Windows 7 - Editing with XP's Movie Maker 2.1... but in Windows 7

Certainly the optional download of the new Windows Live Movie Maker will work in Windows 7, and promises to be better in the long run for most users. It's being developed from scratch after years of lessons learned under its belt. But until it's completed, released, and users have learned it, there will be many who want to continue with the tried and true features of MM2.1 in XP and MM6 in Vista. Is that possible? We'll see.

Windows 7 is teasing me. I can copy the Movie Maker folders from XP and Vista, register their DLLs, and run versions MM1, MM2.1, MM2.6 and MM6. Each opens OK but lacks some or most features until their DLLs are registered. That shifts them into higher gears where they work with enough features to get my hopes up, at least high enough to write this article and demo it's use with an example.

MM2.1 from XP seems to offer the most promise. It's a much more self-contained app than MM6 in Vista. I can use it in Windows 7 to capture DV from my mini-DV camcorder, and create and edit projects using more than the basic sets of custom effects, transitions and title overlays.

After making a project, I can use MM2.1 to save the movie to a wmv or DV-AVI file on the hard drive, or transfer it to my mini-DV camcorder. The files on the hard drive are easy to upload to online hosts such as YouTube, Facebook and vimeo.

Here's a link to the first project I made completely with MM2.1 running on Windows 7, a 2 minute video of my grand-son's last basketball game of the season.

Basketball Game

Most features, with the exception of still pictures, work well. Here's a rundown.

Video clips work fine. You can:

• Capture from a mini-DV camcorder with a firewire connection (after a driver is installed... I did it by installing the optional Windows Live suite, which automatically installs the driver when you plug the camcorder in and turn it to the VCR mode).
• Preview and split clips in collections.
• Drag the ones you want to the storyboard or timeline view of the project.
• Split clips on the timeline, and add effects and transitons. The basic and some added ones work but most third party ones don't.
• Preview the project... it sometimes pauses by itself, often as the position reaches a transition.
• Save the movie to either wmv or DV-AVI format and see all the video clips in it.
• Save the movie to a DV camcorder connected by firewire (this works without having first installed the driver for the camcorder).

Still pictures (BMP, JPG, PNG) give you hope as they import and preview normally in the collections, but that's followed by significant issues in a project:

• They import into collections and preview fine.
• Frame snapshots from video clips in the collection save as JPG files OK.
• You can drag them to the project timeline/storyboard where you think they're fine as the thumbnails show as usual... but
• They appear only as blackness in project previews or saved movies.

In my sample video I was going to use a frame snapshot at the very end, of the ball as it reached the rim of the basket... a freeze-frame with text over it. But when I saw the still picture wouldn't work I split the video clip and applied the slow-down-half effect a couple times and finished it with that instead.

Audio/Music clips sort of work, with quirks but no critical issues:

• They import and preview well from the collections.
• On the timeline they work but sometimes pause by themselves during a project preview. This may be related to the occasional pauses when the timeline position reaches a transition.
• The audio is included in saved movies without problems.

Title Overlays work fine:

• The text features and title animations of MM2.1 work as they do in XP.
• Custom xml files and overlay images also work well, including moving overlays.

Continue to the second page to read the final thoughts on Movie Maker 2.1.