For anyone out there who has Windows XP and has used the onboard windows movie maker you may be interested to know there is an update for this here...... Windows Movie Maker

The result of which is Windows Movie Maker 2. What's more, it's all free.

If, like me, you successfully download this programme, you will find a much more detailed & enhanced movie editing programme than the original; In my opinion it rivals many of the programmes out there for beginners and intermediates. I recently finished my first 10 mins. production and found Windows Movie Maker 2 very user friendly and a lot of fun to use - although not without it's teething problems.

It seems upon reading the official WMM2 website there are alot of conflicts and glitches with wmm2 that, i believe, are worth the effort to sort out.

A website committed to solving all these problems has been established and is very helpful... Papa John

If you've already used Movie Maker 2, then you'll appreciate just how annoying adding any transition or effect to the storyboard can be - the thing just crashes! It turns out that the single biggest reason for these crashes is a conflict with Movie Maker 2 and certain .ax file codecs, with the main culprit being the divxaf.ax codec. The way around this is to run a search for all .ax files and find this file, re-name it to divxaf.ax_, and in my case this solved the problem and now wmm2 is running great. Apparently WMM2 searches for registered codecs to run certain images and this one muscles in above the others and causes wmm2 to close, this re-naming solves all this. Another recommended tip is to download the latest version of direct x which is directx9....

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en&categoryid=2

If you are still having difficulties then the papajohn website covers all manner of fixes, but i have mentioned the main 2.

As for the programme itself, well I found it very user friendly, and after trying adobe premiere 6.5 (very advanced), pinnacle 7 (very slick, intermediate) & video edit magic (novice-intermediate) i think that Windows Movie Maker is very much a beginners tool.

There are loads of special effects and transitions that are simply dragged & dropped onto the storyboard to create your production. The time-line option allows you to see everything in more detail. you can add text in a myriad of different ways, sliding in from any direction, spinning around, opening credits and groovy end credits. Slow motion and increased film speed are all included.

More importantly for me it accepted my footage from my small, inexpensive digital stills camera at 15 f.p.s, which Adobe Premiere would not accept, and i know alot of people out there have only got this type of footage to play with as they haven't been able to afford a £500 - £ 700 DV camera.

There are also loads of freebie extras to download from the previous links with extra effects and other bonus tools to further enhance your movies. Alll in all, using Windows Movie Maker 2 is a fun experience despite the glitches and as a standard XP upgrade it has to be worth a go.

Once you have created your edited footage you can turn it into a complete movie file and then Windows Movie Maker will prep. it for burning onto disc, or you can go on to encode it to Mpeg, to create your own svcd, vcd or dvd's.

Thanks to Windows Movie Maker 2, my first encounter with movie editing has been fantastic fun and really given me the enthusiasm to continue, and more importantly my sons first sports day is immortalised on disc forever.

Steve Denton