Windows Live Movie Maker File Types

What kinds of file types are supported by Windows Live Movie Maker 2011? In the chart below I cover the most common file types, and even some uncommon ones. A more complete list can be found here. File Type Video Files Windows Media Video .wmv Wikipedia Link Very common compressed formats for devices that connect to PCs. An older but still fairly common file format supported by Microsoft. QT is the older and now somewhat rare format. MOV is very common and support in Movie Maker is very welcome. except for .mp4, .mov, and .m4v you will not commonly see these extensions. You are not likely to see any other than the .mpg extension or .mpeg for downloaded files. This is a big deal if you use Windows Media Center to record TV and then later want to edit the video. File Extension Description Comments

DV-AVI (digital video audio video interleave) files Apple QuickTime Files

.avi

Wikipedia Link

.mov or .qt

Wikipedia Link

MPEG-4 Movie Files

.mp4, .mov, .m4v, .3gp, .3g2, and .k3g

Wikipedia Link

MPEG-2 Movie Files

.mpeg, .mpg, .mpe, .m1v, .mp2, .mpv2, .mod, .vob

Wikipedia Link

Microsoft Recorded TV files

.dvr-ms (older format), .wtv (new format)

Wikipedia Link

Gotchas: Windows Movie Maker will not work with video rights that have digital rights management (DRM) applied, such as video files you might download from a commercial service, or through the OverDrive service at your local library.

MPEG-2 and Microsoft Recorded TV files require one of these versions of Windows: Windows 7 Home
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Premium, Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Enterprise, or Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows Vista Home Premium, or Windows Vista Ultimatewhich pretty much covers the waterfront, but does leave out a couple of low-end and older versions that are likely to still be out there.

For some even more obscure Gotachas, check the detailed release notes.

Audio Files Windows Media Audio Files (WMA) .wma Wikipedia Link A very common, high quality compressed audio format. Another very common downloadable format.

Pulse Code Modulation Files (PCM) Advanced Audio Coding Files (AAC) MP3 Files

.aif, .aiff, .wav

Wikipedia Link

.m4a

Wikipedia Link

.mp3

Wikipedia Link

More good news. Use your mp3s unless they have DRM.

Gotchas: Audio files protected with DRMplease note iTunes userscannot be used with Windows Movie Maker.

For very specific technical information on audio codecs that you may need to install to get some of the more specific audio to play, see this Microsoft technical document. Image Files Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEF) files Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) files .jpg, .jpeg, .jfif, .jpe Wikipedia Link A very common format from many digital cameras and web sites. Found only rarely on Internet because of the enormous size of these uncompressed files.

.tif, .tiff

Wikipedia Link

Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) files Windows Bitmap files

.gif

Wikipedia Link

.bmp, .dib, and .rle

Wikipedia Link

You will only rarely see any other than the .bmp extension for this type of 2

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file. Icon files Portable Network Graphics (PNG) files .ico and .icon .png Wikipedia Link Wikipedia Link The current web standard for displaying graphics.

Here are a few more general gotchas. You must have the Windows Media Player installed on the computer you attempt to install Windows Live Movie Maker on. Get it at the Microsoft Download site. (Remember, Windows only. Sorry Mac users. You have iMovie). If you are importing directly from a video camera, you may have to install your cameras decoding software for it to work with Movie Maker. Only True Type fonts are supported in Movie Maker for titles and captions. If you are having video issues, it may be a graphics card problem. You can try updating your graphics driver. If this doesnt solve the problem it may be time for a new graphics card. Remember that audio will be muted for video segments that you have sped up or slowed down. There are workarounds, but this is a bit annoying. As with all video editing, you need fairly decent hardware to do it effectively. Dont let these technicalities scare you. The best thing to do when in doubt is to try it, and if a file type doesnt work for you or an effect is choppy or slow on your system, decide on how important it is to you. You might even try it on another system for comparisons sake. Unless it is really important, you can usually find a workaround. I think it is more important to have fun and do impressive things quickly with Movie Maker, and not to be overly concerned with technicalities.

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