Table of contents

Setting Exact Duration

Reverse Video
Creating Custom Titles and Credits

Setting Exact Duration

In Movie Maker one can specify the default duration time for still pictures which is
applied to each picture when it is added to the story board. This is normally done from
the menu Tools->Option->Advanced. Similarly duration time for a new transition can
be specified at the same dialog tab.

However for some unknown reason the Movie Maker's designers have limited the unit
of time one can specify in this dialog to take 1 second increments. Only when
specifying a time duration of less than 1 sec, it accepts sub second time values which
is still restricted to some pre determined increment values.

All this is very unsatisfactory as it cripples the ability to sync a slideshow with music
beats or doing any other creative editing effect.

This is completely unnecessary too: there is no technical reason for such a restrictions
in these values. It seems somebody just over-designed the dialog box controls.

Good news:

I have discovered a hack to partially overcome this restriction!!!

The values entered in this dialog are stored by Movie Maker in the registry as
milliseconds at the following location :

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MM20\Options\DefaultVideoTrackImageDuratio

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MM20\Options\DefaultTransitionDuration

One can modify the values directly in the registry. However I have made two vb scripts
to enter the values in these registry entries easily and safely. (Remember to restart
Movie Maker for the change to have an effect).

Note that values less than 125ms (1/8th of a second) for Default Picture
Duration do not seem to work :-(.

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effects & transitions and tips & tricks

Reverse Video
Since Movie Maker cannot do reverse video, one has to consider alternative ways to do
this effect. PapaJohn has explained a method to do reverse a video clip by extracting
out all frames and then joining them in reverse order.

However I use a much simpler method to do this using VirtualDub and Avisynth. It
works with AVI files only which are either non-compressed or compressed using frame
by frame compression such as MJPEG.

Assuming you have got the latest versions of both VirtualDub and AviSynth installed
and working correctly:

1. First convert your input clip to a non-compressed AVI file. To do this open the file
in vdub, from Video menu select Compression and set compression to
"Uncompressed RGB". Now "Save As" an AVI file say "mymovie.avi".
 2. Now open Notepad or any other text editor and copy paste the following line in
it:

AviSource("mymovie.avi").Reverse()

and save the file as "mymovie_reverse.avs" in the same folder where you saved
above video file.

3. Again in VirtualDub open this avs file using File -> Open. While keeping the sam
uncompressed selection in the Compression dialog, use File -> "Save as" to save
the target movie file: mymovie_reverse.avi. Let the video to be saved.

That's it. Now you can edit this video in Movie Maker.

If you like these tips & tricks please consider donating to encourage me to work on more such freeware
effects & transitions and tips & tricks