Microsoft has released Windows Live Movie Maker from beta as part of a complete refresh to their Windows Live Essentials package. Designed specifically for Windows 7 (but it will also work on Vista), Windows Live Movie Maker helps you make stunning movies from your photos and videos.
The new version of Movie Maker adds new transitions, effects, and editing capabilities as well as taking advantage of the new features of Windows 7 like jumplists and support for new video formats including QuickTime formats, AVCHD and MPEG4.
Window Live Movie Maker also makes it easy to share you videos, you can send your video to YouTube right from the main menu, or add a quick plug-in and easily publish to Facebook. Microsoft plan to add more plug-ins for popular sharing sites in the future. You can also burn your movie to a DVD or save it in HD (high definition) to play on your TV.
Latest research shows that over 60 percent of US consumers watch user-generated videos online. So Microsoft is pushing the idea of turning your photos and video clips into films and posting them to YouTube. Using Photo Gallery (which is also part of Windows Live Essentials) you can send photos to Movie Maker and using the AutoMovie feature quickly add a soundtrack and generate a movie.
Windows Live Essentials is a suite of free programs for Windows which adds applications for e-mail, instant messaging (Windows Live Messenger), photo-sharing and moving making (including Photo Gallery), blog publishing (Windows Live Writer), and security services. Windows Live Movie Maker is available as part of this suite at http://download.live.com/ or from the Windows Live Movie Maker site.