Flip Video Editing Software

Technorati Tags: [tag-tec]flip-video-camcorder[/tag-tec], [tag-tec]flip-video-editing[/tag-tec]
The super-easy flip video camcorder plugs directly into your laptop or PC USB port so you can transfer the video without any fancy cables or firewire ports.

While that makes it very easy to upload your videos on internet to share with your friends and family, you may want to take an extra step and edit it first. Watching unedited raw footage is like watching grass grow.

To turn your flip video clip into an entertaining movie
with nifty transitions, special effects, titles and music, you need a video editing software. The movie-editing software that I highly recommend for busy and time-pressed folks like us is the free Microsoft Windows Movie Maker software that is already on your PC.

There are several reasons for choosing Windows Movie Maker:

  1. It is very easy to use, and if you record with the flip video, I know EASY is very important to you.
  2. It is rich in features:  add music, pictures, titles and credits.
  3. It comes included with a fun collection of nifty transitions and cool special effects. 
  4. It doesn't hang or crash on you. Video editing software is known to be big memory processing hogs and prone to crashing. Not this one.
  5. It is FREE. It comes with your Windows XP or Windows Vista software, preinstalled in the factory.
  6. Bottom line: You can turn slow-moving boring raw footage into cool home movies to impress your friends and family.

The video tutorial below shows you:

  • a quick big-picture overview of the software and
  • where to find the software on your Windows PC.

Now for an overview of how easy it is to use Windows Movie Maker. Click the video to see a quick demonstration on how to edit your raw video and add music, transitions, titles, credits, and special effects.


If you'd like an easy way to master Windows Movie Maker, I recommend my
"Make Home Movie" online course. It's an instant access to a FREE online video tutorials course where I walk through each task step-by-step, click-by-click as if you were right behind my shoulder.  Why waste time figuring everything out yourself? Click here for details.



Make Home Moves Online Tutorial

Comments

  1. B Subba Rao says:

    I have a DVD in MPEG 2 format and it is 4 GB with more than 100 clips. I am not able to import the clips into story board. When I tried to import the clips one by one and edited, and wanted to save to my computer, it is not saving. Is it due to the bulk of the content or due to some fault?

  2. Myrtha says:

    If you try to import an MPEG-2 file, Movie Maker will attempt to go through the process but, in the end, you might get an error message saying "…the file is empty." or "codec required to play the file is not supported on your computer".

    If these kinds of issues are happening with the file, you should convert the file to an AVI, using a compression codec that will result in a source file that works with Movie Maker.

    Click this link for information on how to convert MPEG2 to AVI:
    http://www.papajohn.org/MM2-Importing-Video-MPEG2.html

  3. Joe says:

    Would like to edit footage taken on my Sony Handycam but have been informed Movie Maker does not recognize the media once its been finalized into DVD format. Any suggestions?

  4. Shawn says:

    Flip Mino HD footage is not compatable with Windows Movie Maker. Any suggeastions?

  5. Guy Pines says:

    Flip Video AVIs only show up as audio files in Windows Movie Maker. I've installed (and uninstalled to avoid conflicts) a variety of codecs, and while the videos play fine in Windows Media Player, they play only as audio files in WMM. From what I've learned, this is due to the fact that Flip Video AVIs were not meant to be edited. I don't know if that's true, but it would explain the horrible time I've had trying to edit the videos in WMM.

  6. manoj kumar says:

    my name manoj kuma i am young boy and the

  7. Bradley says:

    Tried a couple of codec downloads with the flip video and the same issue with winodws movie maker, nothing happens any ideas. I have the codec that flip comes with and well still no editing for wmm. Can any one just give a simple step by step problem solver

  8. John Watts says:

    How to use Flip Mino HD videos in Movie Maker:

    Open FlipShare and from the menu …
    Select SHARE
    Select ONLINE
    Select OTHERS
    Then just follow the instructions in the popup window.
    The selected videos will appear in a folder – and they will be in WMV format for Movie Maker

  9. Carolyn says:

    Thank you, John. That worked beautifully!

  10. Duane says:

    Just to clarify…I have a Flip Ultra (60 minute, not HD) and the .avi videos it produces are compatible with Windows Movie Maker. Can't comment on the HD version, but John Watt's comments sound like a good work-around. Also, I assume "Guy Pines" was referring to a non-HD version b/c I think the HD version produces MP4 files, so not sure why he only gets audio in WMM. I tried on two different computers and it worked fine on both–although it did take kind of long to import though (maybe 45 seconds for a 15 sec./10MB clip). It is possible that I have the "correct" codecs on both of the computers but one is a fairly new netbook and I've cleaned it up and installed "classic media player" which might have installed a set of codecs.

  11. Duane says:

    …make that "media player classic".

  12. John says:

    I try to transfer video to dvd but for some reason my computer keeps telling me that the file format isn't recognized or it tells me that it encountered a problem. How do I put flip video on a dvd?

  13. HHHHH says:

    how do I put flip videos on a DVD?

  14. Video guy says:

    Windows Movie maker does not support MP4 HD video formate for Flip video recorder. Windows sucks anyway

  15. Lyn says:

    Windows Movie Maker editing software is incompatible with Flip Ultra HD. Any suggestions on other easy-to-use software (preferrably free but not absolutely required).

  16. Carol says:

    This worked great until I opened the folder on the desktop and it still saved as an mp4 and not wmv! I have worked for hours on this. All I want to do is import 2 short videos into a movie maker project–not even any editing. Any ideas? I was SO disappointed that this didn't work :-(
    Thanks to any suggestions!!

  17. John says:

    Yeah, I have the same issue with the my new Ultra HD, Movie Maker doesn't support mp4. Anyone know of any 'work-arounds'?

    I saw free conversion software online but haven't tried it since it's not as straightforward as I would like. The preferred method is Movie Maker that will handle mp4.

  18. Tom says:

    While at first glance, it looked like Movie Maker was not going to open my Flip Ultra HD mp4 videos (i.e. would not see them as a supported media type), when I switched it to "Show All Files" and selected my mp4, it actually did work and I was able to edit it and save it!

    Here is another option: http://www.solitude.dk/archives/20060401-1602/

  19. evermoving says:

    try dvd flick seems to work great

  20. frank says:

    we know how to use it, but our audio gets really messed upand we sound as bad as Alvin and the chipmunks only in double time! HELP!!!!

  21. jeff says:

    Using the most current windows movie maker and flip video software John's methods works perfect. THANKS JOHN.

    May 26, 2009
    John Watts said:

    How to use Flip Mino HD videos in Movie Maker:

    Open FlipShare and from the menu …
    Select SHARE
    Select ONLINE
    Select OTHERS
    Then just follow the instructions in the popup window.
    The selected videos will appear in a folder – and they will be in WMV format for Movie Maker

  22. John says:

    Good news! The folks at Flip forwarded several converter apps to try. This NCH conversion app worked really well to convert my Flip camera mp4 files to wmv. http://www.nchsoftware.com/prism/index.html

    The converter app was really easy to use. This was an issue I was having with one conversion app I tried, it was way too complicated and not intuitive. The NCH conversion app worked easily and intuitively.

    After I converted to a wmv file, I was able to drag the movie clip into Movie Maker, Corel VideoStudio, and VideoPad, three different editing programs I'm trying out. This is a great start and it was the sticking point – I couldn't even get the movie clip into an editing program.

  23. Steve says:

    My brother made a Flip video of our family Christmas gathering which is nice, except it has a music background that drowns out the voices of the folks in the video. You can see them talking and barely hear their voices, but mostly you hear the music. Can I get rid of that music background, so we can hear people talking?

  24. Brianna says:

    I HATE WMM. It lags, freezes, & crashes on me. It doesn't support Flip cameras so I must record all my videos under 1:30 so I can convert them on zamzar.com. Over all, it sucks. You can't reverse the videos or do picture in picture, or even split screen. And it doesn't support the green screen effect. It's better to buy a new software.

  25. Webguyjv says:

    Thank You SO MUCH, John!

    The NCH conversion app is my savior! :)

    I just came back from a 9-day vacation with my son, driving all over the Western US. My FlipVideo Ultra HD contained 224 videos – all of which were incompatible with Windows Movie Maker.

    I took your advice, installed the NCH app, and started a queue to convert all 224 files to the .WMV file format. It's humming happily away now, and I've tested a few of these videos, and they load right into Windows Movie Maker. Perfect!

    Thank you so much :)

    JV

  26. david says:

    Above, John Watts wrote:
    "How to use Flip Mino HD videos in Movie Maker:

    Open FlipShare and from the menu …
    Select SHARE
    Select ONLINE
    Select OTHERS
    Then just follow the instructions in the popup window.
    The selected videos will appear in a folder – and they will be in WMV format for Movie Maker"

    I tried this with a Flip Ultra HD I just got, along with Windows Vista and it DID NOT work…. the new file in the newly created folder is in mpeg format NOT WMV format.

    This is VERY frustrating…. I don't have HOURS to convert stuff, and any video clip taken with the FLIP will be useless to me if I can't edit it with movie maker…..

    What is a simple solution please?????????

  27. I have used WMM and find it to be a simple and useful movie editor. For basic editing operations its great but for more advanced video editing it falls short. I guess that's OK because it's free. However if you want editing features that go beyond basic then you'll need a better editor. For the home user that's going to be editing a few movies it's fine. If you plan on commercial grade video I would recommend higher end video editors.

  28. China says:

    ok so I've downloaded the converter John was talking about and it takes about 20minutes to convert a 5minute video…which I guess is ok but ugh wth Flip needs to change their freakin system because this is sooo frustrating

  29. Dave says:

    You are indeed able to use flipshare to export the video into a file that movie maker can recognize. The problem is that movie maker has all kinds of problems when it goes to render your edited video into a final project. You can spend hours putting together a video and then more time rendering it and when it is almost complete, it says their is an error. I was able to get a few small videos together but when I tried anything of larger size it failed. Looking at many websites and that seems to be the biggest problem.

  30. chef jobs says:

    I have wanted to write something like this on my site and this has given me an idea. Thank you.

  31. Tya says:

    I tried that and it didn't work, I use UltraHD, do you know how to make that work?

  32. dsagd says:

    avidemux is a good editor of mp4 format

  33. rolly franco says:

    dear sir/madam
    am looking to buy
    1 pc. software (cool edit/moviemaker)
    please quote with your fast delivery
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    rolly/manila overseas inc.

  34. An alternative to converting so you can use WMM is to open in Avisynth. Programs needed FFDShow, Avisynth, FFMpegShowSource plugin for Avisynth, VirtualDub or VirtualDubMod,AvSP (gui for AviSynth)
    These are all free but there is a learning curve. You will get more control and quality. I am putting together a webinar. If you are interested in signing up please send a message though my contact form on the blog.

  35. Good day! This is kind of off topic but I need some advice from an established blog. Is it hard to set up your own blog? I'm not very techincal but I can figure things out pretty fast. I'm thinking about making my own but I'm not sure where to begin. Do you have any tips or suggestions? Many thanks

  36. Neon Park XIII says:

    Can one edit footage from a Flip Phone to MS Movie Maker? I have a 60 second movie (8 -10 shots) that I shot with a friend's Flip phone. However, my computer cannot support the Flip Phone share ware to edit the thing. Any suggestions?

    Thanks.

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