Windows Live Movie Maker (beta) is a first generation product. That is, instead of adding new features to the original Windows Movie Maker, we started over and have been building the all new Windows Live Movie Maker from the ground up to meet the changing needs of working with digital photos and videos today. 

When Microsoft built the original Windows Movie Maker, it was designed to help you work with video you recorded with a camcorder, because that was what a lot people were using back then.  But these days, with so many devices that can record video, we needed to create a program that could work with movies using lots of different kinds of video. To do this, we really needed to start from scratch.

So, for the beta release of Windows Live Movie Maker a few months ago, we focused on making sure we had these key functionalities running smoothly first:

• adding digital photos and videos easily
• making editing commands easier to find with the new Ribbon user interface
• publishing movies quickly and easily

We know we still have a lot of work to do to get Windows Live Movie Maker ready for final release. We’ve been reading your feedback and comments on the first Windows Live Movie Maker beta post and are working to add more of the features and functionality we hear you asking for. Rest assured, there’s lots more good stuff to come.

If you haven’t tried it yet, we hope you’ll download Windows Live Movie Maker beta. We’d love it if you’d let us know what you think about our work so far, and what else you’d like to see in the final release. We’ll share more information about the final release of Windows Live Movie Maker as soon as it becomes available.

JP Wollersheim
Product Manager, Windows Live