Assembling Your Source Material

Before you can edit your movie, you must have something to edit. This means importing whatever video and audio you want to include in your finished movie.

For most movies, your main source material will be your original video tape(s). You'll use Windows Movie Maker to record the tape as you play it back on your VCR or camcorder. You can import material from more than one videotape, in case you want to edit together several shorter tapes into a longer movie.

If you want to add background music or voiceover narration, those are other elements you need to assemble. In addition, any title cards you want to include must be created (in a graphics-editing program) and then imported into Windows Movie Maker.

Each item you assemble goes into your collection for this project. The movies you record are included as clips, which you can rearrange and delete and otherwise manipulate to edit your project. (You also can split big clips into several smaller clips, as I'll explain later.)

After you have all your elements assembled, you can proceed with editing. But before we get into the tough job of editing, I'll show you how to assemble various types of source material.

Starting a New Project

Before you import any source material, you must have something to import it into. That thing is called a project, and you start a new one by selecting File, New, Project. You can open an existing project by selecting File, Open Project.

Recording from a Camcorder or VCR

If you have an analog camcorder or VCR, you have to connect it to the video capture board installed in your PC. (If your PC doesn't have a video capture board and few new PCs do you'll have to purchase and install one.) If you have a DV camcorder or VCR, you connect it through your PC's FireWire connection.

After you have the camcorder or VCR connected and turned on, select File, Capture Video. This launches the Video Capture Wizard. Follow the onscreen instructions to:

1.	Select the capture device you want to use.
2.	Specify where you want the captured video (and audio) file to be saved, and enter a name for the new file.
3.	Choose the video setting (the level of recording quality). For most purposes, Best Quality for Playback on My Computer is the best option. If you're inputting from a DV source, you can choose the higher-quality Digital Device Format (DV-AVI), although this option can create some mighty big files. (Remember, the higher the quality you choose, the larger the resulting movie files.)
4.	If you're capturing video from a DV camcorder, choose the method you want to use to capture the video and audio.
5.	Click the Record button.

After you've made these selections, press the Play button on your camcorder or VCR; WMM automatically records the playback from your input device. (Recording will stop when you press the Stop button, or after two hours, whichever comes first.) The new clips you create will now appear in the Collections area of the Movie Maker window.

Importing Other Files

Although most of your projects will consist primarily of movies recorded from videotape, you can include several other types of source material. For example, you can edit in movie clips you download from the Internet, or songs you rip from your favorite CDs, or title slides you create in a graphics-editing program.

In case you're curious, Table 16.1 lists all the different file types that can be imported into Windows Movie Maker.

Table 16.1. Acceptable File Types for Importing into Windows Movie Maker

Type of File	File Types
Video	ASF, AVI, M1V, MP2, MPA, MPE, MPEG, MPG, WMV
Audio	AIF, AIFC, AIFF, AU, MP3, SND, WAV, WMA
Still images	BMP, DIB, GIF, JFIF, JPE, JPEG, JPG

There are a few eccentricities you should know about when you import some of these files into Movie Maker. These include

• When you import a file, the file itself doesn't actually move or get copied. Instead, Movie Maker creates a clip that points to the original file. That means that if you move or delete the original file, Movie Maker won't be pointing to the right place.

• When you import a video file, Movie Maker will break it into multiple clips based on scene transitions. So don't freak out when you import a single file and see multiple clips appear in the Movie Maker window.

• When you import a still image that's taller than it is wide, it will be resized or framed to fit within a standard 4:3 ratio television screen.

All that said, importing a file is a piece of cake. Just follow these instructions:

1.	Select the collection into which you want to import.
2.	Select File, Import Into Collections.
3.	When the Import File dialog box appears, navigate to and select the file you want to import.
4.	Click the Open button.

The file you imported now appears as one or more clips in Movie Maker's Collections area.