Since my last post talked about how to add music to your movie, I thought I would share another one of my favorite tools in Windows Movie Maker. The tool lets you take a picture from your preview…what this means is if I took a video clip of something and then I realize I wish I had taken a still photo of it, I still have the option to do so.  I like this tool because it gives you a lot of freedom to work with your videos and still photos.  I’ve broken it down step by step so you can easily do this at home.

1.  The very first thing you need to do is get your video clips into Windows Movie Maker.  You can do this by looking on the left side of your screen you see it says tasks and right under tasks there is a little subgroup that says import.  You will want to choose pictures…even though we are working with video clips, your video clip is probably still housed with your pictures.  You will need to follow the prompts and go in and select the video you want to import and then click import.

2.  Then you will want to preview your video clip to decide exactly where you want to take the still photo from.  On the right of your screen you will see a TV screen, underneath it you will see a blue circle which is the play button, click on play.  Then pause the video in the exact spot you want to take the still photo from.  Pause the video by clicking on that same blue circle underneath the TV screen.

3. Click on the “Tools” button on the top of the screen and the fourth option from the bottom will say “Take Picture from Preview”.  Click on that option and you can then save that shot as a new still photo as a .JPG file, remember that is the format that most of our digital pictures are stored in.  You can then find your new still photo in Windows Live Photo Gallery and work with it just like you would any of your other photos.