Based on version 2.1 of Windows Movie Maker, Portable Windows Movie Maker not only lets you use the missing features on Vista and Windows 7 systems, but it includes the missing transitions and effects from Windows XP, as well as several additional features to boot. Portable and stand-alone, you can use it when you need removed features, like analog capture, without messing with your current version of Windows Movie Maker.

Via Lifehacker which was via Download Squad which was via instant fundas which was via dvrexster who gives credit to winmatrix.

I’ve taught basic workshops on Windows Movie Maker for years now, usually early in the semester. When they work on their assigned projects weeks later, too many students don’t correctly back up their unfinished video projects. They think the Project.MSWMM file is all they need, and don’t back up the video clips that go with that project. So, when they try to finish on another machine, either at home or on another PC in the labs, they see the big red X’s instead of their video clips. Result? FAIL. Must figure out how to make this clearer, but for now, find the steps after the jump.

1. Before starting anything on your project, create a folder for all the video and the project.MSWMM file.
2. Start Movie Maker and save the project in your new folder.
3. When capturing video, save it into that same folder.
4. If you’re adding still images, audio, or narration, make sure it’s saved into that folder.
5. If you have to move your project to another computer, make sure everything in your project is in that folder.
6. If it’s all in there, then copy that folder to your backup media—CD, USB/flash memory stick, external hard drive, whatever.

1. To finish editing, copy that project folder to the new machine before you start. Please do not open the project from the CD or USB memory stick (although an external HD should work fine).

A quick link to a thorough piece on compressing for YouTube: How To Make YouTube Videos Look Great. The author covers several methods, platforms, and compressors, including Divx, Flash, and QuickTime, and provides links to samples. Very well done – if you want to learn about video compression for the web, whether for YouTube or some other site, you’ll do well to bookmark this.

Just a few minutes from another workshop on Windows Movie Maker. Here’s the PDF handout for keeping your files organized so you can move the project from one PC to another without losing files.

Lifehacker points to an Ask Metafilter discussion of video editors with more capabilities than Windows Movie Maker, and one of the commenters points to this nice overview from Wikipedia. I found the feature comparison very valuable, as I don’t have the opportunity to check all the editors out there.

Just so you know, you may find some salty language at Ask Metafilter, a “how do I do it” portion of its parent site, the Metafilter “community weblog.” There’s a constant stream of thoughtful and frivolous posting in both places, and it’s worth your time.

You’re working on a Windows Movie Maker project in a computer lab. You’ve gotten a lot done, but you need to save it to finish another day. How do you keep your project intact so you can finish on another computer?

The key is to remember that you need to save the Movie Maker project file and the captured .WMV video files, and keep them together in a single folder. The project file has a weird extension: .MSWMM (if you named your project BobVideo, it would look like this: BobVideo.MSWMM). This project file keeps track of your edits – which clips go in which order, when the music starts, what you cut out – but it only works by pointing to the video files you’ve captured. It doesn’t sort of absorb the video the way Word or PowerPoint do with picture files. You have to keep the video files and the project files in the same folder or they’ll lose each other.

VisualHub allows you to convert video files to one of 9 formats in as little as three steps.

I tried the demo, and it does something I’ve seen in no other cheap/free tool: export right from a VIDEO_TS folder (the format of the video on a non-copy-protected DVD) to MPEG1, a format that plays well on all platforms, all video players, and – an especially popular feature here – plays beautifully in a Microsoft PowerPoint slide without having to link to another application. It’s $23.32 shareware. Very impressive.

(I love this warning on the “Advanced Settings” window.)

The ability to play video inside a Flash SWF file was introduced with the release of Flash MX, which opened up many new and exciting opportunities for Flash developers. Both Macromedia/Adobe and third-party developers have further upgraded Flash’s video capabilities with the introduction of powerful encoders and batch processing applications. James Gonzalez reviews Sorenson Squeeze 4, one of the leading third-party Flash video-encoding applications, and shows you how to create high-quality Flash video by using this nifty tool.

A good overview. The advantages of Squeeze are the ability to compress to most online video formats:

Although I focus on Flash-based video encoding in this article, depending on the version of Squeeze you purchase, Squeeze also encodes video to the QuickTime, MPEG-4, RealMedia, MPEG-1 and 2 (including the VCD, SVCD, and DVD MPEG Specifications), and Windows Media formats.

I’m increasingly _dis_enchanted with the proprietary formats – QuickTime, Real, Windows Media, Flash – because of the difficulty of easily creating a file that works across players and platforms without paying a lot for the compressor. in my experience, the varieties of MPEG play well all over, but compressing them isn’t easily done from raw video with readily available tools, and they’re bandwidth-heavy.

This afternoon we’re getting a quick iMovie tutorial and then they’re turning us loose to make a project. This is my first hands-on with iMovie HD, too. These folks are doing a pretty good job of making Mac-ish things comprehensible for this crowd of mostly PC users. The demo clip is a 2:44 in duration, 320×240 pixels, and 10 frames per second. Because iMovie only works with DV formatted video material, iMovie HD is taking almost 10 minutes to import this clip for editing – essentially creating an additional 20 frames per second while scaling the size up to 1440×1080. The file size will go from 4.4 MB to 1.39 GB, since we’re working in the iMovie HD default resolution. Which is too big. I ended up creating a new project in DV format; 30 frames per second, and 720×480 resolution. The file was 562 MB, still big, but much more manageable (and viewable on non-HD televisions).

At the end of the hands-on (iMovie HD’s themes are very, very nice once you get how they work), we talked about storyboards, when and when not to take the time, and showed some of the storyboarded sequence-pitch outtakes from Shrek. Which is entertaining, and shows pretty effectively how they help visually think through a story.

Finally, links to royalty free images at Stock Exchange and music at Freeplay Music, and reference books, in addition to the others mentioned (and shortly hope to have linked in Part I):

• The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories
• 20 Master Plots: And How to Build Them

• 45 Master Characters: Mythic Models for Creating Original Characters

These are my notes from the morning session of the Digitally Mediated Storytelling workshop.

The “Digital Campfire”

A point to keep in mind: among other reasons kids don’t engage: many kids come to school to rest up for that night’s game session. So engage them in storytelling – not telling them a story, but telling a digital story about themselves – changes their attitudes about reading & writing

Good source: Grammar of Fantasy by Rodari

One way to start: “what would happen if…”

• you woke up as a dog
• you could suddenly fly
• everybody could suddenly fly
• the world was flat
• you could save the world

• what if gravity disappeared and you had to ‘save all the roller coasters and theme parks’

  usable to build curriculum and meet standards

  Digital cameras: if not available, use cameras in the students’ cell phones for this
  

  Any object can be a story:

• toys as character (Toy Story)
• at the table – knife and spoon
• taboo or dark stories (Beauty and the Beast)
• Story of YOU: your obit, how you want to be remembered
• throw words at them:
  • what if spoons were flat?
  • a girl, a red cape, a wolf, a grandma, and a helicopter (throw a wild card into a familiar story)

• umbrellas were inverted

  Seven elements of storytelling: (this from Joe Lambert’s Center From Digital Storytelling, with his approval)

  1. Point of view: every story has one
  2. No one narrates a story without a reason
  3. they’re told to make a point
  4. pattern of describing a desire, a problem that must be addressed by a central character
  5. POV drives the reader/listener to empathize with the character and identify with the story
  6. POV questions
     • what’s the reason for the story?
     • What is the premise?

• How authentic?

• Fourth and twelve story: boy relates to dad through football; dad is late to championship game where son’s playing; killed in car crash on the way. Boy isn’t told so he’s not distracted; team needs big last minute score (fourth down, twelve to go) to win, and he makes the play. Finds later dad died at… fourth and twelfth street.
• Emotional content
• engage the viewer
• “Contrast and affinity” are essential; someone you’re rooting for and someone to root against
• resurrection tales: must find something that’s missing, something must be lost and regained (Comedy) or lost forever (Tragedy)
  • Gain theory – people would rather gain something than have it – sometimes chasing it is the story
• think Cheers with Sam and Diane, and how the show almost jumped the shark when they got together; Diane leaves, the tension, and interest, and quality returned
• fundamental emotional paradigms
• death, our sense of loss, love

• loneliness, confidence and vulnerability, acceptance and rejection
• Power of Voice-over
• Reading vs. reciting changes the story
  • too many get self-conscious, and don’t read engagingly
  • tell them to “say it, don’t read it”
  • have them do he project, then have them critique it and ask them “What would you do differently?”
  • then have them do it!
• then have them include needed vocabulary, other concepts, etc.
• children love to hear their own voices, or a familiar one

• voice is a great gift – telling the story in your own voice; your audience hearing it will identify much more
• Soundtrack
• match the emotion
• sound effects and music
• overlapping/blending
  • don’t have scene/picture end as music ends
• music should bridge picture changes
• Supplemental to visual, or is it MTV generation-type where the visaul supplements the audio
• music plays on our perception of visual information
• Key: for these purposes, do the visuals first

• write a script about the pictures, rather than picking pics for a song (unless that’s the point)

• if they can do this successfully, then the story is likely to be much stronger and engaging
• Pacing
• considered by many to be the true secret of successful storytelling
• rhythm of the story determines much of what sustains an audience interest
• vary the rhythm
  • match the emotion
  • or change it
  • intonation
  • vary the speed
  • rapid cuts and long takes and long pauses when they fit – and in a good story, it will fit
• lots of percussion, long smooth sequence

• make sure the vitality matches the emotional mood

  Page to screen

  • Screenplay is only an outline
• Have a theme
• Linear structure: beginning-middle-end
• Has a subject
• Student question: “Why read it if I can watch the movie?” “That’s their interpretation; what’s yours?”
• Make a “book trailer” – a commercial/booktalk on video: Digital Booktalks at UCF
• Storyboard thinking – visualize the sequences
• but often, students don’t need to do it first; get them going, then use storyboard as revision, to clarify point, pacing, etc (same with teaching, BTW)
• Who is your target audience?
• keep it authentic
  • if it’s a digital booktalk from a 5th grader, do you need to fix a minor audio glitch?
• Likely not, for authenticity’s sake.
• Power of epic thinking, building to a big finish, a solid resolution
  • see “Drive By” on the Digital Booktalk site as an example of economy
  • peer evaluation helps a lot here; all do the same book, confer with each other

• good ones go on the web site, and they decide which ones are the good ones

  Project hints

  • Good title helps set the scene
• Have a beginning-middle-end
• Tell visually… “text as a crutch” only when necessary
• Use transitions with a purpose
• Use color (as motif – red is significant)
• Use of tempo, length of time pictures are onscreen
• Music (Garageband, if Macs available) – Copyright issues!

• Credits – everyone gets listed

  Showed several examples from kids….

  Another book cited: The Call of Story, by a physician, (psychiatrist?) clients did better telling stories in therapy.

  Showed some by homeless people too, who are irrepressible once they’re started…

  Lunch break – new post for after lunch.

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