Choosing a movie setting
This page of the Save Movie Wizard lets you choose what settings you want to use when saving your movie using the My computer or Recordable CD movie setting. The movie setting you choose determines the quality and file size of the saved movie file. As the video display size and video bit rate increase with higher movie settings, so does the file size. Likewise, a higher movie setting and bit rate results in a larger file size. When choosing the movie setting, consider file size along with how you plan to share your saved movie.
The following is a listing of the options displayed on this page of the Save Movie Wizard.
Best quality for playback on my computer (recommended)
Specifies that you want to save your movie at the recommended movie setting. This movie setting encodes the video at a higher quality setting. The specific movie setting that is selected is determined by the original quality of the video and audio content on the storyboard/timeline. This option appears when you choose the My computer saving option.
This setting is well-suited for a majority of the movies you save to your computer.
Best fit for recordable CD (recommended)
Specifies that you want to save your movie to a recordable CD at the recommended movie setting. This movie setting encodes the video at a higher quality setting. The specific movie setting that is selected is determined by the original quality of the video and audio content on the storyboard/timeline, as well as by the amount of available space on the recordable CD and in the specified temporary storage location. This option appears when you choose the Recordable CD saving option.
This setting is well-suited for a majority of the movies you save to a recordable CD.
Show more choices
Click to see additional movie settings.
Best fit to file size
Specifies that the saved movie should fit to a specified file size. When this option is selected, the settings that are used for saving the movie are determined by Windows Movie Maker. The movie is then saved at a setting where the resulting movie will be at or below the specified file size.
This setting is ideal if you have a file size requirement or limit for your final movie file. To increase the quality of the final movie file size, you can specify a larger file size limit. This lets Windows Movie Maker use a higher movie setting to save the movie compared to if you specify a lower file size limit with the same content on the storyboard/timeline.
Other settings
Provides a list of additional movie settings you can choose to save your movie with. When choosing a setting from this list, consider how you plan to share the final movie. This list ranges from movie settings suited for video on a Pocket PC to video suited for local playback which is saved at a high bit rate and movie setting.
Setting details
Displays the settings for the saved movie file at the current setting. The following details are provided:
File type. The type of file the movie file is saved as on your computer. Possible file types include Windows Media Video (WMV) files or Audio-Video Interleaved (AVI) files.
Bit rate. The total bit rate of the saved video and audio. Typically, a higher bit rate will result in higher-quality video with smoother motion. However, as the bit rate increases, so does the video file size.
Display size. The size the video displays at (in pixels) in your movie. The first number indicates the width of the video, while the second number indicates the height of the video.
Frames per second. The number of frames that are displayed per second in the saved movie file. Typically, a higher number or frames per second will make the motion of objects or persons in your video appear smoother.
Video format. The video standard for the saved video file. The two possible formats are NTSC and PAL. The specific video format depends on the selected video capture device and the video format it uses. This value is displayed when capturing video as a DV-AVI video file.
Movie file size
Provides the estimated file size of the saved movie and the required available space needed on your hard disk (when saving to your computer) or on the recordable CD (when saving to a recordable CD) to store the saved movie file. The estimated amount of disk space consumed by the movie file is displayed in this area and determined by the length of the movie and the selected movie setting.
For movie settings that are based on the quality of the saved movie, a file size estimate is not available because the size of the movie varies depending on the contents of the timeline and the selected movie setting.
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