Microsoft's Movie Maker 2 

Breakthrough New Video-Editing Feature Enables Anyone to Create Home Movies Like a Professional

Microsoft Corporation's Windows Movie Maker 2 is one of the easiest to use video editing software solutions for those just getting into video production as well as those who already have experience. In addition, if you are running Windows XP, it is FREE.  Download it.

If you are running an older version of Windows, it is worth upgrading to Windows XP just for the Movie Maker 2 application. (In our humble opinion, Windows XP is a lot more stable than earlier versions of Windows)

If you are running Windows Me, you probably have Movie Maker 1 on your system. Not as powerful or as fun to use as Movie Maker 2, it still provides some excellent capabilities for the beginning video maker. Macintosh users get to use a similar program from Apple - iMovie 1 and iMovie2. See iMovie page.

 Windows Movie Maker 2 has been designed to take advantage of state-of-the-art technology and remove the complexity and confusion from home video editing, allowing users to create and edit home movies with professional-looking transitions and video effects in just minutes.

Windows Movie Maker 2 - Create Professional-Looking Home Movies in Minutes

Windows Movie Maker 2 for Windows XP redefines fast and easy home video creation with a new, more intuitive, task-based user interface, improved timeline and storyboard views, and a new breakthrough feature called AutoMovie, which allows anyone to create a professional-looking home video in just minutes. Windows Movie Maker 2 for Windows XP also offers nearly 30 video effects, 60 video transitions and more than 40 titles and credits, giving users many creative options. Through support for Windows Media Video 9, users can enjoy the most efficient way to edit and store a home movie and share it with friends and family. The advanced compression of Windows Media Video 9 means users can store the equivalent of 15 one-hour DV tapes in just 10 GB of hard drive space. Using DV-AVI, the same 10GB hard drive would store only 45 minutes of video footage - not even enough to store a standard DV tape.

 Windows Movie Maker 2 also provides users with more ways to share their home movies, including burning them to CD or DVD, sending them in e-mail, sharing them on a Pocket PC or saving them back to a digital video camera. Users can also share their home movies over the Internet using Web sharing services such as Neptune Mediashare and POPcast Inc., or burn them to DVD with leading third-party DVD-burning software such as Sonic MyDVD or MedioStream neoDVD.

Post Your Movie to the Web using Movie Maker

Once your film is saved, you can send send it to a video hosting provider on the Web—if you don’t currently have a hosting provider, you can sign up directly from the Wizard. .

To upload your movie to the Web:

1. Once your movie is edited and saved, click Send to the web in the Taskpane.

2. Enter the name of your movie and click Next.

3. On the Movie Setting page, do one of the following:

   1. Choose one of the movie settings that best matches the Internet connection speed of your intended audience.
      
      
      Selecting a connection speed
      
      

   2. Click Show more choices, and select one of the additional movie settings.

4. Click Next and wait for your movie to be saved.

5. On the Select a Video Hosting Provider and Sign In page, click Sign up now to see a list of video hosting providers available, and then sign up and establish an account with a provider. Sign in with your new user name and password, the come back to Movie Maker and enter in your User Name and Password.

6. If you already have a web site and an account with a video hosting provider, simply enter in your User Name and Password. Click Next, and Windows Movie Maker will transfer your video to the Web. This may take a few moments.

7. Do any of the following:

   1. To play the movie on the Web, click the Watch my movie on the Web after I click Finish check box.

   2. To save a local copy of the movie on your computer and upload a copy to the video hosting provider’s server, click Save a copy of my movie on my computer.

8. If you are using a web authoring program like FrontPage, you may choose to use the program to insert or embed the video on a certain page. Make sure the program can find your video. Then upload the new pages and movie to your site.

 Get Windows Movie Maker 2 for Windows XP

Windows Movie Maker 2 are available in English as well as 26 other languages including Arabic, simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

More information about the features of Windows Media Player 9 Series and Windows Movie Maker 2 for Windows XP can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/experiences/.

 Learn to Use Movie Maker

Microsoft's Online Guide

Movie Maker Handbook - read review