What's wrong with using Windows Movie Maker 2?

Adv1sor · Post by **Adv1sor** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:33 pm

I'm new to making AMVs but so far so good.

Not a lot of flashyness, but in a way that's a good thing.

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:46 pm

1. It doesnt let you do much BASIC stuff.
2. You can't get as good video quality.
3. It's extremely unstable.

Adv1sor · Post by **Adv1sor** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:49 pm

Well, maybe it’s just that I don’t really know what I’m doing anyway, but with MM2 I can drop in a tune and edit in stills and video, have a choice of a few transitions (which seem to throw off the timing), and make a quick AMV.

Can someone tell me what, for example, Adobe does that MM2 doesn’t do?

post-it · Post by **post-it** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:50 pm

Howdy

. The problem is not Movie Makers, Real Media's nor Xvids fault really;
the problem most of us have, here at the ORG, are people who do not clean-up
the Video's before they use Movie Maker, Real Media and/or Xvid.
. The Guides tell everyone to "deinterlace" your Video's and remove any
watermarks - and nobodies listening!

. If people use the Guides, then use MovieMaker2, we're happy campers

quadir · Post by **quadir** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:50 pm

You can make an awsome music video with Movie Maker 2.
However, you asked for problems.

1) The .wmv format is not liked by people around here (for example, it wont play easily on my linux box), I don't know the program enough to say if it can encode to anything else. Like divX or better yet XviD

2) You may find that you are limited in what you can do. This is not a bad thing. One should learn a lot about scene selection, mood and good transition use before] going into euphoric libraries of effects and filters.

One really big advantage the windows/mac "default" packages have is that they are relatively inexpensive. Everyone keeps talking about premier/after effects/vegas... but that fact is that these products cost a lot of money at the store. If you decide to switch, there are a few ways to make these cheaper:

1) Be a student. Get student prices. Or education versions. Local univercities will often sell at student prices to anyone, or student of other uni/colleges, or even to HS students.

2) Some "Educational" versions of software can be had at a regular store, these are limited in some way, but still very featurefull and usefull.

3) There are often `light' editions of software, similar to education.

4) Connections. It is a known fact that employees of companies like adobe get their own software REALLY cheap for friends. They actually have a plan in place for people to buy through them. 20$ USD sounds good for premier, thanks! (how I got mine, 2 years back).

quadir · Post by **quadir** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:51 pm

oh, forgot method 5 for cheapifying other software packages... get it bundled with something, like a editing card, etc.

Flint the Dwarf · Post by **Flint the Dwarf** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:55 pm

Zarxrax wrote:1. It doesnt let you do much BASIC stuff.
2. You can't get as good video quality.
3. It's extremely unstable.

Are you being sarcastic? I've seen many recent WMM 2.0/WMM 2.1 videos that came out nicely. And I hear 2.1 is a pretty decent improvement on 2.0.

Pyle · Post by **Pyle** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:59 pm

I agree with Flint. WMM2 is still very useful to me for fast edits and lip sync. If you try hard enough you can get most edits down to 3 frames

It's almost as useful as MSPaint.

Sentient Satire · Post by **Sentient Satire** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:02 pm

Nothing is intrinsicly wrong with using it. That is a decent starting point. One thing I will say, without feeding my penchant for shoveling paragraphs of supporting bytes, is that it is a bit rudimentary according to some.

(Now bear in mind I am not implying this applies to you, this is a generalization)
Individuals with no to minimal experience using video editing software will be less likely to be intimidated by WMM. Once they are comfortable with the basics and develop their own personal creative tastes, then I would say it is time to outgrow it. And again, this is entirely based upon what one wants to get out of their AMV "career". WMM might cater to what someone wants to get out of editing completely.

[successfully fought temptation to use technical oriented case-in-points]

downwithpants · Post by **downwithpants** » Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:15 pm

wmm 2.1 is a good deal more stable than previous versions. it stalls now and then, but doesn't crash nearly as often as previous versions.

a limitation of wmm 2.1 is that it can only works with one video track at a time. which effectively means that for every clip you want to put on the timeline, there will have to be some point when only that clip is shown (i.e. not in a transition). editing programs that allow you to work with multiple tracks allow you to use filters on layered clips (such as overlays, mattes) without needing to show the entire, opaque clip by itself. furthermore, image editing is often built into other editing programs, where as if you are using wmm, you'll have to work in a separate program to edit an image, then import the image into wmm, and wmm doesn't read alpha (transparency) data from your imported images. and there are probably more things.

nonetheless its a fine program if you don't mind the limitations, or can find ways around them. and you can get quality that will satisfy most people.