Windows Movie Maker 2 (which comes in an update to Windows XP) is really not a bad movie making program. I have heard surprisingly little about it, so for a long time, I didn’t even try clicking the icon to see what it did. Once I finally decided to give it a whirl, I was surprised at its usefulness. <\/p>\n
The project I wanted to do was just to take a folder of still images and create a video slideshow with music in the background. It turns out there’s a Wizard built in to do just that. Basically I just had to open the wizard, select the folder, select the song, select a style and click “create movie.” That’s it… it was done. Windows Movie Maker automatically creates the slideshow to the length of the song and throws in some nice default transitions. <\/p>\n
Once it’s done, you can either save it and have a decent movie done in about 15 minutes, or go in and add from the impressive selection of transitions and titling effects to customize the movie. <\/p>\n
There are however, as with most Microsoft programs, some caveats. Windows Movie Maker won’t even run on my Dell laptop. I tried some troubleshooting (updating my video card drivers etc) but it just keeps crashing. It runs perfectly on my MUCH older P II 450 Gateway desktop–even with such an antiquated processor, it is able to render the transitions in realtime. <\/p>\n
Creating a similar movie in Premier<\/a> or another, more advanced video editing application such as Final Cut <\/a>would have taken much longer to get the desired effect. Between tweaking the length of transitions and the time pictures are shown on the stage, creating a simple slideshow (even using the storyboarding features) can become a much more involved process. I haven’t compared it to iMovie<\/a> yet, but I imagine it has similar features.<\/p>\n If you have Windows XP and want to make simple videos, I suggest checking out Windows Movie Maker. If it doesn’t crash on your machine, you might just find you really like it.<\/p>\n