Windows Movie Maker 101

Create your first movie

Jul 10, 2006
Sharon Koss

Movie Maker 101 - Created with Photoshop

Making a basic movie is easy with Windows Movie Maker. Getting started is the only hard part.

Getting Organized

The first thing to do is decide on a theme for your movie. Easy starting themes could be a vacation, family outing or even for insurance. Collect pictures and music; decide their order to be displayed. Create a folder and copy photos and music to this folder. Keep this movie short, 3 minutes or less.

Assemble the Movie

1. Open Movie Maker by clicking on Start, All Programs, Accessories then Movie Maker. Notice that Movie Maker has 4 sections, Task Pane, Collections, Movie Player and Storyboard/Timeline.

2. Clear any previous pictures and music by clicking on EDIT, Select All, EDIT, and Delete.

3. Import pictures into the Collection section by clicking on Import Pictures, section 1 in the Task Pane. Go to the folder that contains your photos, click on the first picture, and hold down the Shift key, click on the last picture, release the shift key and click on Import. You should see your pictures in the Collections section.

4. You can use either Storyboard or the Timeline. Click and drag pictures to the Storyboard. Continue dragging pictures until all of them have been inserted.

Add Music

1. Click on Import Audio or Music, go to the folder where you saved your music, click on the file, click on Import.

2. Switch to the Timeline, move the scroll bar all the way to the left in this section, go to the Collections section, scroll to the top, click and drag the music file to the beginning of the Timeline. You can move the music file (click and drag), to a different location on the Timeline if it is not in the correct spot.

3. Preview your movie by clicking on the play button in the Movie Player. When the movie plays, notice the blue line that moves across the Timeline. The default time for each picture to show is .05 seconds. To adjust the time for all the clips, click on TOOLS, Options, and Advanced. To change time for an individual picture, click and drag the black arrow on the right of the clip on the Timeline.