Microsoft first created an application
called Windows Movie Maker as part of Windows Millennium Edition
(Windows Me), which shipped back in 2000. Since then, both Windows XP
and Vista also included updated versions of Windows Movie Maker. With
Windows 7, Microsoft has stripped Movie Maker out of the operating
system and made it part of the freely downloadable Windows Live
Essentials suite instead. That way, the company can update the product
more frequently and meet the product bundling requirements of various
governments around the world. As always, we assume that you or your PC
maker has downloaded and installed Windows Live Essentials. If not, you
can find the suite at http://download.live.com.
Windows Live Movie Maker is Microsoft's tool for
creating and editing digital videos and publishing them to the Web. You
can import a variety of digital media types into the application,
including home movies, photos, music and other audio files, and even
recorded TV shows. Then, using simple editing techniques along with
professional transitions and effects, you can create completed videos
that can be shared with others on the Web.
NOTE
Windows Live Movie Maker can also output video
files to your hard drive, but only in a limited range of formats. This
is by design: whereas previous versions of Windows Movie Maker were
aimed mostly at home users with camcorders who wanted to share videos
in a variety of ways, including via DVD, times have changed, and
Windows Live Movie Maker addresses those changes. Now, instead of
supporting a bunch of special use cases, the application does what most
people want: it publishes to the Web.
NOTE
While we focus on Windows Live Movie Maker, you may want to overcome some of its limitations and
access some old-school publishing options. You can do so by downloading
and installing Windows Live Movie Maker 2.6 for Windows Vista (it works
fine in Windows 7 as well). This older version of Movie Maker—dating
from the XP days—features a simple user interface, numerous effects and
transitions, and decent titling capabilities. Best of all, it's ideally
suited for creating desktop-oriented video files of various resolutions
and quality levels. You can download Windows Live Movie Maker 2.6 from
the Microsoft Web site: www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=D6BA5972-328E-4DF7-8F9D-068FC0F80CFC&displaylang=en.
Windows Live Movie Maker is a simple and
straightforward application, assuming you're comfortable with video
editing. (And heck, who isn't?) But even for the uninitiated, Windows
Live Movie Maker is pretty easy to use. You just need to know your way
around.
1. Starting Windows Live Movie Maker
Typically, you start Windows Live Movie Maker by launching its shortcut from the Start menu. (Type movie
in the Search box to find it quickly.) You can also find it buried in
the Start menu All Programs list under Windows Live. The Windows Live
Movie Maker application window is shown in Figure 1.
NOTE
In increasingly rare cases, you may get an error
message when you try to launch Windows Live Movie Maker. If you see an
error dialog like that shown in Figure 2, then your PC is not powerful enough to run Windows Live Movie Maker.
You will only see this dialog if your PC
does not meet the performance requirements for the application. These
requirements include 1GB of RAM, a single-core 2.4 GHz or faster
processor, and a video card that supports DirectX 9.0c (or later) and
Pixel Shader 2.0 (or later). But we don't want to get bogged down in
technical jargon here. If you have a reasonably modern computer, you'll
have no issues with Movie Maker. We've successfully run Windows Live
Movie Maker on a low-end netbook featuring a dual-core Atom processor
running at just 1.6 GHz and utilizing integrated graphics, for example.
So if you do see this dialog, you probably shouldn't even be running
Windows 7.
