Publish and save your Windows Movie Maker movie to your computer

As most of you know, I make computer video tutorials and post them to Youtube for everyone to learn about computers. I do not use anything fancy or even expensive, in fact I use the free Camstudio program to record the tutorial and Windows Movie Maker to edit it… Windows movie make comes with most versions of Windows. In this tutorial I will show you how save and publish your windows movie maker production to your computer. This way you can watch it anytime you like, email it to friends, or upload it to Youtube.

What do you need to save a movie to your computer?

• You will need to have Windows Movie Maker on your computer. If you have a normal version of Windows then you will have Windows Movie Maker installed as well, however some versions do not have it. For example Windows Seven Ultimate doesn’t have it.
• You will need a finished movie ready to save. You might have used Camstudio or even a video camera to record it.
• You will need storage space to save the movie to. If you save your movie as an .avi then it will take up twice as much space as a movie saved as .wmv. I usually save my movies as a .wmv as Youtube happily takes this format.

How to Publish my movie to save it on my computer?

When using Windows Movie Maker instead of saying save movie, this program uses the term “publish movie”. Therefore we will publish the movie to the computer. This will save the finished movie file to play at a later date.

In this tutorial I will presume that you have finished editing your movie and now want to save it onto your computer.

1. In the tasks menu on the left side, when you have your program open, there is a menu. If you do not see this menu, press on File at the top and choose publish from the drop down menu.
2. If you do see the menu, go to the Publish section.
3. Click on “This computer“. See the screenshot below.

1. A Publish movie dialog box will appear.
2. Fill in your movie name.
3. Press on browse to choose where to save your movie on your computer. See screenshot below.
4. Then press the next button.

1. The next window will appear.
2. Choose what setting you want your movie to be. If you choose the top choice, Best quality for playback then your movie will be an AVI and will be bigger in size and need more storage space. See below.

1. If you choose the more settings choice, you can choose more options.
2. See below, if you click the drop down arrow you can see the choices.
3. I usually choose “Windows Media DVD Quality (PAL) (3.0 Mbps)”
4. Down below it will show you the exact details of what your movie will be.

1. Now when you are ready you can press on the publish button and the movie will be converted and saved to your computer.

See this movie on how to Save a movie to your computer

And Add a subtitle to a Youtube movie with Windows movie maker