that provide additional helpful information along the way, and sidebars headed "LinkED" that
provide URLs for useful hardware and software. The author uses a
relaxed, first-person style as if he were talking to the reader, which
also helps make the material appealing.
Lights, camera, video
The first chapter gives a brief overview of the program, explaining
where to find a fuller explanation in later chapters, and showing
screenshots of the various features. After that, the book’s main focus
is on producing your own videos, using material imported from your
camera. There are clear instructions on how to get the data from your
camera into Windows Live Movie Maker in a variety of ways, which should cover pretty much everyone’s equipment and software.
I liked the inclusion of a suggestion that the camera’s own
software might be the best for making the transfer from one device to
the other. Even though the software that comes with your camera may not
be sophisticated (and I’ve seen quite a few instances where this is
true) it’s still designed to work specifically with your hardware. I
also appreciated the sidebar that explained that imported videos don’t
automatically end up in the My Videos folder, but go to My Pictures instead.
The author also shows how to create your own folder structure that will
organize and protect your digital media. This is excellent advice.
Windows Live Movie Maker includes a feature called AutoMovie,
which may be all the novice filmmaker needs to put together a
reasonably professional looking video. The book contains clear
instructions for doing this, which should get the newcomer off to a good
start.
Making it all work
The rest of the book is devoted to the process of making and
editing your own videos. The author gives excellent, common-sense advice
that should help newcomers avoid common mistakes like putting scenes in
the wrong order, overdoing the special effects or soundtrack, making
your video too long or too short, and putting your viewers to sleep. He
also points out the very important issue of using copyrighted material
without permission, which is something anyone who intends to post videos
on YouTube should pay careful attention to. Copyright owners are
getting more and more prickly over time, and the inclusion of someone
else’s graphics or music could land the video’s creators in plenty of
hot water.
There’s also a link to the videos the author has created, on the APress web site (in the Source Code/Downloads section),
so the reader can follow along and see the creative process in action.
Click on the "downloads" tab to find them. Seeing what’s being done in
still photos is good, but in a book about creating videos, seeing the
actual video examples is much better.
The technical terms that many of us have heard of in descriptions
of movie making ("fade in", "fade out," "continuity" and so forth) which
also apply to Windows Live Movie Maker are
well explained. The importance of aspect ratio (the physical size of
the image on the screen) is also given a thorough explanation.
Windows Live Movie Maker also
includes what Microsoft has called "animations". Most of us would think
of animated cartoons when we hear this term, but here it’s applied to
the various kinds of transitions between scenes, such as fades,
dissolves and wipes. Having the term explained along with instructions
for applying the various effects was very helpful (when I was fiddling
withWindows Live Movie Maker it took me a while to find out where the transitions had gone).
Up, up and away
The book concludes with chapters that show you how to save your
video (including the formats you can use for the finished product, like
high definition video and mobile phone format) and how to burn it to a
DVD and upload it to YouTube. I could definitely have used these
instructions when I was finishing up my own videos and trying to figure
out what format to use and how to get them on YouTube. It’s a
straightforward process, but neither Windows Live Movie Maker nor
YouTube provides much in the way of instructions. I didn’t think of
burning my videos (actually slideshows with soundtracks) to a DVD, but
if my techno-limited mother were still around, I definitely would have
done that and the instructions would have been very useful.
The process of adding titles, menus, and credits to a DVD, which
can make a video look much more professional, is also well explained.
The book concludes with a chapter containing a good list of helpful web sites for video makers. Since Windows Live Movie Maker, like all the Windows Live Essentials programs,
is simplified to make the creative process easy for beginners, it’s not
intended for highly sophisticated work. The links provide information
for people who want to go beyond the basics.
What I liked and didn’t like
I liked the author’s personal style and the inclusion of his own
videos as examples. Mr. Kelly is clearly an expert user of Windows Live Movie Maker,
but he understands what it’s like to be a beginner. The book definitely
fills in a gap left by the inadequate official "help" for the program.
As I mentioned, the graphic design of the book is amateurish. For a
book dealing with artistic design software, a much more professional
layout would be more appropriate. Still, as they say, one should not
judge the book by its cover (or its pencil squares on the inside pages,
either.)
The Verdict: Buy it for Beginners!
Getting StartED with Windows Live Movie Maker delivers
what the title promises, a good clear introduction to the program. It
should help novice video or slideshow makers gain confidence quickly,
and the online examples linked to the book really help. The Windows Live Essentials suite
of programs are not highly sophisticated, but they are likely to be
more than sufficient for the average person, and having a "user’s
manual" like this can make learning them much easier.
