Too many typos to correct, thay can stay
To hide SL's UI hit "Ctrl-Alt-F1" I think that you must have the advanced menu available for this to work. "Ctrl-Alt-D" will toggle the advanced menu.
I never even used these programs nor Flickr for video but after a quick look at Movie Maker here are my suggestions. First off download a good codec pack like K-Lite
http://www.codecguide.com/download_kl.htm (I use the mega pack.) This will give you many more options when it comes to capturing your video and in the final rendering of your edited projects.
Use the view > timeline option to be able to edit the length of your clips instead of being stuck with MM's predetermined clips. Switch back and forth from timeline to story board to add and remove your transitions and effects.
Under tools> options
General tab > Just the basic stuff here. No explanation required except the default author will actually put this into the movies properties. If you send this video to a friend in e-mail and they check the properties it will tell them that you're the author.
Advanced tab > Default durations~the presets for any still pictures you might use in your media.
Video Properties~Video format NTSC is North American standard 29.9 FPS and PAL is Euro standard 25 FPS
Aspect ratio~normal TV screen or wide screen
e-mail~if you choose to save as -email file M.M. will compress the crap out of you vid to make it fit as close to this size as it can.
Compatibility~Only use this if you're having crashing issues when rendering your video to a certain format. Just turn off the format that does not work.
When you are finished working you have several options to save that work.
"Save project" and "save project as" will only save your the work you've done to the movie, it will not render a video. It allows you to make a movie in more than one session. If you delete a file used in your project before you render the final movie M.M will not be able to find it and it will tell you so your computer may even freeze on you.
"Save movie" will render your finished product. Rendering may take several minutes to several hours depending in the size and quality of your movie. Most short clips should only take a few minutes. As you go through the saving process you'll be given several options. I'll explain the ones I think will help you.
First option is location. This is up to you.
Second option is the title and folder of the saved movie.
Third option is "movie Setting" This is where you choose the properties of your move and
get to see the estimated file size. This is where those codecs come in. You can't change the aspect ratio here so if its telling you 16:9 and you want 4:3 you must cancel and go back to tool options.
"Best Quality" will render a movie based on your first location option. If you are saving the file to you computer but want to send it via e-mail you can check "Other settings" and choose a higher compression and smaller screen size. You can also change the playback bit rate at this point to even further compress your video.
If you are going to upload to YouTube and want your video to be hi-def don't choose the web option, it will give you a low quality file. Use 16:9 aspect ratio WMV with a minimum bit rate of 640Kpbs.
When I first started using capturing and editing software I pushed buttons and pulled levers in random ways just to see how things work. Once I got to know the ins and outs of my programs I captured the same sequence of video in different formats and found that uncompressed capture was the highest quality and had the least amount of CPU load because you are not compressing the video as you shoot it. These files are huge though several GB for just a few seconds of capture. I then rendered the same clip several times over in different formats to see how to achieve the highest quality in my final movie. Try shooting a couple of 30 second clips and make a back up copy of them so that you always a an original to compare results to if you mess up and save over your source files.
AWM Mars and Osprey Therian might know more about xFire and Movie Maker. I know that they have more general knowledge in machinima than I. There seem to only be the three of us active in the machinima section right now and all three of us look at this forum. If you post this in the movie/machinima section you might get lucky and have someone more knowledgeable in one of these programs happen along your post.
