Microsoft Windows Movie Maker 2: Visual Quickstart Guide

Using Transitions to Create Customized Fades

Movie Maker has the ability to fade into and away from a clip in black and white, as you'll see in “Using Fade-In and Fade-Out Effects” in Chapter 11. However, each effect occurs in a relatively speedy 1 second, which may be too fast for some producers.

Fortunately, there's a relatively simple way to change the fade color and/or slow the fade. First you build an image in the desired color, typically called a matte. Then you import the matte into Movie Maker and onto your Timeline adjacent to the target clip. Then you insert a fade transition between the two clips and customize it to the target length of the fade.

Let's go through the process step by step, using Windows Paint, the simple paint program ...