Windows Movie Maker - The daddy of free video editors...?Full disclosure here: Regarding Windows Movie Maker, I personally have a bias against Microsoft products. I find them to be bloated, unsecure, overly complex and too ubiquitous for my liking. The exception to this is Microsoft Flight Simulator, which I love! Windows Movie Maker holds a rare place in the pantheon of free video editing software. As it is bundled with the Windows Operating system it can be said to be the most widely owned editing software on the planet. That makes it the 'daddy' of all free movie editors, in terms of reach. But that doesn't mean it's the best! Taking away my bias, though, it is apparent that WMM is actually a fairly well put together tool with some reasonable functionality. From the web site: Windows Movie Maker 2.1 makes home movies amazingly fun. With Movie Maker 2.1, you can create, edit, and share your home movies right on your computer. Build your movie with a few simple drag-and-drops. Delete bad shots and include only the best scenes. Then share your movie via the Web, e-mail, or CD. Using third-party software you can even take movies you've made and turn them into DVDs. You can also save your movie back to the video tape in your camera to play back on a TV or on the camera itself. The interface itself is similar to many others 
on
the market in that it uses a timeline and allows
simple drag and drop editing. A seperate layout allows
'storyboard' approach where the movie can be built using
blocks. The software will then format this with the appropriate
transitions etc.WMM has a titling function which allows you to create start and end credits as well as adding caption to individual scenes. These are all managed on a separate track in the timeline. Input formatsWMM will accept the following input formats (according to the help text):.asf, .avi, .m1v, .mp2, .mp2v, .mpe, .mpeg, .mpg, .mpv2, .wm, and .wmv However as with all video imports, the issue is not the file type but the codec associated with it. If you don't have the appropriate codec loaded on your machine WMM will not be able to open it. Output formatsWmm will output to the following formats:
Note you cannot take output from WMM and put it directly onto a DVD it will need to go through a DVD authoring software first. This will convert it to the MPEG format that DVD's use. TransitionsThere are about 60 basic transitions that come with WMM and more can be created or purchased through third party
vendors. Usually in a movie I tend to stick with a basic number of
transitions - fade, and dissolve (See the image right). Unless you're George Lucas, the need to have fancy wipes and swipes to move between one scene and another is unnecessary. The exception to this is when creating some sort of avant-garde pop video in which funky transitions might be in keeping with the theme. SummaryThis is a very competent piece of free editing software. It has good support (papajohn appears to be the world expert on this software), good functionality and is available on all PC's. If I remove my Microsoft bias I can rate this quite highly. Beware, however, that lot's of forums contain issues from disgruntled users complaining about the speed and stability of this tool - particularly on Vista. This is not unusual for free tools but given the provenance of the tool (and that fact that it is supported by the biggest company in the world) the noise should be a lot less!You should have the software on your PC already (if you can't find it click 'Start', the 'run' then enter 'moviemk.exe'). If you don't have it download the software here Go to the papajohn support site here Return from Windows Movie Maker to Free editing software
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