Windows Movie Maker

Windows Movie Maker (known as Windows Live Movie Maker for the 2009 and 2011 releases) is a discontinued video editing software program by Microsoft. It was a part of Windows Essentials software suite and offered the ability to create and edit videos as well as to publish them on OneDrive, Facebook, Vimeo, YouTube, Windows Live Groups and Flickr. It is comparable to Apple’s iMovie. Movie Maker was officially discontinued on January 10, 2017, and it is replaced by Video Editor which is built in with Microsoft Photos on Windows 10.

History
The first release of Windows Movie Maker was included with Windows Me on September 14, 2000. Version 1.1 was included in Windows XP a year later, and included support for creating DV AVI and WMV 8 files. Version 2.0 was released as a free update in November 2002, and added a number of new features. Version 2.1, a minor update, is included in Windows XP Service Pack 2. The Movie Maker in Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 had more transitions and support for DVD burning.

Layout
The layout consists of a storyboard view and a timeline view, collections for organizing imported video, and a preview pane. When in Storyboard view, the video project appears as a film strip showing each scene in clips. The storyboard/timeline consists of one 'Video', one 'Music/Audio' bar, and one 'Titles/Credits' bar. In each bar, clips can be added for editing. Still images can also be imported into the timeline and "stretched" to any desired number of frames. The Video and Music/Audio bars can be "cut" to any number of short segments, which will play together seamlessly, but the individual segments are isolated editing-wise, so that for example, the music volume can be lowered for just a few seconds while someone is speaking.

Reception
Movie Maker 1.0, introduced with Windows Me, was widely criticized for being "bare bones" and suffering "a woeful lack of features"; and saving movies only in Microsoft's ASF file format. Critical reception of versions 2.0 and 2.6 has been slightly more positive. Many longstanding users were disappointed by the removal of so many features in the effective re-writing of the software in Live Movie Maker 2009. Some of those features have subsequently been re-added.