Thursday, August 23, 2012

Custom iPhone Overlay Title for WMM 6.0

iPhone OverlayFollowing 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.

    Friday, July 27, 2012

    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.

    Wednesday, May 02, 2012

    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 and if you aren't very technically savvy, that's what I would suggest.  Completely follow the instructions at that link, especially the last step where you submit a private request for support on this issue. If you don't receive any follow-up, post a question in the Microsoft Community Forums for Movie Maker.

    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.  It requires some PC knowledge.

    The first step is to make a copy of the file so you aren't working with the original. You do this by copying the file in Windows Explorer then pasting it back into the same folder with a new name.  You'll want to use the copy, not the original. Right-click on the copy of the project file and choose 'Open With' and pick the Notepad application.  The file is text in the form of XML tags.  It's just a hierarchical mark-up similar to HTML.

    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.  You might want to select and print just this section, or paste that list into another window so you can refer back to it.

    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 is 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.

    The quickest fix is to then go to the ExtentIDs section and remove that problem ExtentID.  It will remove that one problem caption and that will usually fix it, so you might be able to stop here. However, you should check all <TitleClip sections to be sure. After removing any problem ExtentIDs, you can save the file.

    You should now be able to open the project in Movie Maker just like before. You may need to recheck your captions and add back any that were removed, but at least you won't have a completely corrupted project.

    As a final step, I'd recommend downloading the latest version of Movie Maker to avoid corruption in the future.  That 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.

    Edit: Since posting this, I've seen other corruptions unrelated to the captions. The newest corruption will still let you open the project, but you'll see nothing in the storyboard project area. Whenever I have encountered this, the cause was a VideoClip that had a start point (inTime) after the ending point (outTime). To fix this, you have to find the duration of the media item at the top and use that in place of the outTime for any clips that are set incorrectly. Again, always work in a copy, not the original.

    Monday, April 16, 2012

    Blaine's Custom Transition Pack 4 (Twists)

    Blaine's Transition Pack 4I'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.

    Wednesday, April 04, 2012

    Blaine's Paint Splat Titles

    Preview Paint Splat TitlesI 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.

    Saturday, January 21, 2012

    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.