When we set out to build Windows Live Movie Maker, we heard loud and clear that people wanted their movies to simply look better with less effort.
Our research into how people used Windows Movie Maker told us that most movies created were quite simple – just a set of pictures with captions, a soundtrack, the occasional small clip of lightly edited video and transitions. We also saw that people were increasingly publishing movies to popular video-sharing sites. Last, we found that there were many more features in Windows Movie Maker than most people used or wanted to use, and some of the important features were not easy enough to find.
As a result of our research, we designed the new Windows Live Movie Maker to be the best way for everyday people to create stunning short movies with minimal time investment and share them online immediately.
Easy to create beautiful videos and slide shows. Innovative features such as Auto Movie help you generate a polished movie from your videos, photos and music or choose from a variety of transitions and effects to customize your creation and make it really stand out.
Easy to share. Windows Live Movie Maker allows you to share your movie across a TV, PC and mobile device.
Works great on Windows. Windows and Office users will find Movie Maker familiar and easy to use and will love the way it works well with other Windows Live Essentials applications such as Windows Live Photo Gallery.
The new Windows Live Movie Maker includes an array of new features that make it simple for consumers to create, publish and share movies online, in a matter of clicks.
It’s hard to know how transitions and effects will look before adding them. Live Preview gives you a brief glimpse as you mouse over them, so you can quickly choose the best one.
Video is for sharing, so we make it easy to publish your creation to YouTube, with the extensibility to add plug-ins for Facebook and, soon, other online sharing sites.
No more tinkering to get your content to match your soundtrack — with Windows Live Movie Maker, you just make one click and they match up perfectly.
We all know that not all the moments you film should make the final cut, but editing your video is daunting to many consumers. Windows Live Movie Maker makes video editing easy so you can find and include the sweet spot of each video clip.
You want your video to look professional, but without hiring an editing crew. Transitions make your video flow seamlessly between photos and videos and add more action to your creation.
You want to create polished movies with your photos and videos that you can share, but you don’t have a lot of time. Auto Movie can create a beautiful video for you in under one minute that includes transitions, a title, captions and a music soundtrack.
If you’re not a video enthusiast, Windows Live Movie Maker is still a great way to create the coolest photo slide shows with fun transitions and effects that make your photos come to life.
If you use Windows or Office, you’ll be right at home with Windows Live Movie Maker because it uses the same user interface (UI).
Lay out your movie just like the pros do. Storyboard view makes it easy to drag and drop elements to different places and add and edit new elements including audio and transitions.
Make your video an action flick by adding panning and zooming to photos in your movie.
Create a great viewing experience by saving your movie in high-definition format.
Tailor your movie’s soundtrack to set the right mood with easy audio editing.
Windows 7 and Windows Live Movie Maker make it easy to get your photos and videos off your devices and into a beautiful movie that you can share. Just plug in your device, and we’ll walk you through it.
Make your photos even more interesting with rich effects that add variety to your video.
Use text captions overlaid onto your video to tell your story, and give credit where it’s due by adding title screens and end credits.
- Add a soundtrack
- Undo/redo
- Make DVD
- Create in standard or widescreen format
- Adjust brightness
- Save to a mobile device
- Share via e-mail
- Burn to DVD
- Display on your PC
- Display on TV (Media Center Edition, Blu-ray) in high definition
- View via streaming media player
- Display on Xbox
- Display on Zune
- Send to file share Web site, such as Windows Live SkyDrive
- Send to a video-sharing Web site (YouTube, Facebook)
- Publish to other sharing sites (coming soon)
- Windows Media Video (WMV)
- Windows Media, DV-AVI
- Microsoft Recorded TV Show
- 3GP
- 3GPP
- MPEG-2
- MPEG-1
- Motion JPEG
- JPEG
- TIFF
- GIF
- Bitmap
- PNG
- QuickTime .mov* and .qt*
- AVCHD*
- MPEG-4 files*
*Supported in Windows 7 only
Windows Live Movie Maker is unique among video editing software because it makes creating movies and editing video so simple. Our research tells us that the average person wants video creation software that is simple to use and that allows them to easily share their creations. Many programs available today pack the screen with advanced features that might be useful to an advanced user or a professional, but these features can make it hard to do that one simple task: make a polished movie from photos and videos quickly and easily. Windows Live Movie Maker was built for that purpose and it’s the best tool for that job.
Are you looking to create a polished short movie quickly and share it easily? Here’s how Windows Live Movie Maker stacks up against Apple’s iMovie ’09 on the features that enable that experience:
| Windows Live Movie Maker v1 | Apple iMovie ‘09 |
| Automatically generate a movie out of photos, videos and music* | Yes | No |
| Basic video clip editing | Yes | Yes |
| Transitions | 65 transitions | 20 transitions |
| Visual Effects | 20 visual effects | 20 visual effects |
| Preview how all effects, transitions, or animations look on your project before applying | Yes | No |
| Publish to YouTube | Yes | Yes |
| Extensible plug-in support for uploading to additional Web sites, such as Facebook | Yes | No |
| Burn to a DVD | Yes | Yes |
| Publish in high definition | Yes | Yes |
Support for the most popular devices and file formats**
| WLMM supports more formats: 17 video, 14 photo (including manufacturer RAW formats), and 6 audio extensions | iMovie supports 12 video, 4 photo and 5 audio extensions |
| Movie themes | No | Yes |
| Video clip stabilization | No | Yes |
* AutoMovie can add photos, videos and music all at the same time for a polished movie with titles, credits, transitions, and pan and zoom effects.
** Based on best-selling devices in 2008.
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