Windows 7: The old Movie Maker better?

I understand that the old Movie Maker (perhaps the one that shipped with Vista) had better features that the new one. Is this true? How do I get the old one?

You can either download Movie Maker 2.6 standalone or download Windows Live Movie Maker through Windows Live.

Like you, I have read that the Live Movie Maker version lacks features. It's supposed to be good for quickly and easily making a video and uploading to YouTube, but not for anything close to serious editing.

It turns out the special edition MM2.6 installs and works fine on Windows 7. It's the only version of Movie Maker that's a stand-alone download from Microsoft... get it at:

http://tinyurl.com/2mgxem

I have installed it, but haven't yet used it. It looks very familiar.

I just installed it. A lot of the effects are missing.

I found this in the Tutorials section:

Windows Movie Maker 6.0 - Install on Windows 7

How to install Vista's Movie Maker 6.0 in Win 7. I haven't tried it yet, but it's something to consider...

I no longer have Vista installed. Can the file be extracted from the source CD?

Possibly, but I don't know how to do that. Maybe a friend or family member has a pc with Vista on it that you could access?

I have movie maker 6.0 on my computer that can be used. I have used it myself and it works fine, I think I found the links from this site somewhere, I can try and find it or if you want I can PM you with the details?

I just ran a test that may be useful.

I started with 4 random WMV files of about 20 minutes in length. I edited out about a little over half of each of these files. I then combined the stuff I wanted to save into a single WMV file of 32 minutes in length.

I did this with Movie Maker 2.6 (available as a download) and with Movie Maker 6, which I copied over to Windows 7 from an image of an earlier Vista installation. I just dragged the Movie Maker folder from C Program files of the Vista image to C program files of Windows 7. The only change I made to the Windows 7 install was to re-register a few DLL files as recommend by WiFi Ed of this forum.

Here are the results:

MM 2.6 results in a WMV file of 476 MB, which took 90 minutes to process on my PC.

MM 6 (the Vista application) results in a file of 345 MB and took only 18 minutes to process.

One of these files runs 32`10" and the other runs 32' 12". I tried to make them the same length and came close.

The only differences I immediately noted in the interfaces was that MM 6 permits frame by frame advances of 3/100 of a second, with very little lag. MM 2.6 frame by frame is 7/100 of a second and has considerable lag--you have to wait on it for the frame to change.

I can't tell any visual difference in the finished versions.

Here are the detail tabs for the properties of each file. The first one is for MM 2.6; the second one is for MM 6, the Vista application.

Make of this what you will. I am not sure what it means, but I'm going with the Vista application for the lower processing time.

One other thing I noticed when I upgraded from Vista (using version 6) to Win 7 RC (using version 2.6): projects created in version 6 could not be opened by 2.6.

Here is a way to download it for Windows 7 and 8... Movie Maker