I got my copy for free as a promotional copy. The website was http://giveaway.downloadcrew.com/, but I\'m not able to say you can get a free copy there now; the promotion expired. And thanks for the comment…

You have my appreciation…

Later,
Larry

The depressing thing about the Windows Live Movie Maker forum is that it's the same problem day in and day out; there's no progress with Windows Live Movie Maker and Microsoft isn't releasing updates for the application. Problems from corrupt project files, superfluous memory usage and another big one; being compatible with the various standard video and audio formats.

In my early beta testing, these things kind of went unnoticed, but after spending more time with Windows Live Movie Maker and being in the forums the problems are clearly apparent. And again, these problems go unanswered…

Windows Live Movie Maker/Windows Live Essentials, people would have thought would've been released on an annual schedule; they have tossed that too. If they were on a proper release schedule wave 5 of Windows Live Essentials would be out already [like November of last year (2011)].

In light of these issues and having experienced several of them, I realized that if you're doing video production on a regular basis, I needed something a little more professional and a little more stable…

I would recommend MAGIX Movie Edit Pro Plus; it has everything I was searching for in a video editing package, very flexible, lots of effects and options…

I wrote a post on it [including a video]… http://www.lehsys.com/2011/02/techie-review-movie...

I hope this helps...

Until next time,
Larry Henry Jr.

According to the license, you only purchase 1 license; so, technically you shouldn't be loading PaperPort on other machines. That's a violation of T&C's, but people do it. PaperPort has an activation and if you don't activate, after a few runs, it doesn't work anymore. This happened to me on PaperPort 12 while doing my review. Now, if Nuance finds you in violation of the T&C's they can null out your activation key and you'd have to contact Nuance support— and I wouldn't assume they'd be very forgiving; but it's a chance you take. good luck

Later,

Larry

awesome=E2=80=94 Glad to help...
I hope you have a nice day!

Later,
Larry
=C2=A0

Your laptop spec aren't going to have much to do with Windows Live Movie Maker performance [in this area]. BUT what I'll say is that if you've got a NVIDIA card; recently there was an issue with importing and working with video with systems that have NVIDIA— so video drivers can play a part in the troubleshooting process.

You don't have to install all of the codecs with the codec pack, but you should install the ones for MP4, MOV and 3gp and h.264 if it's listed there. Windows Live Movie Maker supports many formats; but what's not provided to the public [regular users] is that Windows Live Movie Maker doesn't recognize those various formats unless the CODEC for that format is installed in the operating system; it's not built-in to Windows Live Movie Maker. And Windows Live Movie Maker doesn't make any attempts to identify or get those codecs for you.

I have some suggestions for video conversion. I have used all three of these video converters and think are are very good; and easy to use. They all have the video conversion options you'd be searching for and handle plenty of formats— and they're all free.

Link:
http://www.videoconverterfactory.com/free-video-c...
http://videoconverter.hamstersoft.com/
http://www.freemake.com/free_video_converter/

A video converter is great if you can't find the right codec, and need to get moving on your project. Just convert the video to a WMV and Windows Live Movie Maker shouldn't have any issues with it.

Sorry that you're having issues, but that's why I don't use Windows Live Movie Maker for big projects anymore; I use another video editing package. Windows Live Movie Maker became to frustrating to use, and too limited.

I would recommend MAGIX Movie Edit Pro Plus; it has everything I was searching for in a video editing package, very flexible, lots of effects and options…
I wrote a post on it [including a video]… http://www.lehsys.com/2011/02/techie-review-movie...
I hope this helps...

Thank you,
Larry Henry Jr.
LEHSYS.com

I have not tried File Centre, but lots of people says it's good; I may have to give it a round of tests.

Later,
Larry

Windows Live Movie Maker has the ability to save the current project [as WLMP] in a project file and/or export to a WMV file…

If you saved the project to a location on your hard drive with a WLMP extension; it's a textual file
that points to all the references of media and effects that are used in the project— there's no
actual media in the file, and the file size is typically very small. If you have this file, just load that
it. From that point, you can continue editing the project just as you did before with all the
robust features/options.

If you saved the project as a WMV file; that's a final [export] production version… you can
load it, but you can't edit it like before with robust options. At that point, you are simply
loading a video clip.

Ensure to save in a WLMP… and you can then come back and edit it.

I hope this helps...

Later,
Larry

It used to have those features… Microsoft removed them. very odd.

If you\'d like, you can leave feedback for the Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 team for suggestions/improvements:

Link:
https://feedback.live.com/default.aspx?productkey...

I hope this helps...

Later,
Larry

I have not had that experience with it… But I understand that people do have issues. I do agree that customer support should be better.

Later,
Larry

If you've got a NVIDIA card, that could be your issue; many users are reporting issues with the latest NVIDIA drivers and it's causing a mess. Try downgrading to the previous version, or look for newer version.

I hope this helps...
Later,
Larry