How Do I Import Pictures and Sound Files into Movie Maker?

To add pictures and music clips into your home movie, you must first import the pictures and sounds files from your PC hard drive into Movie Maker. The pictures and files must already exist on your hard drive. You cannot import pictures and sounds files directly from a camera or iPod into Movie Maker.

This “Make Home Movie” course does not cover how to get your digital pictures from your camera onto your hard drive. I assume that if you have a digital camera, you must already be saving your digital pictures on your hard drive somewhere.

After you have moved your pictures from your camera to your hard drive, then you can Import them into Movie Maker. This tutorial shows you how to do that hard drive->Movie Maker part. Click play below to start the video tutorial:



Here are some helpful tips when working with picture and sound files:

Do not move pictures and sound files on your hard drive to a different location in the middle of your Movie Maker project. Wait till you are done and have saved your movie before moving the pictures and sound files otherwise Movie Maker won’t be able to find them. This is because Movie Maker does not save a copy of those source files, Movie Maker just create references that point to the source files. And if you move the source files, yikes!

As part of this course, we give you a bonus CD ripper software. This is an easy software that lets you rip music tracks from your CD so you can import these tracks into Movie Maker. Check out the Bonus section of this course for the bonus CD ripper software and instructions on how to install and use this easy application.

Another great source of music files is http://www.itunes.com where you can search by composer, artist, title and purchase music tracks for 99 cents. http://www.sounddogs.com also offers a rich library of music tracks but cost more.

If you are making home movies for personal family and friends distribution only and not for public for-profit sales, http://ww.royaltyfreemusic.com is a great resource. For free.

Homework

• Create a new collection and called it Test (or any name you choose). If you need help creating collections, check out our tutorial on Movie Maker Collections.
• Import a few pictures from your hard drive folders into the new Collection you created.
• Import a couple songs from your hard drive folders into the new Collection you created.
• Visit http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com and download a couple sound effects from the web site to your hard drive (My Music is a good place to save music files.)
• Now import the sound effects into the new collection you created in step 1.