Playing with Multimedia

Windows Vista gives you a choice of tools that can determine the way you manage and play your multimedia. These tools include Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Movie Maker, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, Windows DVD Burner, and the Windows Import Video Wizard. Each has its specific uses, and it's your choice as to which tools you use and how you use them. Note that Media Center and DVD Burner are available only in the Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate versions. Of course, you'll need the proper equipmenta DVD reader to watch DVD movies, a DVD burner to create your own DVDs, and lots of computer memory, disk space, and video power to enjoy all the features.

Windows Photo Gallery is mainly used to organize and preview your photos, but it also gives you access to your videos. You just double-click a video file to play the video directly in Photo Gallery, using a simple viewer. You can also use Windows DVD Maker directly from Photo Gallery to create an animated slide show or a video, complete with clips, transitions, and a title, and then burn it onto a DVD.

Windows Movie Maker is a video-editing program. You use it to edit and rearrange existing video files; to eliminate extraneous materials; and to add effects such as transitions between scenes, video transformations (recoloring, for example), and a narration or a soundtrack. Movie Maker also makes it easy to share your finished videos with others through e-mails, video CDs, or DVDs, or right from your computer.

Windows Media Player is a multipurpose program that you use to organize and play your multimedia, including video files, streaming video from the Internet, DVDs, music files, and music CDs. You can also purchase and download music files from the Internet. You can organize what you want to hear using playlists, coordinate your music with visual displays, record your own music CDs, transfer music to a portable device, and share your media library with other computers on your network.

Windows Media Center is an entire environment that's designed to bring the vast multimedia computer world into your living room. Media Center uses all your computer's power to maximize your experience as you watch television, record shows, play DVDs, listen to the radio and CDsand you can do it all with a remote control, your mouse, or your keyboard!

Windows DVD Maker is a program that enables you to quickly create video DVDs using photos and/or videos. You can set the title and menu text and can choose from a variety of themes for the opening of the video DVD. You can also use DVD Maker to create a DVD directly from video recordings on a video camera.

Windows Import Video Wizard is a tool you use to import video from an .avi-format (also called Mini-DV) video camera. With this wizard, you can transfer an entire video recording, or selected sections of it, onto your computer or onto a DVD, or you can capture the live feed from the camera as a video on your computer. To use the wizard, you need to have the camera attached to your computer with an IEEE 1394 (also called a Firewire or i.LINK) cable and port. You can also use a USB 2 connection if the camera supports USB streaming (a USB Video Class camera).