How Do You Make a Collage when using Movie Maker?

[Ian Wilson]

I am using Windows XP and its default Movie Maker since a long time and have good knowledge of the same. But there is a thing which I need to accomplish but I don’t know how can I do that. I want to make a Collage in Movie maker but dint found any such option so far. So I wanted to know if there is any Movie Maker expert who can tell me if there is any such option in XP Movie maker? If not, please suggest me some another program which can do this in a way that I can play the Collage in WMM.

Please help.

[Borgnine]

Nope i dont think there is any such option in Movie Maker to create Collage. Hence i use third party software called Photoshop Elements 4. It is a good toll for the same. Once created you can also use its "slide show" feature to pan/zoom all around the collage. And yes, you can also play it in Movie Maker because you can save its output in wmv format which is compatible with Windows Movie Maker.

[Sweeper]

I did a project similar to what your trying to create. I Find PhotoShop with Movie Maker to be a perfect match. What I wanted was to have a photo appear in a haphazard fashion, as if you had a Polaroid photo and you tossed it on a table, then another would appear, then another, then another and so on. This example will have four photos appear.

NOTE: I would create my photos the same size as my produced video. If video is to be 640x480, so would be my photos, this prevents movie maker from resizing and thus losing photo quality. I'll assume you know Photoshop’s basic features and procedures and will not go into too much detail.

The steps for a 640 x 480 video
1. Create new photo with background color of choice at 640x480.
2. Create new layer named PHOTO1, then paste you first photo into this layer.
3. Resize your pasted photo to your choice, rotate it to choice, and position it to choice, and add a drop shadow for effect.
4. Create a another layer named PHOTO2 and repeat step 3 with your second photo.
5. Repeat above steps until you have four layers with four different photos.

Saving the layers as .jpg
1. Deselect all layers and save the background as P1.JPG (or with name of your choice) All you will be saving is the background color.
2. Reselect PHOTO1 layer and save as P2.JPG P2.JPG shows background + First photo.
3. Reselect PHOTO2 layer, keeping previous layers selected as well, and save as P2.JPG
4. Repeat procedure for remaining layers.

Now to Movie maker
1. Import your 5 new photos and drag them to the story board in order by filename.
2. Switch to timeline view to drag each photo into the other a tad for a nice fade effect.


First you see the background, then photo1 appears, then another photo on top, then another on top and so on.

AFTER THOUGHTS:
The use of Photoshop with Moviemaker for still images is endless and is limited only by your imagination. Though Movie maker can create titles which overlay a photo, at times I prefer to load a copy of that photo in photoshop and create my own title layer where text effects are endless. Simply drag the original photo into timeline, followed by the new version with text, add some fade and Volla!!

[Diggs]

There is no way doing the same in Xp's default Movie Maker. You will need to go with any third party tool for the same. The best i can suggest you is get a tool called "Photo Story Platinum". It is far better then many other similar programs because of its over 160 amazing move styles. It also offers a effect called "Life Template" With this effect you can create frame where first 4 photos will show together in one frame, then they will be displayed one by one.