Bad home movies? Shudder! They can be longer than many prison sentences, home to multimedia’s worst excesses and, all too often, guaranteed to leave you trying to slit your wrists with a Pringle.
However, with Windows Vista, you have no excuse for such nonsense. None. We’re going to war on bad home movies. Right now!
The good news is that with Movie Maker you immediately avoid the biggest trap. It’s a simple editor that focuses on the important things.
Not only don’t you need hundreds of transitions, effects, and other flashy tools, you’re usually better off without them. It’s not for nothing that the average director’s favourite transition is the humble cut.
Editing in action
Let’s step through a holiday video. Don’t worry about the mouse clicks yet; that’s the easy part. Raw footage is where every project starts. The cardinal rule is: shoot everything you can, then throw out almost as much. A ruthless editor is a good editor.
Exactly what to keep will depend on your subject matter and intended audience, but you’ll never go wrong by treating it as a professional project, rather than doing things you know are wrong.
One thing I always do when starting a new project is to sit down and list everything that annoys me in similar things I’ve seen, and then avoid doing them even if they seem like a great idea at the time.
Here, let’s look at the classic roller-coaster shot. On my list, the number one ‘gotcha’ is the first-person shakycam as someone, usually my father, desperately tries to keep the camcorder to his face.
It never works. Ignoring the blurring of the world, and the sick-making bouncing of the camera on every twist and turn, you’ll never be able to emulate the experience of being on that ride. So what do you do? You film it anyway. The problem isn’t the footage; it’s the execution. You also film the exterior of the ride, and everything else you’re going to cut. Then get the shears.
First of all, the establishing shot. That should be easy enough – especially if the family is there, waving and looking nervously at the ride’s biggest lunch-launching moment. Next, cut – a simple cut, nothing fancy – to the first-person camera, as the rollercoaster car pulls out of the station.
Our list tells us that we don’t want to stick with this too much, so now, we cut to another external shot of the coaster pulling away towards the big loop. Obviously, it’s not your car. That doesn’t matter. As it plummets, snap cut again to the fi rst-person camera, showing a family member’s screaming reaction. Cut back to the external.
If you’ve got a good bit of first-person camera of a drop, or a turn, or a particular bit of scenery, slip it in. Finally, cut to the family waddling uncertainly out of the gates, and closer up shots of reactions; cries of “Again!” or “Never again!”
It’s a simple editing job. One transition (Cut) and one editing tool (Trim). However, when you play the video, nobody will care about the technology behind it, just the result. And believe it or not, that’s the big secret of editing. Simplicity always wins out over glitz, and less really is more.
Of course, there is scope to play around with the more complicated effects as well. If you’re building a montage of photos, picking a transition to go between them can look good. Even then, though, the keep-it simple mantra applies. A page-curl may look good, but a page-curl followed by a barwipe, followed by a dissolve, followed by a shatter is guaranteed to look tacky.
Always try to stick to one effect, one editing style, one (rough) length for your individual segments, and the whole thing will flow. It may seem like overkill for a family video, but when you’ve got the tools to do better, why settle for less?
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There are so many television channels out there today, and while a lot are filled with dross, there’s plenty of great stuff that I can’t miss. Now I can ditch the TV listings, make sure everything is recorded, and watch it when and where I want to. If you own Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate edition, then you’ve got Windows Media Center, which offers no-fuss access to the multimedia content stored on your PC. It conceals the familiar face of Windows behind large, readable text and icons and a simple, effortlessly navigable menu, designed to be viewed on a television or a projector. There’s a lot in Media Center, but it’s the television features I use most. You’ll need a TV tuner card in your PC to use them – but if you haven’t already got one, it’s a simple business to add a USB TV tuner.
Making life easier
The first time you run Media Center, you’ll have to go through a brief set-up routine. Once you’ve got it working, the first benefit is that watching TV is much easier. Press one of the cursor buttons on the keyboard or the remote control (if you’ve got one) and it will pop up a mini-guide where you can check what’s on other channels. Alternatively, hit Pause and it will freeze live TV as if it were a tape or DVD – the signal is recorded to the hard drive, so when you come back you can click Play to start where you left off.
That’s the answer to those irritating phone calls that come through just as Jack Bauer is about to do something heroic, but the really good stuff comes from planning ahead. Delve into the integrated Guide, take a look at what’s coming up and tag the shows you want to watch. When they roll around, Media Center will record them automatically.
You can record a whole series with one click thanks to the Record Series option: every episode is automatically grabbed so you don’t have to worry about missing anything. If you plan on building up an archive, go to TV + Movies on the main menu and choose Recorded TV > View Scheduled > Series, select the series and click Series Settings > Keep. The number of episodes you can keep depends on the size of your hard drive. If you start running out of space, consider boosting it with an external hard drive. Plug it in and tell Media Center to record to it under Tasks > Settings > TV > Recorder > Recorder Storage.
Not that you have to leave everything on the computer. You can just as easily burn them on to a DVD (which can then be watched on any DVD player), or even sync them to an external device such as an Archos 604 portable video player. Again, both of these processes can be handled straight from the Media Center menu, under Burn DVD and Synch to Portable Device.
While we’re on the subject of DVDs, Media Center does that, too. It’s not nearly as exciting as the TV stuff, with only basic playback controls, but there is one handy extra: parental controls. Go into Tasks > Settings > General Parental Controls, set up a four-digit code and you’ll be able to set limits based on a movie’s rating.
The last great advantage of using your PC for your viewing pleasure is that you can junk the airwaves and download shows direct. This is in its infancy, but watch the Online Spotlight section of the main menu for the ability to get the shows you want, whenever you want them.
Tuning Up
The first thing you need is a TV tuner – a device that can take a signal from an attached aerial. Unless your PC has one built in, you’ll need to splash some cash. Naturally, ensure that it’s compatible with Windows Vista.
Go digital
We’d go for a digital DVB-T tuner. These deliver more channels than the five you get out of old analogue tuners, including bags of widescreen material. Better yet, buy a dual digital tuner and watch one channel while recording another.
Antenna-Shun!
Now it’s time to plug an aerial into your TV tuner. A rooftop antenna is the ideal option, but under the right conditions cheap indoor ones can work well, too. For the best results, buy a wideband one with a signal booster.
Setting up time
Fire up Media Center and in the menu select Tasks, then Settings. Enter the TV submenu and choose Set Up TV Signal. The computer will take you step by step through the tuning process, seeking out and storing channels.
Veg Out
For maximum comfort, connect the PC to your TV. Using an Xbox 360 as a Media Center Extender is the flashiest route, but a cable will do. See which ports you have on your TV and PC and ask at an electronics store, or our forum to see which one you need.
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In Windows Movie Maker you can send your footage to Windows DVD Maker by clicking on the Publish to DVD option, which asks you to save your work and then imports it directly into DVD Maker. Of course, you can use it as a stand-alone program too by clicking on Start > All Programs > Windows DVD Maker and importing your videos manually. In this tutorial, though, we’ll export from Movie Maker.
Automatic Adding
When you choose the Publish to DVD option in Windows Movie Maker and save your work, your movie will automatically be transferred to Windows DVD Maker. The icon in the bottom left of the window shows how much space your movie will take up; as you can see, our film is very short indeed. Click on Next to continue.
Complete control
Click on Options to adjust the way your finished DVD will work. By default the DVD menu will load when the disc is played, but you can change that setting if you like. You can also specify whether the DVD should have an aspect ratio of 4:3 (standard TV) or 16:9 (widescreen), and whether it should use the European PAL standard or the American NTSC one.
If you’ll be playing your disc on European equipment, go for PAL. Once you’ve chosen the appropriate options, click on OK and then on Next.
Make a menu
Commercial DVDs have a menu that plays when the disc is loaded, and DVD Maker enables your disc to have one too. The main window shows what your menu will look like, and if you like it you can create your DVD by putting a blank DVD in the drive and clicking Burn. Don’t do that just yet, though, because we can make your DVD even better.
Picture perfect
There are lots of menu designs to choose from, and you can see how they’ll look by clicking on the thumbnail in the right hand panel. The main window updates automatically so you can see exactly what your DVD menu will look like.
See it properly
If you click on the Preview button you’ll get an even better idea of how your DVD menu will look: in this example we’ll see our footage playing in the middle of the menu. Click on OK to return to the editing options.
Make it mine
Although the various menu designs are all rather lovely, that doesn’t mean you can’t make them better. Click on Menu Text and you can change the text that appears on the main menu screen, and you can also change the font. Changes appear immediately in the preview at the right of the window; click on Change Text when you’re finished.
Menu maker
You can also change the way the disc menu appears by clicking on Customize Menu. Here you can import video or audio to personalise the menu, or you can change the button styles. Once again, the right hand of the window shows the results of your changes. Once you’re happy, click on Change Style and then click Burn to copy your masterpiece to a blank DVD.
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