GameSpot spent some hands-on time with The Sims 3 and it’s Movie Mashup Tool that will be featured on TheSims3.com once the game is released.  For those incapable of using Windows Movie Maker, you should be pleased that with this tool, anyone will be able to create their own movies!  I still plan to use my own movie editor…as you’re still limited to what you can use within their tools (music wise for example).  Thanks to Pete aka TheSidDog for sending in the link!

You can create a mash-up by dragging and dropping clips from your folder into a slideshow on the bottom of the studio screen, and you can also add three different additional effects to each segment: a starting transition that opens the scene, a floating text caption, and a visual filter. The transitions include all kinds of wipes (up, down, left, right, pixelation wipes, and fade-ins); the captions let you include brief text blurbs in the lower-third area of the screen in various font-plus-background combinations, such as newspaper print or pink cursive script; and the visual filters include things such as black-and-white desaturation and various heavy color tints. You can preview any part of your video, or the whole shebang, at any time, editing all of your transitions, captions, and filters before saving it and uploading it to the community area for consumption.

GameSpot – The Sims 3 Exclusive Hands-On – Making Movies With The Sims 3’s Mash-Up Tool