1:00 AM
Paul B
I like Windows Live Movie Maker. Sure, it's not as good as the original Movie Maker, and has been scaled way down, but it's still good for quick and simple little videos for home or the blog. For podcasts I prefer something a little more robust like Sony Vegas Pro, but I don't always need to do so many fancy edits. The thing I love about Windows Live Movie Maker is that you can render your files in HD natively which is nice because most cheap video cameras film in at least 720P HD these days.
Other times Windows Live Movie Maker kind of sucks. For instance, the other day I loaded a 3gp video I took from my Android phone, and Live Move Maker stripped the sound off for no reason. Weird. Some times you want to have multiple audio layers, and you can't with Live Move Maker. Maybe you want to do some cool Chroma keying. Nope, not going to happen in Movie Maker.
There is a really cool alternative though, and it's free for personal use. It's called VideoPad Video Editor! VideoPad is really great, and probably the best free video editor I've seen for Windows in a very long time. It supports all sorts of video formats like MP4, AVI, MPEG, OGM etc., but also renders videos in multiple formats as well! Plus, it has full 1080P HD support!
Here is a quick video tutorial on how to do some basic video editing in VideoPad that I found on Youtube:
Here is a screenshot I took of my first go with VideoPad as well.
Pretty cool huh? Know of other free video editors for Windows that put Live Movie Maker to shame? What are your favorites? Let us know in the comments.
del.icio.us tags: free, alternative, to, windows, live, movie, maker, videopad, nch
