Jason Dunn
09-02-2009, 06:30 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.youtube.com/user/WindowsVideos' target='_blank'>http://www.youtube.com/user/WindowsVideos</a><br /><br /></div><p><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="600" height="360" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/94lYVLPBXpg&ap=&fmt=18" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="600" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/94lYVLPBXpg&ap=&fmt=18"></embed></object></p><p>The first Windows Live Movie Maker beta that came out was so bad, <a href="http://www.digitalhomethoughts.com/news/show/90673/windows-live-movie-maker-beta.html" target="_blank">I called it alpha software</a>. It was so limited, it was useless for anything but making the most basic slide-shows. Fast forward a year, and the product is still in beta - Microsoft doesn't do anything fast it seems - but it has far more features, and is quite useful right now...especially if you're using it on a Windows 7-based system that has full codec support for MPEG4/h.264 video files. Unfortunately the program is still very Microsoft-centric in that it only outputs to WMV, but thankfully they've included HD WMV outputs, so even if you have to transcode it to another format later, at least you'll start with great quality.</p><p>The video above is a nice walk through of the product, so if you haven't used the new version of the software, watch the video and I bet <a href="http://download.live.com/moviemaker" target="_blank">you'll want to take it for a spin</a>!</p>