Time to edit

Now that you've added your video clip (and a music file to go with it if you want to), you are ready to edit.

Windows Movie Maker does not allow you to cut a piece out from the middle of a video and then stitch the beginning and end parts together, minus the middle part. To do that, you'll need to work with multiple pieces of the same video, shortened at the start and ends to show just the piece you want.

Let me explain it this way: imagine your video as an old fashioned film reel with individual frames showing each scene. Say you had multiple copies of the same film reel, but you wanted to make one long reel by cutting out different pieces from the reels and taping them together.

In a way, it works the same here. You'll "cut" off the parts before and after the piece that you need, leaving you with just the part in the middle. To add a second piece, you'll do the same to a second reel, cutting off the parts before and after that which you need.

Here's how it works in practice: to cut off the first part of your video in the timeline, move your mouse over the start line of your video file. Your cursor will change into a horizontal red arrow that points left and right. Click the left mouse button and hold it, dragging the cursor to the right.

As you drag it to the right, you'll be able to see what scene is being shown in the preview player on the top right. So drag the cursor to the right until just before the scene you want to start with. Let go of the mouse button.

Windows Movie Maker now basically deletes the opening scenes right up to where you dragged the mouse and moves the whole video bar to the left again, so that it begins at time 0 in the timeline. (Note that the embedded audio file gets changed at the same time. The music file that you added separately, however, will remain unedited ? you have to edit it individually in the same way you did with the video file.)

Now do the same from the right-hand end of the video-file, dragging your mouse all the way to the left up to right after the scene you wanted to end with.

> Add more scenes and finish it: page 4