Microsoft Windows Movie Maker Handbook (Book & CD-ROM)

Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (a.k.a. Windows Me) endows Microsoft's everyday operating system with considerable multimedia capability, including video editing. The Microsoft Windows MovieMaker Handbook explains how to use the video-editing tools that ship with Windows Me to assemble video presentations. Perhaps more importantly, the authors relate knowledge about moviemaking--enabling you to plan and create videos that are more emotionally moving, persuasive, and technically attractive. They do a good job of communicating the importance of high production values in every video creation, whether professional or amateur, and appropriately place the editing tools themselves second in importance, behind good conceptual thinking.

In a typical section, the authors explain differences in editing styles. Documentary editing in the cinéma vérité style, for example, involves stringing together clips, often out of chronological sequence, in order to convey a larger truth about the subject. They explain camera moves ("dolly in," "pedestal up"), too. Coverage would be better if authors had included examples from famous movies and television shows (the jerky camera in "Homicide," the window in the series of dissolves at the beginning of "Citizen Kane"). Sections on Windows MovieMaker and the other Windows Me tools are adequate--it's the background information on moviemaking that gives this book its value. --David Wall

Topics covered: Fundamentals of cinematography, video editing, and the other technical aspects of moviemaking, as facilitated by the tools that come with Microsoft Windows Me. Sections deal with planning shots, writing scripts, arranging lights, and capturing video to digital format. Coverage of the Windows MovieMaker software documents the editing suite fully, from the everyday user's point of view.