- The Jan-FAQs
- The Movie Maker Interface
- Creating and Managing Collections
- Customizing Your Collection Views
- Customizing Movie Maker's Panes
- Setting Project Defaults
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Customizing Your Collection Views
After you import a still image or audio file into a collection, Movie Maker defaults to Thumbnails view, displaying each of these assets separately. For example, Figure 3.31 shows a collection of still images, each with its own thumbnail image.
In addition, when you import video into Movie Maker, you'll likely subdivide each video into separate clips using techniques discussed in "Creating Clips in Video Files" in Chapter 8. Once displayed in a collection, each clip will also have its own thumbnail image.
Though the thumbnails help, you're still confronted with multiple assets in each collection. Many times, particularly with video, it's helpful to rename clips in your collection so that you can find relevant clips more quickly during editing.
Movie Maker provides a Details view as well as a Thumbnails view, plus six different ways to sort content in each collection. All will be useful down the road when you're trying to find that one critical piece of content that will make or break your production.
To rename content in the collection
- Do one of the following:
- Click the text beneath the thumbnail twice slowly.
- Click the thumbnail; then right-click and choose Rename.
Figure 3.34 Renaming clips and other content makes them easy to find during editing.
- Type the desired name and press Enter on your keyboard.
Movie Maker renames the item (
Figure 3.35
).
Figure 3.35 Clip renamed.
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To switch between Thumbnails and Details views
- On the main toolbar, click the Views button and choose Details (
Figure 3.36
).
Movie Maker switches to Details view ( Figure 3.37 ).
Figure 3.36 Accessing the Details view.
Figure 3.37 Details view.
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To arrange icons in the collection
- On the main toolbar, click the Views button and choose Arrange Icons By (
Figure 3.38
).
Figure 3.38 You can sort collections using any of the parameters listed in this menu.
- Choose the desired parameter to arrange the icons. Movie Maker arranges the icons based upon the selected parameter.
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TIP
- In Details view, you can sort items in a collection by clicking the title of the column you want to sort on. For example,
Figure 3.39
shows the 2003 Reviews Pics collection, which contains pictures of my daughters taken over the preceding year. To sort by Date Taken, click that heading; Movie Maker will display the images in chronological order, starting with the oldest (with the arrow pointing up). To reverse the order and display the newest first, click the heading again.
Figure 3.39 Or click any heading in Details view to sort based on that parameter.
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To contract and expand branches on the collections tree
- To contract a branch, hiding it from view, click the minus sign to the left of the collection branch (
Figure 3.40
).
Movie Maker contracts the branch ( Figure 3.41 ).
Figure 3.40 Close a branch by clicking the minus sign.
Figure 3.41 Branch closed.
- To expand a branch, click the plus sign to the left of the collection branch (
Figure 3.42
).
Movie Maker expands the branch ( Figure 3.43 ).
Figure 3.42 Click the plus sign to reopen a branch.
Figure 3.43 There's the branch again.
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