Windows® 7 All-in-One for Dummies®

Chapter IV.5. Lights! Action! Windows Live Movie Maker

In This Chapter

• Recording and editing video

• Bringing in narration and background sounds

• Creating transitions

• Burning your own DVDs — within limits, anyway

No, you can't go down to Blockbuster, rent a DVD, take it home, and make a copy of it using Windows Live Movie Maker (WLMM). There. That answers about 80 percent of the questions I get about WLMM.

Yes, you can take that TV program you recorded in Windows Media Center — you know, that hu-u-u-u-u-ge hour-long 4GB WTV file — convert it to DVR-MS, run it through WLMM, and save the program as a 400MB WMV file. The trip through WLMM takes more than an hour of computer time. But it reduces the size of the file by 80 percent to 90 percent. You may have trouble recording the show (see the discussion of broadcast flags in Book IV, Chapter 4), but after you get it into unencrypted form on disk, you can use WLMM to put it on DVD. That answers about 80 percent of the questions I should get about WLMM.

Windows Live Movie Maker brings a stunted but barely usable video-editing workshop to your PC. You can use it to create anything from a few seconds of action — say, to dress up an e-mail message — to a full-length documentary about your kid's first birthday party. Get the sound synchronization right and you could even toss together a decent music video, sell it to iTunes, and turn into an overnight sensation.

Just remember where you got the idea, huh?

This chapter covers two different programs that ...