[jzee]

As part of the Windows Essentials package (Live branding now dropped)

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b...vie-maker.aspx

[jzee]

This update to Photo Gallery 2012 will include the following new features:

AutoCollage

You can now select up to 50 images and automatically create a collage of your images with this new Photo Gallery feature. AutoCollage is accessed from the More Tools drop down in the Create tab.

Vimeo Publishing Plugin

You can now easily upload your movie content to Vimeo, (one of the leading video sharing sites on the web today). This plugin will follow a similar flow to that of the YouTube publish plugin and is located in the Share group section of the Home tab.


What new features have been added to Movie Maker 2012?

Audio Narration

Movie Maker now allows you to record narration and you can record while watching your video playback. Once recorded you can save the audio file and add it to a separate audio track. You can also add external items such as sound effects to the narration track. Narration can be recorded by clicking on the Record Narration button in the Home tab, or by clicking on the dropdown portion of the button to add an audio file to the narration track.

Audio Waveforms

Waveforms have been added to help you to know where audio is in within your project. You will be able to determine where the high and low points are to help when making editing decisions. Waveforms are enabled from the View tab by clicking on the Waveforms button.

Audio Ducking and Emphasis

To accompany Narration, Movie Maker now allows for audio ducking and emphasized audio. When you add a narration to your project, the audio from all other tracks will be temporarily reduced (ducked) while there is audible content on the narration track. You can also change the priority (emphasized) to one of the other audio tracks, reducing the volume on the remaining tracks. You may also adjust the mix between the two non-emphasized tracks. By default the narration track will be emphasized. These features are available from the Project tab.

Music Store download integration

Movie Maker now provides you with a way to find and download music for your movies from AudioMicro, Free Music Archive (FMA) and Vimeo Music Store download integration. You can now add music to your projects that have the correct rights usage associated with it. Additionally, when you apply a theme to your movies, the credits are updated to include the artists who created the music. Associating the Creative Commons-focused artists helps the artists gain more visibility and notoriety,

Deferred Encode Proxy and Disable Transcoding Options

After adding non-natively supported video to your project, Movie Maker will now generate low-resolution video previews for use when making edits to your movie, allowing you to edit your movie more quickly than previous versions. You can also disable video preview file preparation and sandboxing of non-native file types when saving a movie. However, this may have a negative impact on performance. These options are accessible from the new Advanced tab in the File menu.

MPEG-4/H.264 Encoding (MP4)

Movie Maker now supports MPEG-4/H.264 encoding. H.264 encoding allows for smooth and seamless playback of your HD video recordings on a broader range of apps and devices, and reduces the amount of storage required for saving movies. MPEG-4 will be the default file format used when saving your videos, but you will still be able to save your movies using the WMV format.

Video Stabilization and Rolling Shutter Correction (Windows 8 Only)

You can now stabilize your shaky videos and correct wobbling in your Movies using the new Stabilization and Wobble Correction (Rolling Shutter correction) features. These are available from Edit tab’s Videos stabilization button/dropdown.

Outlined Text

Movie Maker now supports customizable outlined text, improving the overall quality and readability of the messages in your movies.

Videos As Audio

In addition to supporting a large number of audio formats, you can now use your Video files as an audio source for your audio tracks. To add your audio source from a video file, you can select the Add Music button and then select video extensions to display video files.

Vimeo Publishing Plugin

You can now easily upload your movie content to Vimeo, (one of the leading video sharing sites on the web today). This plugin will follow a similar flow to that of the YouTube publish plugin and is located in the Share group section of the Home tab.

Project Auto-Save

Project files are now periodically saved when working on your projects. This will allow you to recover data from your projects in the case of unexpected or unintentional app closure.

[The Rat]

Personally, I have little interest in these programs, but rumour is that installing them will remove Live Mesh - the one truely decent (Live) Essential program. Not had chance to test this, but those who use Live Mesh, beware of this potential pitfall.

Dave

[Brush Master]

Originally Posted by The Rat

...rumour is that installing them will remove Live Mesh - the one truely decent (Live) Essential program. ..

Live Mesh is not (no longer?) listed as a member of Live Essentials. I find Photo Gallery is a very decent program too (personally prefer it over Picasa), and Live Writer is the only decent offline blog editor.

[The Rat]

Originally Posted by Brush Master

Live Mesh is not (no longer?) listed as a member of Live Essentials.

Correct. They are trying to shoehorn everything into SkyDrive which does not fully replicate Live Mesh functionality. Those who have Live Mesh installed and want to keep using it (until MS makes a decision on its future, which if we're being honest looks bleak) should be wary of this update since the rumour is that it actively uninstalls Live Mesh.

If someone can confirm or correct the above, please do.

Dave

[IvanIV]

I installed it on my (relatively) ancient laptop and had to remove it. MM kept crashing on startup

[NewWorldMan]

Originally Posted by The Rat

Correct. They are trying to shoehorn everything into SkyDrive which does not fully replicate Live Mesh functionality.

I've no problem when vendors do this kind of thing provided that they replace or supersede the old product's features before killing it. I don't use Live Mesh but they should keep it around without a danger of its being accidentally deleted until they provide a suitable replacement.

[jzee]

Seems people are sceptical that the Video Stabilization and Rolling Shutter Correction feature (supposedly better than many commercial apps) would really not work in Windows 7 and is instead a Windows 8 bribe.

[anniebrion]

I used the new movie maker to convert an MPEG movie to H.264, it went through the motions and resulted in an MP4 that WMC, WMP, VideoLan, Quicktime or XBMC couldn't playback

[classixuk]

You know something?

I was going to spend quite a bit of time and money upgrading my PC to run Windows 8, but after seeing this thread and realising that all of this stuff comes as standard with a Mac and has done for years (and is implemented much better) I just thought, "Why am I even sticking with Windows?"

So I've just ordered a brand new Mac instead.

I'll take my current Windows 7 disc and install it on the Mac so I can carry on using all my existing software as usual and get to use a Movie Maker etc. that just works out of the box.

[IvanIV]

Doesn't look very cost effective to me, buying a good video editing software could have saved you a few quid But whatever works for you.

[len112]

Originally Posted by Brush Master

Live Mesh is not (no longer?) listed as a member of Live Essentials. I find Photo Gallery is a very decent program too (personally prefer it over Picasa), and Live Writer is the only decent offline blog editor.

Do you find that Live gallery takes forever to show thumbnails , sometimes hours and then once found they are often lost then need to be found again ? This is an ongoing and annoying problem I have with this program

[classixuk]

Originally Posted by IvanIV

Doesn't look very cost effective to me, buying a good video editing software could have saved you a few quid But whatever works for you.

Not really.

My current PC runs on an AMD Athlon II x3 445 and has 4GB ram.

Update the motherboard, RAM and CPU plus cost of Windows 8 Pro will cost me more than the £434 + £39.99 I just paid for a brand new Mac Mini with 8GB RAM upgrade which comes with OS Mountain Lion as standard.

I already have Adobe Premiere etc. but sometimes you just want stuff that's family friendly and ready to go, but not totally lacking in features.