Hi all, am brand new here. As my username implies, I'm an audio techie, not a video one, which is why I've come to ask for help! I'm not a grand cinimatographer, just a musician who wants to put some videos on Youtube.

Okay. Recently, I learned that all Windows users were entitled to Windows Movie Maker, and that, for whatever reason, I didn't have it. So I went to the official site and downloaded it, and began to teach myself to use it. It looked straightforward enough. All I really wanted to do was cut out some unnecessary speaking in the beginning of a video. (I don't see a version number on it, but it's probably the latest). I can start with great source material, but once I import it into Windows Movie Maker, the sound is HORRIBLE!! It has lots of high-frequency aliasing like a really lo-fi MP3 file. I have looked fruitlessly through the settings to see if maybe there is some compression going on that can be adjusted or eliminated. The only import settings relate to video size and aspect ratio. Has anyone encountered this before? Is it just me? What am I to do? Thanks in advance.

Jessica

It would help greatly to give you a meaningful answer if you could provide the forum with the exact properties of the files you are having trouble with.
Where did they come from?
What format are they in?

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Windows Movie Maker is very very basic. If you are looking for lots of audio tools you will be disappointed. You need to aim higher and download a 30 day trial of adobe premiere elements 7 and a 30 day trial of adobe soundbooth from adobes website. They have a lot more video and audio options but have a much steeper learning curve. What type of file are you trying to edit?

They are MP4 files. These files are just home movies of me playing the piano. Our camcorder doesn't have a digital connection such as FireWire, but its medium is the Mini DVD format. I transferred them to a normal-sized, standard DVD-R, and then used a DVD-ripping program to convert them to compressed digital files. The DVD ripper program lets you save your files as a variety of formats, and gives you several levels of quality to choose from. I set the video quality to normal, and the audio quality to highest, since the sound is my main concern. I only wanted to import one into Windows Movie Maker just so that I could trim some un-necessary talking from the beginning. Would you recommend that I try to save them as another format before importing them?

Mp4 files don't work in Windows Movie Maker. You need to convert your files to avi if your software lets you do that. WMM will only work with with avi and wmv files, as I said earlier it is very basic. Once they are converted to avi you can open them in WMM.