Not Exactly Windows Movie Maker but It Works

We have received a lot of emails about finding a good replacement for Windows Movie Maker. We have kind of fallen behind on that task, but we did take time out to play around with the Photos App in Windows 10. This tip was written using Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (version 1709).

Windows Photos App has a feature sometimes referred to as Story Remix. Basically, it’s a fairly easy-to-use, if not intuitive app for making videos out of you pictures. You can add music (your own or music included with the Photos app), you choose from a dozen or so themes, you can add titles, effects and filters to each image that you include in your video.  It’s not a very intuitive program, but with a little experimenting, you can crank out some fairly nice videos.

We’re going to provide you with the basics, and you can take it from there.

Open the Photos app from the Windows 10 start menu or type Photos in the taskbar search and press Enter to open it.

At the top of the Photos app you see a option labeled “Create”. Click on it to expand its menu, and choose “Custom video with music”.

Choose a theme. There are about a half-dozen themes. Previews are available for all of them. Play around and find a groovy one. (EB told me to say “Groovy”… she’s a groovy granny she says….)

Time to make a video? Yes, it would seem so .. you can do these steps in whatever order you like.

To make a video of your pictures, you need to a add pictures… logical right? Click on Add.

When you have selected the picture your video, you  can slide them onto the storyboard. One you have all the images you want on the storyboard, you can drag them around to arrange them, add text or effects, etc.

A closeup of the controls you can use to modify & edit each image on the storyboard.

Here’s a sample of what you see if you click on the Motion icon in the storyboard controls.

If you want to add music, click on “Music” and you can add music that comes with the Photos app or you can add your own music… EB likes Conway Bruno and his country polka band.

You can preview your video, go back and edit it, edit all or some of the images, add / remove titles, text, change music, add more pictures, remove pictures and play around until you made a masterpiece.’

One your done you can save the video to your computer – or share it. Just click Export or share for options.

And that’s about it. Those are the basics to using the Windows 10 Photos app to create videos from your photos and music.

We made a little one for you – not fancy but then it only took about 2 minutes to make. And no we did not go to New Zealand, but one of our family members did 🙂  Now don’t be critical, this is just a quickie to show you we actually do try this stuff… enjoy!

[evp_embed_video url=”http://thundercloud.net/infoave/images/2018/nzclip.mp4″]