Installing Windows Movie Maker 6.0 on Windows 7, 8, 8.1 or 10

If you are reading this, I'm going to assume you've upgraded or purchased at least one PC with Windows 7, 8, 8.1 or 10 and discovered Windows Movie Maker is no where to be found. In its place, Microsoft offered a set of programs called "Windows Essentials" which included Movie Maker 2011 or 2012.

Many people have tried these versions of Movie Maker 2011 or 2012 and complained about the lack of a traditional timeline, issues with crashing, long times to prepare video files and the inability to customize the transitions, effects and titles. If you have been building up a library of custom titles, transitions and effects under Windows Movie Maker 6.0, none of these can be used in the newest Movie Maker because the rendering architecture has changed and Microsoft has no API for customizing things.

The good news is you can still use the latest version of Windows Movie Maker 6.0 from Vista. You can do this manually by copying the files from a Vista machine, registering some DLLs and creating a shortcut in your start menu. Or you can just use the installers I created below:

Movie Maker 6.0 for Windows 7/8/8.1/10 (64-bit)
Movie Maker 6.0 for Windows 7/8/8.1/10 (32-bit)

There are two versions (64-bit or 32-bit) depending on the version of Windows you are running. If you are unsure, go to your 'Start' menu, right-click on 'Computer' and choose 'Properties'. System type should show 64-bit or 32-bit operating system. Pick the installer that matches. After that, don't forget to start previewing all the cool add-ons that you can have with this version.

Note: I'm turning off comments on this thread since there are more than 200.

Windows Live Movie Maker – What changed in the new version, and why...

On the Windows Live Team Blog, Cheryl White (a Program Manager for Windows Live Movie Maker), has detailed some of the new features in WLMM along with the rationale for changing the way things are done compared to Windows Movie Maker.

Take a look at Windows Live Movie Maker – What changed in the new version, and why.

Anticipation Builds for Windows Live Movie Maker

The underlying tenet of the Windows Movie Maker team has always been to make an extremely easy-to-use program for editing movies. Movie Maker has been a place where you can quickly bring in your camcorder footage, trim and reorder clips, overlay some music, add some titles (along with captions and credits) then save the results out as a movie file.

From there it has often been hard to get that to the point where it can be shared (a 10MB limitation on e-mailing, a separate step for uploading to a video site like YouTube, extra software for burning the movie onto a DVD). And there's always been an issue with getting certain file types to import and edit correctly. The only types that have consistently worked are the native import types of DV-AVI (mini-DV camcorder) and WMV. When file types didn't work, it required a user to convert them, suffer editing weirdness like green screens, saving that would hang, outright crashes and the like.

Vista Movie Maker made some strides in the areas of real time preview, ability to capture HD video into DVR-MS files for editing, usage of the GPU for high-quality transitions/effects and the ability to create a DVD using DVD Maker. But even now there are issues that arise with file types, occasional crashes, publishing problems, etc.

In response, Microsoft is in the process of creating a new Windows Live Movie Maker (WLMM) as part of Windows Live Essentials. The program is currently in a "beta" release, but other reviewers, along with myself would really call this more of a placeholder. It's almost like they have gone back to version 1.0 with no titles, a single fade transition, a couple black/white effects, etc. And the most startling missing feature seems to be the lack of a timeline.

So, is this what we should expect? Will there be a timeline in the final version? How will "power" users get control over their project if it all seems to be a storyboard? And will we have the ability to build custom transitions and effects like we could in prior releases to extend the capabilities? Will it handle HD video better? Will it be easy to publish and share my video? Will it handle new file types?

Well, I can't disclose all of what I learned recently in a visit to the Microsoft Campus in Redmond, but I can say I am excited. My concerns about a missing timeline are partially allayed. And I can see that they haven't abandoned customization. In fact, Eric Doerr has hinted that the new rendering engine in WLMM will take advantage of the GPU in ways it hasn't so far. Trust me, I think Windows Live Movie Maker will have the simplicity that we all appreciate for quickly creating movies, but with the fancy features we all love to show off. While it isn't there in the current public beta, stay tuned.

Aspect Ratios, HD and Windows Movie Maker

I'm having a lot of fun with HD video. I'm hoping that others are seeing that HD video will be the standard for home video, but with that comes challenges. The hardest part is dealing with the tools we have for editing video; it's not a seamless environment yet. I can't take stuff I've captured in Sony Vegas and easily use it in Windows Movie Maker. Similarly, if I want to capture something in WMM, it doesn't come in seamlessly into Sony Vegas.

For example, recently our family took a camping trip to Mammoth Lakes. I had set up our camera and filmed 40+ minutes of us setting up the tent. Obviously, I didn't want to have people watch a full 40 minutes, I wanted to speed it up but with variable speeds, slower at the beginning, faster in the middle, slower at the end.

Windows Movie Maker only has the ability to increase the speed by powers of 2 (double, quadruple, etc.) by applying the Speed Up, Double effect up to 6 times. Even with my custom effects for speed (that allow other speed rates), I couldn't get the effect I wanted. So I switched to Sony Vegas Pro 8. For some reason it didn't like the dvr.ms format that I captured in WMM. So I had to recapture it in Vegas. That was okay, but then I found that Sony Vegas doesn't let you speed up more than 4 times. Since I wanted to get our 40 minutes down to about 1 minute, it meant I would need multiple passes.

My plan was to do the first pass in Sony Vegas with variable speeds, then do an overall speed up using Movie Maker. Things were going fine... I did the first pass and saved the clip in a high-bitrate WMV format. Then I brought it into WMM and applied the speed effect to get it down to a minute. I published the movie.

What I discovered was that WMM took only the top, left corner of the video. So rather than thinking I had 1920x1080 video, it saw it as 720x480 and only took those pixels in the upper right. I'm thinking it must be related to the format that Sony exports in that it must not be *true* WMV format, or is otherwise causing WMM to get confused.

In the end, I had to do all the work in Sony Vegas with about 3 (or was it 4) passes there. The result is great, but it took a lot more time than I thought it should. I hope we get to the point where things will be seamless and all formats will be recognized. Will we get there? Who knows?