What are themes?

In Movie Maker, we have a number of transitions and effects that we can add between and let me call these slides.
For those who might not know what a transition between slides is, this is an effect that you add between two video or photo files.
You can add slide transitions and effects for each slide, or you can let Movie Maker determine. For the later we use themes.
Themes are the easiest and fastest way to hand-made movies that capture in Movie Maker.

 

 

Add theme

We find various themess under the menu-item “Home” (1) in the ribbon under the section “Auto Movie Themes” (2).Clicking on the downward pointing arrow opens a menu (3) where all the available themes in Movie Maker are displayed.

To apply a theme, click one of these themes. I’m here and can prove difficult at all, you should try it.
You can try this easily. Besides, when you hover over a theme, subject moves, you already see an example in the preview window.

If you do not want to chose a theme, click the first theme in the list (A).

 

If you have chosen a theme, you are asked whether you want to add music.
Select “Yes” if you wish to do.
This opens a window where you navigate to the sound file you want to add, select it and click the “Open” button.
Select “No” if you do not or if you want to do it later.

 

When a theme is applied, four blocks appear in the upper left corner of each slide (1). So you already know that the slides have a theme.
Move your mouse over a slide, an information window which contains the transition between this and the next slide is mentioned (2).
The type of transition is randomly chosen by Movie Maker.

 

Adding Music

To add music to your project you have to click on the “Yes” button when you were asked if you wanted to add music, or click the button “Add Music” under the tab “Home”.
What you did does not matter, in both cases, this opens a window where you navigate to the sound file you want to add, you select it, and you click the “Open” button.

When music is added appear a number of options you can set for this music. Prerequisite for thse options to be seen is that the time indicator (A) is located on a slide where there is music.
Then click the “Options” tab (B) in the menu bar.
This has some options on the Ribbon (C).

 

Let me once go through this from left to right.

The first button “Music Volume” determines the volume of the music, that’s for sure.

The two adjacent options are for the beginning and the end of the music, in and out.
For those who do not know what this means, fade in is from soft to hard, fade out is the reverse.

The next button “Split” divides the music piece into two parts. The place where the fragment is cleaved, is the position of the time indicator.

 

With the adjacent three options we can set the start time, the starting point and the end point.
Select this for the music piece, and then set different times.

The start time can be set in different ways.
One way is to position the time indicator in the timeline where you want music to start, and click on the “Set Start Time” button. A second way is by dragging the music bar, which is the green bar above that, to the position you want. And a third way is to type a time in the textbox “Start Time”.

 

We can trim the music using the buttons and fill boxes for starting and ending points.
Place the indicator on the time where you want the music to start or end, and click the respective button.

When you do this, cut the excess music at the start or end of road.

One drawback I find is that your inserted music can not “walk” or “repeat”. You need to copy and paste the music piece, when it is not long enough.
Right above the sound file, choose “Copy” from the pop-up menu, move the time indicator to the desired position, right click and choose “Paste”.
There may be something to do for this in the next version of Microsoft Movie Maker.

To remove added music, select the music bar, and click the Delete key on your keyboard.

 

Information!

If you have annoying background noise in a video and wish you to remove it, select this video clip (1), select the tab “Edit” (2), click the button “Volume” (3), and place the slider completely to the left ( 4).

 

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