Saturday, October 08, 2011

Custom Camera Shutter and Letterbox Effects for Windows Movie Maker 6.0 (Updated)

Preview Blaine's Letterbox EffectsUpdated! This package has been updated with a camera shutter effect and white letterbox bars. Enjoy!

There have been lots of requests on the forums for a letterbox/widescreen effect which adds bars to the top and bottom of your video. Well, I went one step farther and added a couple more effects that let you have the bars appear and disappear. Here's a sample video of the moving letterbox effects.

Note: These effects take advantage of the effects architecture of Windows Movie Maker 6.0 and therefore will not work in XP. There are other solutions for XP such as a letterbox title.

There are two installers depending on whether you are running WMM 6.0 on a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows. The installer will put the necessary files into, C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared.
Windows Movie Maker 6.0:
Blaine's Letterbox Effects (32-bit)
Blaine's Letterbox Effects (64-bit)
After installing, you'll have new effects called:
  • Camera Shutter - quick in and out (New)

  • Letterbox - static letterbox in black

  • Letterbox (In) - adds letterbox in black

  • Letterbox (Out) - removes letterbox in black
  • Letterbox White - static letterbox in white (New)

  • Letterbox White (In) - adds letterbox in white (New)

  • Letterbox White (Out) - removes letterbox in white (New)
    • Posted by Blaine at 4:44 PM
    Labels: , , ,

    30 comments:

    1. You are awesome! Thank you so much for all your hard work on making custom effects and making them available to the public.
      ReplyDelete
    2. BLAINE! You are incredible!

      Now I can finally finish this project I was working on. Thank you so much!

      -Derek
      ReplyDelete
    3. I agree with the other comments. Thanks for working so hard.
      ReplyDelete
    4. AHHH thank you thank you THANK YOU! I cannot even begin to imagine all the hard work you put into your effects. Your site is seriously my WMM dream come true!
      ReplyDelete
    5. hi blaine
      thanks for the effects. i downloaded and eveerything its ok but when i mix with a transition like FADE, the image shake. sorry for my english but it,s my third language. i hope you can understand my problem and thanks again. don,t give up. your job is really cool!
      ReplyDelete
    6. sorry, the effect is the letterbox
      thanks
      ReplyDelete
    7. Sometimes the computer can't keep up with the effect in order to preview it in realtime. However, when you publish it as a movie it should be clear.
      ReplyDelete
    8. Thank you very much, this has helped me a lot! ^_^
      I was just wondering, is there anyway to have the letterbox show the upper or lower half of the picture?
      If you don't understand the question, here's a picture of what I'm talking about: http://www.thebenevolent.net/imghost/files/rf5cze7qd6m2nl5zbq0z.png
      ReplyDelete
    9. Thank you very much, this has helped me a lot! ^_^
      I was just wondering, is there anyway to have the letterbox show the upper or lower half of the picture?
      If you don't understand the question, here's a picture of what I'm talking about: http://www.thebenevolent.net/imghost/files/rf5cze7qd6m2nl5zbq0z.png
      ReplyDelete
    10. Thank you so much for this effect!
      It's helping me greatly ^.^

      I just have one small request...is there any way to adjust the letterbox height?

      Is it possible if you can provide a small adjusted download?
      Example of height:
      http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/3848/widescreenedmw1.jpg

      Thanks so much!
      ReplyDelete
    11. omg man ty ty so much its so awsome cause i realy realy needed this i just wanted to know if theres one that could make the letter boxes more in cause i need to cover somethings or any possible way to make it a little more in but thx man if there isnt i just gata live with it THX ANYWAYS
      ReplyDelete
    13. could it be possible to make one for windows XP
      ReplyDelete
    14. Check the forums at Windows Movie Makers.net Look under the 'Share Your XP Transitions/Effects' forum.
      ReplyDelete
    15. so i tried downloading this and it doesnt want to pop up in my effects in my wmm!!!
      i have vista,but idk why. i installed it and still nothing
      ReplyDelete
    16. I downloaded the installer, but it's not showing up. Could you post the .xml code so that it can be manually installed?
      ReplyDelete
    17. Never mind; a bit of tweaking was all I had to do. Thank you so much for the lovely effects!!
      ReplyDelete
    18. Hello again Blaine, I've been trying to download the Letterbox, and the custom Desaturation add on to the color fade effect. I got them downloaded and followed your directions, but only the letterbox, and color fade showed up. No desaturation, even with the notepad saved into the Addon folder. also when i add the letterblox/ any other effect, the movie I have on the timeline Starts glitching out, with no effect added. please help!
      ReplyDelete
    19. You have to move the complete contents from C:\Program Files (x86)\Movie Maker\Shared to c:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared.

      As for the glitching, check the format of your clips. WMM likes .wmv for video and .wma or .wav for audio. Other types cause glitching (e.g. .mp4, Divx, .mp3, etc.)
      ReplyDelete
    20. I've updated the post with both 32-bit and 64-bit installers so the manual copying is no longer necessary.
      ReplyDelete
    21. Can this work with Windows Live movie maker on Vista?
      ReplyDelete
    22. @Nick, sorry. The architecture of WLMM is completely different and nothing has been published by Microsoft on customizing effects in WLMM.
      ReplyDelete
    23. >Blaine said...

      > Sometimes the computer can't keep up
      > with the effect in order to preview it
      > in real-time.
      > However, when you publish it as a movie it
      > should be clear.

      Hi Blaine, unfortunately that is not the case. I experience the same as the user above. It happens always in the same spot watching the compiled video in different computers, so I'm positive is there. There is some picture 'shaking' just after the transition between the two pictures has finished, especially when the transition is a 'Fade'... or the two pictures have different aspect ratios or one is portrait and the other landscape...

      is there any fix around this?

      I'm using a XML posted in:
      http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=168557

      but the same applies for the picture-shaking here related...

      Thank you!
      ReplyDelete
    24. @69monos, would you mind posting a question in the forums along with a sample video?
      ReplyDelete
    25. I installed this, but the effects haven't shown up in my Windows Movie Maker 2.6 I am on Windows 7. My computer says the files installed. Am I doing something wrong?
      ReplyDelete
    26. WMM 2.6 is based off of the XP version (WMM 2.1). As noted above, this will not work on the XP (WMM 2.x) version because the effects/transition architecture is different.

      Is there a reason you aren't running the full Vista version (WMM 6.0) on your Windows 7 machine? There's a link to install it at the top of my blog; click the WMM 6.0 on Windows 7 button above.
      ReplyDelete
    27. how can i use the camera shutter effect like in your example video, i have tried it, and it's just only flip flap in and out not taking a picture like in your example video
      ReplyDelete
    28. The camera shutter effect is just the simulated closing/opening of the shutter. After that you can display whatever you want. I typically take a snapshot (Tools > Take Picture) and add that after the effect. I also applied my Photo Album Title to the still picture.
      ReplyDelete
    29. Ermm.. i didn't really find an anwser to this, when using the launcher it says: "A network error occurred while attempting to read from the file: C:\Users\Jones\AppData\\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content. IE5\WOMC2EB3\BlaineLetterbox-64.msi
      ReplyDelete
    30. @Jones,

      Try saving the installer to your computer first, then running it.
      ReplyDelete

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