With your pictures and music in order, you are ready to take a look at movies. Movie Maker 2 is the application you’ll use to create movies from footage you take with your digital video (DV) camera. Movie Maker 2 walks you through the process for the most part, offering options in the Movie Tasks pane to lead you, and offering wizards where applicable. In the Movie Tasks pane, you can perform the following tasks, among others:
■ Capture footage from your DV camera
■ Import video, pictures, audio, and music
■ View and add video effects and transitions
■ Make an AutoMovie
■ Save movies to your computer or to a CD
■ Send a movie in an e-mail
I’ll assume you have your camera connected and working, that you’ve taken some footage, and that you know how to use Movie Maker 2 to import that footage. If you need more information about or assistance with those tasks, there are plenty of Help and Support files available from the Help menu.
What I want to cover here are some tips and tricks for getting a movie made quickly, while still offering a professional-looking output. This includes using AutoMovie, personalizing your movie-in-progress with transitions and effects, adding title pages and credits, and exploring different ways to share your movies with others. Make sure you’ve downloaded and installed Windows Movie Maker 2; version 2 is an upgrade to what ships with Windows XP.