| As you can see, Windows Movie Maker is a decent little digital video-editing program. It isn't as full featured as some other programs on the market, though. If your needs are more sophisticated, check out the full-featured Adobe Premiere Pro (www.adobe.com/products/premiere/), the lower-priced Adobe Premiere Elements (www.adobe.com/products/premiereel/), or the competing Ulead MediaStudio Pro (www.ulead.com/msp/). Both of these programs offer a lot more in the way of professional transitions, titling, special effects, and the like. When you're using Windows Movie Maker, remember these key points: Windows Movie Maker is a digital video-editing program that you can use to edit your home movies originally recorded on videotape. The latest version, available for free download, is version 2.0. For the best results, stay all-digital throughout the entire process. This means recording your original movie in Digital8 or MiniDV format. When you use a Digital8 or MiniDV camcorder, you connect the camcorder to your PC via an IEEE1394 FireWire connection. When you use an analog camcorder, you have to install an analog-to-digital video capture board in your PC, and connect to that board. Besides your videotaped movies, you can also import audio files, still images, and other video files into your project. The bits and pieces of your project are called clips. You put together your movie by dragging clips into the Storyboard/Timeline area at the bottom of the Movie Maker window. WMM 2 lets you add professional transitions between clips, and special video effects to any specific clip. You add background music by dragging an audio clip on top of the video clips. Audio from both your audio and video clips will play simultaneously, mixed 50/50.
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