Custom Camera Back Overlay for WMM 6.0

Following my series of custom Movie Maker image overlays, here's an overlay where your video appears on the back of a digital camera.

There are two installers depending on whether you are running on a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows. The installer will put the necessary files into, C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared.

Blaine's Camera Back Overlay (32-bit)
Blaine's Camera Back Overlay (64-bit)

To use the new title

Go to 'Tools' > 'Titles and Credits' > 'Title on the selected clip'.

Click on 'change the title animation'.

Under your list of one line titles there will a new title animation: Camera Back Overlay (4:3)

Pick this then click 'Done'.

Stretch the title so that it extends for the length of your clip.

If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the original forum post that inspired this title.

Installing Windows Movie Maker 6.0 on Windows 7 or 8

If you are reading this, I'm going to assume you've upgraded or purchased at least one PC with Windows 7 or 8 and discovered Windows Movie Maker is no where to be found. In its place, Microsoft now offers a set of programs called "Windows Essentials". Often these programs are installed on a new PC but otherwise you must download the Movie Maker program to once again have the ability to edit movies.

Many people have tried the newer version of Movie Maker 2011 or 2012 and complained about the lack of a traditional timeline, issues with crashing, long times to prepare video files and the inability to customize the transitions, effects and titles. If you have been building up a library of custom titles, transitions and effects under Windows Movie Maker 6.0, none of these can be used in the newest Movie Maker because the rendering architecture has changed and Microsoft has no API for customizing things.

The good news is you can still use the latest version of Windows Movie Maker 6.0 from Vista. You can do this manually by copying the files from a Vista machine, registering some DLLs and creating a shortcut in your start menu. Or you can just use the installers I created below:

Movie Maker 6.0 for Windows 7/8 (64-bit)
Movie Maker 6.0 for Windows 7/8 (32-bit)

There are two versions (64-bit or 32-bit) depending on the version of Windows 7/8 you are running. If you are unsure, go to your 'Start' menu, right-click on 'Computer' and choose 'Properties'. System type should show 64-bit or 32-bit operating system. Pick the installer that matches. After that, don't forget to start previewing all the cool add-ons that you can have with this version.

Note: I'm turning off comments on this thread since there are more than 200. If you have a question, please post it in the Windows Movie Makers.net Forums and I'll answer you there.

Custom iPhone Overlay Title for WMM 6.0

Following my series of custom Movie Maker image overlays, here's an overlay where your video appears on the screen of a iPhone.

There are two installers depending on whether you are running on a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows. The installer will put the necessary files into, C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared.

Blaine's iPhone Overlay Title (32-bit)
Blaine's iPhone Overlay Title (64-bit)

To use the new title

Go to 'Tools' > 'Titles and Credits' > 'Title on the selected clip'.

Click on 'change the title animation'.

Under your list of one line titles there will be two new titles: iPhone Overlay FS (4:3) or iPhone Overlay WS (16:9)

Pick the one that matches your aspect ratio then click 'Done'.

Stretch the title so that it extends for the length of your clip.

If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the original forum post that inspired this title.

Wow! Title Variations for Movie Maker

It was recently brought to my attention that the "Wow!" title animation in Windows Movie Maker will randomly choose the angle of the words. After a bit of snooping, I discovered there is a parameter to control this angle. As a result I decided to create this pack of Wow! Title variations so you can decide the angle (even upside down!)

Note: These titles will work in WMM 2.1 (XP) and WMM 6.0 (Vista/Win7). I've provided XML for both versions in the installers.

Here's a sample video to help you visualize the titles.

There are two installers depending on whether you are running on a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows. The installer will put the necessary files into, C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared.

Blaine's Wow Titles (32-bit)
Blaine's Wow Titles (64-bit)

There are 4 different variations, but feel free to examine to XML to make your own variants. To use one of the new titles:
Go to 'Tools' > 'Titles and Credits' > 'Title on the selected clip'.
Type your text in the first box.
Click on 'change the title animation'.
Under your list of one line titles, pick the desired variant:

Wow! Tilt Up

Wow! Tilt Down

Wow! Straight

Wow! Upside-down

As with other titles, you can change the font, background color and other styling attributes. Finally, click 'Done'.
Adjust the title duration by shrinking/stretching the rectangle on the Title Overlay track.

How to fix error 80004003 in Windows Live Movie Maker

Error 80004003

A number of people have been reporting corruption issues (error 80004003) when trying to reopen a Windows Live Movie Maker project. It happens after a person has made changes to a WLMM project then he/she tries to reopen the project. WLMM displays an error (80004003) saying that it is unable to open the file.

Sorry, Movie Maker can't open this project file. The file might not be compatible with Windows Live Movie Maker or be corrupted.

If you are willing to wait, Microsoft will fix a corrupted file for you. I've also fixed quite a few files for people in the Microsoft Answers forums.

This post is for anyone that wants to know what is happening behind the scenes, or that wants to try to fix the problem on their own.

The first step is to make a copy of the file so you aren't working with the original. Next, right-click on the copy of the project file and choose 'Open With' and pick the Notepad application.

Scroll to the bottom of the file to find a <BoundPlaceHolders> section. It says that the "Text" section has an extentID of 4. Looking just above that you should see a section that starts with <ExtentSelector ExtentID="4" which lists all the added titles and captions by number. Make a note of all these because you'll need them later.

Now search further up for each section starting with <TitleClip. Ignore any sections that have a complete section between the <Effects> and </Effects> tags. Eventually you'll hit a few that just have <Effects/> (an empty Effects section).

Check if that ExtentID in the list of ExtentIDs in the Text section from before (the ones you made a note of). If it isn't you can ignore this, but if you find that it has an empty Effects section *and* it is listed in that block of text ExtentIDs, that's a problem.

Take the empty <Effects> line and replace it with a block of <Effects> ... </Effects> from a working title. I usually fill in the <BoundPropertyStringSet Name="string"> section with a recognizable string like "FIX ME!" so I can find it later. Most often, there is only one caption that is corrupted, so you might be able to stop here. However, you should check all <TitleClip sections to be sure. After replacing the empty Effects sections in all bad captions with good data, you can save the file.

You should now be able to open the project in Windows Live Movie Maker just like before. Look for any caption(s) that say "FIX ME!" and correct the position, text and styling as needed.

As a final step, I'd recommend downloading the latest version of Windows Live Movie Maker. Version 15.4.3555.0308 which was released in March has a fix to prevent this corruption from happening in future projects. It won't fix broken projects, but at least it will stop you from having this problem going forward. It's really not all that magical and can be done easily, if you are careful and only work in a copy.

Blaine's Custom Transition Pack 4 (Twists)

I've been meaning to release another transition pack for awhile now. If you watch the Transition Pack 4 - Sample Video you'll see they are a series of cool twist transitions.

These transitions require the use of Rehan's ShaderTFX add-on. If you've never installed this before, follow the directions on his website and test they work first. If you've already installed a copy of ShaderTFX (registered or unregistered), you can skip these steps.

There are two installers depending on whether you are running WMM 6.0 on a 64-bit or 32-bit version of Windows. The installer will put the necessary files into, C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared.

Prerequisite: Rehan's ShaderTFX add-on.

Windows Movie Maker 6.0:
Blaine's Transition Pack 4 (64-bit) Installer
Blaine's Transition Pack 4 (32-bit) Installer

After restarting Windows Movie Maker, you should have 28 new Twist transitions with corresponding icons. There are 4 twist directions and 7 different background colors.

*Note: These transitions require the architecture of WMM 6.0 and can't be made to work on the earlier WMM 2.6 or the later WLMM. For anyone that wants to customize the background color, check the .xml.

Blaine's Paint Splat Titles

I had a request in the forums for titles on top of paint splats. Here's a sample video to help you visualize the titles.

Note: These titles will work in WMM 2.1 (XP) and WMM 6.0 (Vista/Win7). I've provided XML for both versions in the installers.

There are two installers depending on whether you are running on a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows. The installer will put the necessary files into, C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared.

Blaine's Paint Splat Titles (32-bit)
Blaine's Paint Splat Titles (64-bit)

There are 4 different colored paint splats. To use one of the new titles:
Go to 'Tools' > 'Titles and Credits' > 'Title on the selected clip'.
Type your text in the first box.
Click on 'change the title animation'.
Under your list of one line titles, find the new animation in the desired color:

Paint Splat (Blue)

Paint Splat (Green)

Paint Splat (Purple)

Paint Splat (Red)

As with other titles, you can change the font and other styling attributes. Finally, click 'Done'.
Adjust the title duration by shrinking/stretching the rectangle on the Title Overlay track.

Blaine's Video with Scrolling Text

In response to a query on the Windows Movie Makers forums, I created this custom title animation. It shrinks the current video and shows it on the left. You can then type a lot of text (credits, notes, disclaimers, copyrights, etc.) and have it scroll by on the right.

For instructions on how to add this custom title and use it in Windows Movie Maker 6.0, please check the WMM forums. Please post there if you have further questions.

Blaine's TV Signal Effects

Back in the "old" days, we all had analog TVs where the picture was drawn by an electron beam on a cathode ray tube (CRT). The resulting picture often had noise in the signal, visible scan lines and a slight curvature to the screen. Well, now you can relive those days by applying one of my TV Signal Effects. These effects work with Windows Movie Maker 6.0 (either under Vista or Windows 7).

To install the TV Signal Effects into Windows Movie Maker, you have a choice of installers depending on whether you are running WMM 6.0 on a 64-bit or 32-bit version of Windows. Pick the correct installer and it will put the necessary files into C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared.

Windows Movie Maker 6.0:
Blaine's TV Signal Effects (64-bit) Installer
Blaine's TV Signal Effects (32-bit) Installer

After restarting Windows Movie Maker, you should have 4 new TV Signal effects with corresponding icons:

TV Signal (All) - all 3 effects applied at once (curvature, noise and scanlines)

TV Signal (Curvature) - distorts the picture to give it a slight curvature.

TV Signal (Noise) - adds some random "dot crawl" to the clip.

TV Signal (Scanlines) - draws the screen in bands of light and dark, with some color fringing.

You can apply the individual effects, or just use the combined TV Signal (All) effect. You might also want to apply a Blur effect or Grayscale effect, especially if you are simulating a black and white TV, or maybe a surveillance monitor.

Note: These transitions require the architecture of WMM 6.0 and can't be made to work on versions 2.6 or earlier.

Blaine's Custom Transition Pack 3 (Paper Fold)

Before the end of the year, I wanted to publish another set of transitions for Windows Movie Maker 6.0*. These are called "Paper Fold" transitions which will be obvious if you watch the Transition Pack 3 - Sample Video.

These transitions require the use of Rehan's ShaderTFX add-on. If you've never installed this before, follow the directions on his website and test they work first. If you've already installed a copy of ShaderTFX (registered or unregistered), you can skip these steps.

There are two installers depending on whether you are running WMM 6.0 on a 64-bit or 32-bit version of Windows. The installer will put the necessary files into, C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared.

Prerequisite: Rehan's ShaderTFX add-on.

Windows Movie Maker 6.0:
Blaine's Transition Pack 3 (64-bit) Installer
Blaine's Transition Pack 3 (32-bit) Installer

After restarting Windows Movie Maker, you should have 7 new Paper Fold transitions with corresponding icons. They all look like the screen is being folded down the middle and then it opens up to the new clip. The only difference between the clips is the color background that appears.

*Note: These transitions require the architecture of WMM 6.0 and can't be made to work on versions 2.6 or earlier. For anyone that wants to customize the background color, check the .xml.