Video making help...(Using Windows Movie Maker)?

Question

Okay, im making a Naruto AMV and i want to add an icon, i guess thats what its called, from photobucket. I dont know if im going about this the right way, but how do i get the icon into my video? If theres another site i should be using for this kind of thing, plz give me the link. And if im in the right site...plz tell me how to do it right. If you need specifics, im trying to use a Gaara icon, he's dancing. Plz help!!! ToT

Did i mention it was animated? Well, after i choose the ANIMATED Gaara icon i want, it shows me a preview. Right, so how would i download it without the download basically being a link to the preview? Im still kind of new to this stuff.

Answer 1

Hi kaylacatz,

If you're trying to do what I *think* you're trying to do.. .I've got some bad news for you:

Okay, what I *think* you would like to do is have this icon you mention kinda 'floating' on the screen during the length of the video, like 'on top' of the running video. Is that correct?

Then NO: you're not going to do this with Windows Movie Maker, because what you're referring to is, technically, like a Video Overlay (static image or animated..doesn't matter), which is too advanced for WMM.

It's similar to Text overlays (which WMM does do), because in either case, the application needs to redraw *every frame* the text overlays and literally 'cut' the picture so that the text can be displayed in the places the text occupies. But again, WMM doesn't offer that for pictures or video. Neither will Apple's equivalent to WMM, iMovie.

Instead, these folks who are doing it are either using a higher-end (retail) video editing application such as Adobe Premiere, Avid, Final Cut Pro, Pinnacle, etc or some freeware I've *never* heard of...which is not saying a freeware doesn't exist to do so, but I just don't know of any.

Try checking some AMV boards or descriptions for AMV's uploaded to You Tube or something; maybe someone will mention the freebie app they might be using. Or do a search here for Free Video Editing Software and see what comes up. I did that search here and at least came up with this page http://www.brothersoft.com/downloads/video-editing.html which has a bunch of applications listed..but I've never used any of these apps and couldn't recommend one over another specifically.

Answer 2

Well, basically you have to have that file on your computer.
Save the picture (its a gif, right?) to your hard drive.
Then once its on your hard drive, you should be able to use it whenever.

I've never tried using WMM with gifs, but it seems that its likely that you can use gifs inside WMM without difficulties, as I have seen many AMVs with gifs used in them.