Organizing collections and clips

You can organize the source material you capture into collections and clips for use in future projects. A collection serves as a container for clips, which you can organize in many ways. For example, you might organize your collections by an event category.

You can change how your clips are displayed in the Contents pane to see varying amounts of detail about the individual clips within a collection. In the Thumbnails view, you can view the title and a bitmap image of each clip. In the Details view, you can view all the properties of each clip.

In Windows Movie Maker, you can choose to arrange your clip according to different clip properties. This lets you choose how you want to display your clips in the Contents pane so you can quickly find the specific clip you are looking for. For example, if you were looking for a picture that began with an A, you could choose to arrange the clips by name so that file would appear at the top of the Contents pane. The properties you can choose to arrange clips by depend on the selected folder in the tree pane.

The following list identifies how the different file types can be arranged.

• Video clips and pictures. Clips can be arranged by name, duration, start time, end time, dimensions, or source.
• Audio. Clips can be arranged by name, duration, start time, end time, or source.
• Video transitions and video effects. Clips can be arranged by name.

Related topics

• To change the clip view
• To arrange clips in the Contents pane
• To create a collection
• To delete a collection
• To rename a collection
• To delete a clip from a collection
• To copy a clip in a collection
• Working with the collections file
• Using Windows Movie Maker