Importing Video Files Into A Single Collection

[Stewart Berman]

My camera only lets me take up to 90 seconds of video at a time. As a result I have a large number
of small video files. I wanted to put them all of the ones from a family vacation into a single
movie. No titles -- just a simple continuous movie.

I assumed I would import them into a single collection and then select them all at once and drag
them to the storyboard. However, I cannot find a way to import multiple video files into one
collection. This won't be so bad if you could select multiple collections to drag to the storyboard
but you can't.

The only way I can find is to import them is as separate collections and then drag one at a time
into a single collection. Importing multiple video files into a single collection is such an
obvious required feature that I must be missing something.

How do I import all of the video files into a single collection?

 

[John Inzer]

How do I import all of the video files into a
single collection?

=======================================
Maybe the following steps would work for you.

Create a new folder...Tools / New Collections Folder...

Open each imported folder one at a time and select
one clip with a left click...then type...Ctrl / A...to select
all the clips in the folder.

Right click the selected group and choose...Copy...

Open your New Folder and right click...Paste.

When all of your clips are copied into the new folder...
left click / select one clip...type...Ctrl / A...

Now...left click the selected group and drag
the whole collection to your time line.

--

John Inzer
MS Picture It! MVP
How to ask a newsgroup question:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375

 

[Wojo]

Unfortunately this is a "feature" of Movie Maker (although I consider it a
bug) and you can't import multiple clips into a single collection. John's
way will work but really that way is the same as dragging the clips to one
collection which you already know how to do.
Unfortunately I don't have a good work around for you.
-Wojo
PS: See Papajohn I'm not the only one.

 

[Al Stu - MVP]

Can you capture them with Windows Movie Maker all at once into a single
video file? Do NOT click the "Finish" button between capturing each clip.

This is what I do when I want a group of clips from the camera to be in a
single source file. Then I use the create clips wizard so they the clips
are listed in a single collection.

Start capture of first video clip,
stop capture,
start capture of next video clip,
stop capture,
and so forth,
start capture of last video clip,
stop capture,
finish.

 

[Stewart Berman]

This is a design flaw not a bug. It follows from a long history of "Microsoft knows best" design
decisions in many products. Either this product was not beta tested or Microsoft ignored the
feedback. No one that wanted to put two or more clips together would not have found this to be a
problem.

 

[Stewart Berman]

I am not capturing from a camera. The camera stores the video (and picture images) as files on a
memory card. The camera interface downloads the files to the computer. (I could also remove the
card and put it into a reader and drag and drop the files onto the hard drive.)

 

[Stewart Berman]

Thanks but this isn't any better than dragging each file from its individual collection into a
common one.

I just want to import them all into one collection.

 

[Al Stu - MVP]

Well if you can't use the WMM capture from video device function then I
think your just stuck with the way it works. Agree it's a design flaw,
myself and some others do not like the way it works. While yet some others
do.

One size does not fit all that's for sure.

 

[Wojo]

Well some have considered this a "feature" of WMM2.1 since it didn't work
that way in the older versions of Movie Maker. I am with you though, I don't
like this "feature" either. If it were truly a feature then the option
would/should be available to disable it.
-Wojo