Movie Tasks Part 2: Edit Movie

Arranging Your Media

The Storyboard is for visually planning your project. You can add video or images into the larger white boxes and in the little boxes that sit between each board you can choose to add a particular transition from one clip to another. We'll get into transitions later.

The Timeline is where you will do all of your final editing and most of editing process actually occurs here. It's a precise time-based layout and ultimately editing all comes down to timing. It has audio and video tracks as well as an auxiliary track for title overlay. If you are still in storyboard mode there is a button just above the storyboards saying, show timeline, click this to switch back and fourth between the storyboards and timeline. The timeline allows you to trim clips down and reorder them easily.

Drag clips from the Collection bin into the storyboard template in the order you want them. If you are undecided about your order you can switch modes to the timeline layout and arrange them in time there to get a better sense of the actual progression of the clips. If you wish to add music or audio to your project you will need to use the timeline. Just drag the audio clip from Collections into the audio track.

Now that you have your materials you should notice places where you want to trim things down or split things up. Make sure you are in the timeline mode for this.

To trim a clip move your arrow to the end or beginning of the clip and your arrow will change to a red symbol. Click and drag to change the length of the clip.

To split a clip move the timeline slider, the blue vertical bar, to the time at which you wish to slice the clip. Go up to the Clip menu and choose Split. Notice it has the shortcut Ctrl+L, this is extremely handy for making a lot of splits in your clips.

That's it for cutting things up so just split, trim, and rearrange until your film is in order and the timing is right.

Add Video Effects

With effect you can generate the look you want for your film. To view the possible video effects look in the Movie Tasks window and expand the Edit Movie menu, then click on View video effects. There should be a tiled menu of effects to choose from. Click and drag the one you want to try out onto the clip you want to effect. Play through your timeline and watch the new look. If you don't like it, Ctrl+Z or edit Undo will remove it. Try them all out and choose one or a combination of several for you film or specific clip.

Add Video Transitions

Again find these under the Movie Tasks menu and click on View video transitions. Drag the desired transition down to the timeline in between the two clips you wish make a transition between.

Make Titles or Credits

Movie Tasks again, click Make titles or credits, then select from the list where you want the title to go. Type your text into the field supplied and either click done or investigate the other options. You can change the title animation to give it more life or change some of the attributes of the text font. I recommend using some options that differ from the default to differentiate your film from the Movie Maker mold.