One of the easiest ways to make your home movies look better is to add some effects, transitions and titles to them, lending them a professional looking finish. Before, these flashy animations have been limited to expensive editing packages.
If you've got Windows Vista, however, you can do all these things by using Movie Maker. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to do them.
1. Effect / Transition
These are the two main animations available to you. Effects work on individual clips, making them sepia-toned or blurred, or whatever else you choose. Transitions link two clips – tearing, shattering, wiping and pushing the screen.
2. Stay Controlled
Use as few transitions as possible. One or two can look good, but more than that gets confusing, irritating or, worst of all, tacky.
Think about how often the sappiest of romantic comedies wipe between scenes via a giant heart.
3. Watch the speed
Click on Storyboard then Timeline to switch editing modes, and drag the block representing the transition. The maximum length is the length of the second clip – although that could be a montage if you need it to be longer.
4. Titles
These are handled separately, with presets available for one-line titles, two-line titles, and a longer list of credits. You can choose the font and colour, but not a great deal more. The alternative is to create image-based titles in any art package.
5. Text Control
There are two types of titles – those before or after the movie, and text overlays. The former are like a movie clip, and can have effects added over the top. Overlays can be moved within a clip, and scaled, but you don’t get the effects.
6. Mix and Match
Overlays aren’t locked to a clip, so you can stretch them out to caption an extended sequence, and it all happens underneath them. The animation attached will only play at the start and end, rescaling as you move the clip around.
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