Paint.NET Tutorial - PapaJohn's Newsletter Archive

With the current flurry of interest in custom xml code and the use of image overlays, the timing of Paint.NET is perfect.

Its background is interesting. Designed and developed at Washington State University with guidance from Microsoft, Paint.NET is a student project programmed in C# and GDI+., a class project to learn programming by doing something from scratch. Inspired by Paint and aided by Microsoft, the students developed Paint.NET to get it to its current state in less than a year. Pretty impressive!!

I used Paint.NET all week as I made another video to demo Movie Maker and Photo Story at the San Francisco Windows Brand Gallery next weekend... a 7 minute one about our walk across the Golden Gate in early October. The opening scene uses two custom title overlays, and at the 3 minute mark there's another overlay to point to Bernadette in a group.

I'll use these to illustrate how you would use Paint.NET when preparing such images for custom overlays.

The first 3 batches of newsletters I sent out last week had the wrong issue number. Maybe you didn't notice that you have two different ones with #75 and none with #76.

Someone emailed a copy of a 3gp video clip file from her cell phone. The info on my site pointed to a 'command-line' utility that can convert it to an avi file, but she didn't know how to use such a thing. I changed that... now there's a tutorial on the Importing Source Files > Video > Phones page.

Check it if you use or run into other 'command-line' utilities that you need help figuring out.

I'll be at the Windows Brand Gallery in San Francisco next weekend... with scheduled presentations at 1, 3 and 5 pm on the 19th and 20th. Stop by if you're in the bay area.

Here's a link to a brief Photo Story that shows the Gallery... at 1830 Polk Street, the corner of Polk and Jackson. Note that the text I added at the lower left is angled a bit to be aligned with the sign... that was done with the fine rotation feature of Paint.NET.

My dates at the Gallery in New York City are now firm; the weekend of Dec 17-18. I'll let you know when the location is selected.

I wondered why a movie made wth a custom WMV profile in widescreen mode in Movie Maker played widescreen in MM2 and the Windows Media Player, but in standard 4:3 mode on a DVD in MyDVD. What I found was a simple difference in how things work.

Movie Maker places a widescreen tag in a saved movie and, when WMP sees the tag it plays it that way. But MyDVD doesn't look at the tag.

MyDVD uses the pixel dimensions of the movie, and shows it with a bias toward a standard 4:3. What I mean by bias is that, for any width from a square 480x480 pixels to 720x480, MyDVD will play it as standard 4:3. Movies wider than 720 (up to the maximum of 2000 pixels for a custom profile) play wider and wider, with the 16:9 ratio only when it's 856 pixels wide. A width less than 480 pixels shows the full height but with black borders at the left and right, down to the minimum width of 16 pixels when the video looks like a pencil standing on end.

This means my downloadable custom profiles for DVDs will work for standard mode DVDs but not widescreen, as the dimensions are 720x480... I'll need to add two more profiles for widescreen NTSC and PAL options, at least for users of MyDVD. Maybe other DVD software looks at the tag? I don't know.

... here's an interesting post on Thursday by a very knowledgeable MVP - "...WMM is designed to capture digital video. It does sometimes work with analog, but not always. Better results can be obtained by using third party analog capture software."

I'm watching postings swing from "... use this black box for analog capture..." to "... Movie Maker doesn't do analog capture...".

This app is shaping up to be a great step up from Paint, and still free. It's still in beta and developing quickly. Your download will be a slightly newer version than the one I used for this newsletter... Download Paint.NET

The license says we're free to do anything we want with the software as long as we include this copyright and permission statement. It's one of the shortest and most interesting license statements I"ve read.

I ran into more of a challenge when I started to present a tutorial about Paint.NET than I did when I jumped into it to do some work.

The screen snapshots that are usually so easy to do with IrfanView will capture the main working window, but not the 4 smaller windows with the tools, Colors, Layers, and History states.

I fished around and found that the screen capture feature of Microsoft Producer gets them all. These are my first screen shots using Producer.

The working window includes the main one with the menu and options at the top, the canvas for the pictures, and 4 little ones to help you work.

You can move the little ones anywhere on your desktop, even off of the main window so as to not be covering the canvas.

Let's look at the features that are more than Paint and of particular help to us when prepping the images for custom overlays.

The magnifier has options to go down in size in addition to upwards. Paint can only go up, with a maximum of 800%. Paint.NET can go to 3200%, and can also go down to as low as 2%... handy for the larger pixel images from today's digicams.

The magic wand lets you select an area of a picture and quickly delete all the pixels that have the same color or ones close to it... the sensitivity level is adjustable to get more or less of them with a single stroke.

The look is different but the functionality similar, with the addition of the ability to input a hex value and assign a transparency setting.

History states are new... giving you the ability to go back in time... kind of like the multiple undo's of Movie Maker, and similar to Photoshop's history states. History states let you take big jumps rather than sequential undo's and redo's.

Layers are key to developing overlay images like the pointer to Bernadette in the Golden Gate movie. By placing an image on one layer and marking up the overlying layer, you can leave the underlying layer behind when going to Movie Maker with the image you want to use. We'll see it in action in a minute.

Let's walk through the creation of the overlay used at the opening of the video... starting with a 5 megapixel picture from a still camera, the one at the right.

I selected this picture because it has a big frame that I could cut-out and use the rest of the image as an overlay image to a video playing in the background. The fairly even lighter color of the sign meant I could easily pick and discard the pixels... easy with the magic wand.

I used IrfanView to crop and resize a segment of the picture, saving it as a BMP.

If I tried to remove the background in Paint, I'd have been able to change the inside of the sign to a single color needed for the PNG file... but I'd probably have opted to delete the words with the background, as they would take too much effort to work around.

With the magic wand of Paint.NET, it was easy enough to erase the background. It opened up new possibilities, having the text of a sign included in the overlay.

Work your way around the picture, touching another spot with the wand and pressing the delete key.... until you're done.

Removing these pixels gets the area to be all the same color (even the absence of a color is all the same). You need that to set the color as transparent when making the PNG file.

From Paint.NET save it as a BMP. Open the BMP in IrfanView and save it as a PNG. That'll let you pick the color for transparency. Paint.NET has the option to save to a PNG, but it doesn't let you select the transparent color.

You may have noticed when viewing the video that the sign at first had only the larger title, not the facts in smaller text under it. I used two title overlays, carving out the smaller text for the first one and leaving it in for the second.

This one is easier than cleaning out lots of pixels for a see-thru effect. If there's something of interest in a scene, and it doesn't move around a lot, you can use a simple annotated overlay. It's an easy 2 step process in Paint.NET.

Step 1... take a snapshot of a typical frame using Movie Maker's snapshot feature. Open it in Paint.NET. Draw/annotate on it, but not on the picture itself.

Create a new blank layer by pressing the little lower left icon and annotate on it... it'll look like you're marking up the picture, but it'll be like writing on tracing paper over an image. These are the layers.

Step 2... uncheck the background image and save the file to a new BMP. It'll save whatever is visible... ready to take into IrfanView for a PNG overlay image with transparency.

Maybe Paint.NET has a transparency setting when saving as a PNG, but I didn't notice it. That was the only reason I had to take the image through IrfanView.

Everything worked well... by the time I finished there was another beta version, one with a Bezier pen in addition to staight lines, which works great also. Paint.NET is a keeper for my video editing toolbox... I added the download link to the Setup > Other Software page of the site.

If you want to try the overlays yourself, I put a PapaJohn-Overlays zip package on the website. It has the xml file and sample PNG overlay files 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9.

Put the five PNG files in the c:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared folder and the xml file in the c:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared\AddOnTFX folder (make the AddOnTFX folder manually if you don't have one).

To check it, use the samples I included... then replace the sample PNG files and add others with your own images... the XML file supports up to 10 different images.

I look forward to comments and discussion about this and other newsletters on the forums at:

I'm involved in many things that support users of Movie Maker and Photo Story, and adding more regularly. Some are free and others reasonably priced.

TheDVShow is the only weekly Podcast having more useful information about desktop video editing and production than anywhere else on the Web. Digital video editing, nonlinear editing, streaming media, software releases, tutorials, business tips, technical help, download of the day and news on the latest products to make everything easier. It's where professional and consumer desktop video users go to stay on the cutting edge.

Call the phone mail machine to get your technical question answered on the air... call (206)-203-3516

The radio broadcast is from Boston, and the website has downloadable podcast files. The June 19th 2005 podcast was the first 'bi-weekly' show with a segment about Movie Maker 2.

Movie Maker 2 - Do Amazing Things (with its online companion on www.papajohn.org), published by Microsoft Press...

Movie Maker 2 - Zero to Hero - with support on the publisher's forum - Friends of Ed

MaximumPC's winter 2005 quarterly special... had a 7 page tutorial 'Make a Killer Home Movie with Maker 2'. The special edition of the video made for it is now on my website as a file download.

The November 2005 edition of Maximum PC had a well done reworked 6 page reprint of the same article, starting on page 42 after the Happy 20th Birthday article for Windows.

Learning VirtualDub - published by Virtual Dub

Packt Publishing, is the first book about VirtualDub software. I wrote the first chapter about downloading and setting up the software: VirtualDub, VDubMod and AVISynth.

Movie Maker 2 and Photo Story 3 - www.papajohn.org - the site's 3 goals are: an online companion to the Do Amazing Things book, a detailed tutorial for PhotoStory 3, and helping you solve Movie Maker 2 problems.

Forums are open to all for viewing, but require registration of those who want to post. Moderators actively participate to ensure the forum discussions move forward and stay on track.

Newsgroups are wide open for all to view and post... moderation is collective by the participants.

Movie Maker 2/Photo Story newsletter. The annual subscription is $20 and the link to subscribe is on the main page of my Movie Maker website at:

#78 - November 19 - open (it'll be issued early as I'll be at the San Francisco Gallery for the weekend)

Newsletters that were distributed more than 6 issues ago are posted by Rob Morris to an Archive Site at his Windows Movie Makers website. Links from my website pages to specific newsletters make it easier for the website viewer to see the content of both while browsing a topic.

Drop an email to suggest a newsletter topic... I can use more requests rather than fewer.

Transition Maker 2 (TM2) is a utility for the ultimate in making your own personal and custom transitions for Movie Maker 2. It's a joint product from Patrick Leabo, the programmer, and myself. Version 2 was released a week ago and I'm still working on updating the online tutorial.

I've beta tested some of the Pixelan packages and think very highly of their people and products.

Managing your personal information is more of a challenge as hard drives get bigger and the internet more robust.

My personal database has been an ongoing project over many years, and is now available to others. A tutorial about using it is on the Managing > Personal Database page of my site, and more info is in the database package itself.

It's free for the asking to regular newsletter subscribers... send an email request and I'll return it with the zipped file, which is less than 1 MB.

To others it's $10. To order, use the button on the top of the Managing > Personal Database page.

An online gallery that fully aligns with the main priority of the website is the 'PapaJohn Expert Zone' at neptune.

Check it at Neptune and the Distributing > Neptune page of the website, where there's a developing tutorial about how to use the service.

in conjunction with the Portage, Michigan library, I offer two free training sessions about Movie Maker, an intro session and a workshop. The upcoming scheduled sessions are:

If you can't save a movie because your project has become too complex, e-mail a copy and I'll divide it into manageable sub-projects, and provide detailed instructions about how to render the parts and assemble them into your final movie. $49.95 (no cost if it's not the right solution or doesn't work) - for details, see the sidebar on the Problem Solving > Can't Save a Movie page of www.papajohn.org

Movie Maker 2/Photo Story training and support services start at $50 per hour - send an email - PapaJohn@CharterMi.net and I'll help you determine your needs, and work with you to plan and implement them.

Wedding combo website/video packages - check the bottom branch of the Movie Maker 2 website for a sample of what you can expect for the online portion of the package.

Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

About John 'PapaJohn' Buechler from Microsoft.com

John "PapaJohn" Buechler, of Kalamazoo, Mich., goes by PapaJohn online. An avid user of Movie Maker since its first release, and a regular supporter of the community of Movie Maker users, John received a 2003 MVP award from Microsoft for that support. In March 2003, he started a comprehensive website about Movie Maker 2 at www.PapaJohn.org. He maintains the website, writes books and articles, teaches, and provides support services - all for the community of Movie Maker 2 users. An engineer by formal education, John is a computer database and multimedia expert by business and personal experience. He co-authored the first book about Movie Maker 2 and is actively working on a second one. You can find his advice in the Windows XP Movie Maker newsgroup and in the Windows Movie Makers Forums.

This newsletter is republished with permission of John "PapaJohn" Buechler.
Please note that this is an archive of newsletters and some information may become outdated. PapaJohn, and the webmaster of this site, provides this information "AS IS" with no warranties.

Visit - PapaJohn's Movie Maker 2 and Photo Story 2 Newsletter Index

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