My Dinner with Window’s Movie Maker (First Impressions)
Posted by Keith · January 16th, 2008We met apprehensively at first, both guarded and with trepidation. You see, I’ve been rooted for some time now in my Mac ways, and this PC program boasted a certain degree of change that
made me, initially, uncomfortable. But as much of the world still operates in a Windows dominated medium, I felt obliged to entertain my guest with a certain degree of objectivity. So, here are my first impressions of Movie Maker, the free PC editing platform that claims comparability with Mac’s iMovie.Well, I’ll say this: I was fairly impressed. My initial surprise came from how similar I found Movie Maker’s functionality with that of iMovie’s. I was able to operate the program with ease from the start, as if I were a seasoned pro at dealing with its operations. This should lift concerns users may have about switching from one platform to the other, for proficiency at one seems to indicate proficiency for both.And for those new to editing in general, the interface of the program is highly intuitive, and I found that each step of the process is easily accomplished even by the novice, due to Movie Maker’s clear and straightforward design. It essentially holds your hand through each maneuver. The only downside to this functionality is that advanced operations, like audio manipulation and visual effect creation, become difficult if not impossible to achieve. I found this to be the same with iMovie. These programs are geared towards beginners and therefore come with a multitude of plug-ins and tools that are designed solely for speed and ease of use. Therefore, the attributes are set in stone and manual manipulation is out of the question. Oh well. For the beginner the trade-off is well worth it.The plug-in effects that come with the program are very nice, as are the transitions. To place these in your timeline, you simply drag and drop the desired effect in; simple, no? The editing
My criticisms rest mainly in editing operations. First, there is only one viewer that changes back and forth from raw footage to your edited movie (the same is true with iMovie). In more advanced programs (like Final Cut Pro and Avid) you have two screens, one to view the uncut material and one for the assembled footage. Also, scrolling through raw footage is slightly arduous, as you have to select it in one window, view it in another, and make a cut in yet another section of the screen. Additionally, I had trouble with rendering effects. IMovie clearly dictates when an effect is rendered with a small green line (opposed to an un-rendered red one), but Movie Maker has no such line and I found my transitions choppy when viewed in the timeline. They were fine and smooth once the whole sequence was exported, but it made choosing the correct transition very difficult.
Overall, I was very impressed with the program, much more so than I was intending. Within 10 minutes of playing around with the system, I felt I had mastered most of its intricacies. I encourage all who have doubts about their ability to edit to try this program, or iMovie for Mac users. You will quickly learn that editing is something anyone with patience and vision can accomplish. Happy MindBiting everyone!
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Tags: Review, Windows Movie Maker | Posted in Video Production and Publishing |
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January 16th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Great review Keith! I’m going to give this a whirl on my laptop. I tried playing with this once a long time ago. From the looks of your diagram, it seems they have made some serious improvements.
March 31st, 2008 at 10:05 am
[...] with a PC and Windows XP or Vista can edit video using the built-in Windows Movie Maker software (Keith’s WMM analysis), it simply cannot compare with the features and options offered by the stand-alone editing [...]