You broke my video editor

dont_change_editors

This post finds me answering the question of what have I been up to lately. Well, I’m trying to find easy ways to edit and produce video for as close to zero expense as possible. So I find myself on the Mac and on the PC side of this MacBook Pro working with Windows Movie Maker for Vista and iMovie’08 for Mac. Now I’m going to jump straight to the ending and say that I don’t recommend you use either one of them, at least not for start to finish video editing projects.

What I will recommend that you do is go download the previous version of the editors and use them instead. So, if you use a Mac, go download iMovie HD. If you are using Windows XP, you’re OK, but make sure you have at least version 2.1. If you have Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate, go download Movie Maker 2.6 for Vista. If you have Vista Home Basic, or Vista Enterprise/Business, it looks like you’re out of luck because version 2.6 seems to require that you have the original Vista Movie Maker program. Home Basic and Enterprise versions don’t come with Movie Maker so it looks like a non-starter.

Another caveat, the download page for Movie Maker 2.6 for Vista says to test if you can run the original version of Movie Maker. They say “If Movie Maker launches, you should not download version 2.6”. I have not discovered any incompatibilities with having both versions on my computer. As a matter of fact, I’m seeing that the original version of Movie Maker runs better once you install the old version. By better I mean that the original version has big problems with frame accuracy, in other words finding the exact point where one scene ends and the other begins. Still, Movie Maker 2.6 is more frame accurate.

Also, when you import video into the original Vista Movie maker, it does not detect scenes correctly. However, here is a truly weird situation. If I open a movie in 2.6 it does the scene detection correctly, and then if I open up the original Movie Maker with the same video all the scenes are now there as if it detected those scenes all along. Here’s a screencast of the phenomenon:

Expect more from me soon, regarding Windows Movie Maker and iMovie. Here’s a teaser for a large project I’m working on.

Facebook
Twitter

4 Responses

  1. Wow that is a real strange bug. This is why I could never use a Mac, because in Windows I have already learned the weird tricks to work around the errors, I can’t function any other way.

    And the teaser for the larger project is really exciting! I want details man!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

css.php