Editing Video With Windows Live Movie Maker

I have been having a small issue lately with my video editing endeavors. I feel like I’ve been trapped…trapped in a weak editing environment. I have been using Youtube’s video editor and while it’s simple and somewhat effective, it’s limited.

I hate dwelling on things, I really do. But when I see something out there that is so simple to accomplish, something that I don’t have the tools to do, I go mad. Simply mad.

All I needed was for Window Movie Maker to do a few more things. One – I needed it to read .MOV files. It didn’t do that. Two – I needed it to do some fast forward time lapse stuff as well as slow motion. These are simply things for any video editor and I continually wondered why my version was lacking.

I did some research this morning about the .MOV files and discovered that the version of Windows Movie Maker I had installed on my Windows Vista machine was old. People online were saying that I needed to update to Windows “Live” Movie Maker. It’s still free. I did that and I was able to import my videos. The only problem at that point was that the video wasn’t being read. A bunch of question marks were showing up in the frames. Weird.

I started thinking and wondered if my laptop might be able to run these things correctly so I fired it up. The laptop runs Windows 7 and has Windows Live Movie Maker already installed. Sure enough, once I opened the raw video in the program, everything worked. It was a beautiful thing.

Hmmm…then came the odd part. I started editing…you know, some transitions and text and stuff like that. I couldn’t find any place that held the controls for the fast motion and slow motion. I went on Youtube (like I usually do) to see if anyone made a video describing my problem and offered a solution. Well, wouldn’t you know, someone did just that. I found out that I needed to update to the latest version on Windows Live Movie Maker. Apparently I was using the beta version that came with Windows. I updated and the controls appeared. Awesome.

I edited a driving video I took yesterday. I made my edits obvious, so when you watch it, you’ll see what I did. If you want to know more, just ask.

This video took the better part of this afternoon to edit, but that time was mostly used learning the program. Now that I know it, I could whip this up and 20 minutes.

Also, I am trying to add information to the videos that I post, such as camera, lens, editing software, etc… I hope I’m doing this right because that info is really helpful to people needing to know.

Check out my video and make sure to watch where I slow down for the birds.

Windows Live Movie Maker – Slow and Fast Motion

Camera : Canon EOS Rebel T3i
Lens : Canon EF-S 18-135mm IS f/3.5-5.6 Standard Zoom Lens
Camera Mount : Delkin Fat Gecko Mini Camera Mount (mounted to windshield)
Video Quality and Frame Rate : 1920×1080 / 30fps
Editing Software : Windows Live Movie Maker 2011
Music : Arctic Stomp – Terry Devine-King / Tom Jenkins
Vehicle: 2008 BMW X5