Editing with Windows Movie Maker 2.0+

Note: Windows Movie Maker is currently at version 2.1. If you're living in a country where microsoft allows you to download the latest version use that one. It's said to solve a lot of crashes and problems i have run into when trying to make the guide for it. Germany is not one of those countries so all screenshots are from version 2.0.

Open Movie Maker 2.0 and an (file) explorer. Drag and Drop the movie clips you want in your movie to the collections area. They will be added under the Collections tree root.

Now drag and drop and the imported video segments onto the big boxes on the time linein the order you want them to display.

Now select Tools -> Video Transitions and select a transiltion you like. Be carefull with what transitions you use and make sure they don't annoy the visitor. I mostly use fading since itallows the watcher to seethat the movie is cut at that point. It's not uncommon to use hard cuts if you edit video professional but I found out it's not that great of an idea if you are recording a longer movie in the same area since it often looks like the player warped around or there was a lag spike.

Now select File -> Save Movie File. An assistant pops up:

1. Select "My computer". Press "Next"
2. Enter a name for the movie (eg. 20060201_Giran_Siege) and make sure you select a drive with enough HD space. Press "Next".
3. Click on "Show more Choices" for a full list of profiles. Select the profile if your choice and hit next to start the encoding

WARNING: Windows Movie Makeronly offers predefined export profiles that are mosty aimed at display on TV or other external devices. There are no predefined profiles that would allow you to export your movie to typical game resolutions like 1024x768 or 800x600. To use those you need to create yourown profiles. You can do so in 2 ways:

1. Download Windows Media Encoder. Use the built in profiles (PRX) editor to create a profile for use at Movie Maker export.
2. Download a random profile (.PRX). Open it with a text editor like notepad or ultraedit and replace the predefined values with the values you want/need.