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How to make a video out of an audio mix with images in Windows Movie Maker


Steve

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If you've got a straight up audio mix that you want to share on YouTube, you might want to add a few images to it when you turn it into a video. Here's how to do that in Windows Movie Maker, which is free. I know there's people into video editing and stuff on here who will probably scoff at this tutorial, haha, but some people might not know how to do this.

 

1. Install Windows Movie Maker

 

If you're running Windows 7 or 8, you need to install Windows Essentials: -

 

http://windows.micro...essentials-home

 

Windows Essentials has several components. When you run the installer you can choose to either install everything or choose which elements you want to install, so you can install just Movie Maker/Photo Gallery if that's all you need.

 

2. Prepare your mix and images

 

In my experience, it's best if your mix is in WAV format as this seems to prevent any sync issues. When I used a VBR MP3, the sync would sometimes be slightly off, while WAV worked just fine.

 

Size your images, then name them like this in the order you want them to appear in: -

 

01.jpg

02.jpg

03.jpg

 

etc.

 

Doing it that way means you can drop the whole lot into Movie Maker in one go and they'll appear in the right order.

 

If you want the images to change as the tracks change in your mix, it's a good idea to skim through your mix and note down the times where the transitions occur. What you want is the length of each track in seconds, not the total length from the beginning of the mix, so for example, you might do it like this: -

 

Track 1 = 142

Track 2 = 89

Track 3 = 158

 

etc.

 

If your mix is already split into separate tracks/files rather than being one long file, you can just right-click on each file and see how long it is in the properties box which gives you a more accurate figure. Or you can just load your mix up into an audio player on your PC and see each track length there.

 

3. Using Movie Maker step 1 - Creating the movie

 

When you fire up Movie Maker, the main screen is split into 2 parts. There's a video preview on the left, then a big blank area on the right. Highlight all of your photos and drag and drop them to the blank area on the right. If you numbered them as mentioned above, they should be in the correct order. If not, you can just drag them around.

 

The next step is to add the audio. Click on the first image, then click the "Add music" button in the toolbar. Browse to your WAV file and select it.

 

Next, you want to set how long each image displays for. The first image should still be selected, but if not, click on it again to highlight it. Click "Edit" at the very top of the screen. In the toolbar you will see a box that says "Duration" and the default time will be showing (7 seconds). Type how long you want the first image to display into that box and hit enter. Then click on the second image and enter in the duration for that and so on.

 

As you are doing this, you can preview the video in the left hand pane, so you can check that the images switch at exactly the right time. If not, you can just go back to Edit - Duration and make the necessary adjustments. Make sure that you set the duration of the final image so it lasts long enough for your mix to finish. You don't want the end to be chopped off by a fraction, nor do you want the video to carry on running after the audio has ended as that just makes the video's file size bigger for no reason.

 

At any point you can save the project by clicking the dark blue menu item at the very top left and choosing "Save project". Once your project is saved, don't move the folder(s) containing your photos/audio!

 

4. Using Movie Maker step 2 - Adding transition effects

 

This is optional, but you may want to add transition effects, rather than just having the images instantly change from one to the next. You can do this via the Animations menu item at the top of the screen. You can use different transition effects throughout the video, or you can choose one effect and choose to have it apply to every transition via the "Apply to all" button.

 

5. Using Movie Maker step 3 - Saving the movie

 

Once you're happy with your video, you need to save it. Click the dark blue menu item at the very top left and choose "Save movie". You will then see a bunch of presets that you can select. There are presets in there for Vimeo and YouTube. I'm not sure about the Vimeo option, but the YouTube option will give you a full 1080p video with a .mp4 extension, so it's in the correct format for YouTube. Once you've made your selection, you will be asked to name your movie and choose where to save it, so do that and the encoding process will begin. This will take a while, especially if you have an older machine.

 

And that's basically it. You'll then have a full HD video with great sound quality (assuming your mix sounds great to begin with of course) that you can upload. It is worth doing a full 1080p version because on YouTube, when you watch a video in a lower resolution the audio is more compressed, so even though the video may not be the important part as it's the audio that people will be focussing on the most, giving people a 1080p option means that they get the best sound quality possible.

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Guest loop skywalker

cheers mate..ive messed about a bit with movie maker and its great for a free program and i learnt other stuff from this too mate..thanks a lot.

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