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)
  • 38 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.

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    2. BLAINE! You are incredible!

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

      -Derek

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    3. I agree with the other comments. Thanks for working so hard.

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    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!

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    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!

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    6. 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.

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      1. Blaine... u r juz awsme....thnx a million for these luvly add ons and cnt thank u enuff for making these special stuffs easily accessible for us..and also being so responsive and helpful....god bless uu

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    7. 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

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    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

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    9. 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!

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    10. 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

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    11. could it be possible to make one for windows XP

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    12. Check the forums at Windows Movie Makers.net Look under the 'Share Your XP Transitions/Effects' forum.

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    13. 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

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    14. I downloaded the installer, but it's not showing up. Could you post the .xml code so that it can be manually installed?

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    15. Never mind; a bit of tweaking was all I had to do. Thank you so much for the lovely effects!!

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    16. 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!

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    17. 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.)

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    18. I've updated the post with both 32-bit and 64-bit installers so the manual copying is no longer necessary.

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    19. Can this work with Windows Live movie maker on Vista?

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    20. @Nick, sorry. The architecture of WLMM is completely different and nothing has been published by Microsoft on customizing effects in WLMM.

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    21. @69monos, would you mind posting a question in the forums along with a sample video?

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    22. 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?

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    23. 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.

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    24. 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

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    25. 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.

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    26. 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

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    27. @Jones,

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

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    28. Hey Blaine, this and all the others effects are awesome! Can I use them in my youtube movies? And the last question:the license of these effects are in creative commons? They are royalty free? Sorry for my bad english!

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      Replies
      1. If you use them, I'd appreciate a credit/link back here but otherwise you can use them as you like.

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      2. Thank you! I'll credit you in my projects!

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    29. Wow. Thank you SO much for this effect - its just what I needed for my movie - I'll put you in the credits of my film or at least a link in the description.

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    30. My apologies Blane, I have just stumbled on to your forum via google search, looking for this exact effect for Windows movie maker. My question is: After downloading the link, how do I see it on my Windows movie maker program. I have done so already but I am not able to see where it is. Is there a tutorial that I can read up on or is it something else?
      I'm running Windows Live Movie Maker.

      Thanks in advance and I appreciate any helpful suggestions.

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      Replies
      1. Only WMM 6.0 can use these effects. Microsoft changed the add-on architecture in WLMM and later and hasn't published any instructions on creating custom effects for WLMM. The link at the top will let you install WMM 6.0 if you want these effects.

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    31. Moi je veux télécharger et ça télécharges pas.

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      Replies
      1. Try this:
        Right-click on the link and choose Open in a separate tab. That should download the MSI file that you can then open to install the effects.

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