Adding Music to Your Movie Maker Video

Music makes a photomontage or any video without sound a lot more interesting. With Movie Maker you can easily add songs from your personal library to any video.

Import Music From Your Library

Screenshot of importing a music file.

In picking a song to use, consider the mood you want to set for your video, and also consider who's going to be seeing the final product. If the video is only intended for home and personal viewing, you can feel free to use any music you want.

If you want to share your movie publicly or make money off of it in any way, only use music to which you own a copyright.

To import a song into Movie Maker, choose Import audio or music from the Capture Video menu. From here, browse through your music files to find the tune you're looking for. Click Import to bring the selected song into your Movie Maker project.

Add Music to the Timeline

Screenshot of adding music to the timeline.

When editing a video, Movie Maker lets you choose between Storyboard view and Timeline view. With Storyboard view, you see just a still frame of each photo or video clip. Timeline view separates the clips into three tracks, one for video, one for audio, and one for titles.

When adding music or other audio to your video, switch from Storyboard view to Timeline view by clicking on the Show Timeline icon above the edited movie. This changes the editing setup so that you can add an audio track to your video.

Drag the song icon to the audio track and drop it where you want it to begin playing. After a song is in the timeline it's easy to move around and change the starting point.

Edit the Audio Track

Screenshot of editing a music track.

If the song you picked is longer than your video, trim the beginning or end until the length is right. Place your mouse at either end of the song and drag the marker to the spot where you want the song to start or stop playing.

Add an Audio Fade In and Fade Out

Screenshot of how to add fade in.

When trimming a song to fit a video, you often end up with an abrupt start and stop that can be rough on the ears. You can smooth out the sound by gently fading the music in and out.

Open the Clip menu at the top of the screen and select Audio. From there, select Fade In and Fade Out to add these effects to your video.

Finishing Touches

Screenshot of how to finish a movie.

Now that your photomontage is finished and set to music, you can export it to share with family and friends. The Finish Movie menu gives you options for saving your movie to DVD, camera, computer or the web.

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