Making a Movie with Windows XP : Visual QuickProject Guide

Chapter Summary

Why Buy This Book?

This book details how to create a birthday party video with Microsoft's Movie Maker 2.

• Learn by doing - The easiest way to learn to use a new video editor is to build a project with it. Starting with the video you've shot of the birthday party (and digital still pictures as well), you'll learn how to capture, trim, add transitions, titles, effects and background music and then render your video for desktop viewing or for inserting into a DVD authoring program like MyDVD.

• Short and sweet - At 140 pages, this book is entirely focused on the task at hand. It doesn't show every option (that's what the Visual QuickStart Guide is for), just the best one for your birthday party video. Get the job done quickly, and learn the program to boot.

• Big, four color pictures - The emphasis here is on VISUAL, with big, four color images showing you the way. You won't have to read a lot of text; just follow the images.

Reviews:

You've seen your friends' camcorder-shot, digitally edited home movies-and you're pretty sure you can do better! However, that doesn't mean you want to spend days (or even weeks) learning everything there is to know about the free video editing software at the heart of your Windows XP OS. You learn by doing-and this guide delivers.

In these pages, veteran author Jan Ozer gets right to the point, using simple project-based instruction and big, colorful screen shots to guide you through the process of editing your very first video project with Movie Maker. By focusing on a single goal (making that first movie) rather than exploring every option and feature, Jan demonstrates the quickest, easiest, smartest route to cinematic success.

Each short lesson builds on the last as you learn how to create transitions, titles, wipes, dissolves, freeze frames, and more in the process of editing your video into a finished film that you can then post on the Web or copy to CD or DVD. 

Chapter Summary:

introduction

1. welcome to movie maker

2. collecting project assets

3. preparing your clips

4. assembling your clips

5. inserting transitions

6. applying special effects

7. creating titles

8. using audio

9. creating automovies

10. that's a wrap

Making a Movie With Windows XP: Visual QuickProject Guide