Windows Essentials 2012 Now Supports Windows 8
Windows Essentials 2012 takes advantage of Windows 8 advancements.
Microsoft's Brad Weed announced on Wednesday that an updated version of Windows Essentials 2012 is now ready to download and install, packed with support for the upcoming Windows 8 platform. More specifically, Movie Maker and Photo Gallery for Windows 7 and Windows 8 now have added capabilities that utilize many of the advances offered in the newer OS slated to arrive in October.
For starters, Movie Maker now takes advantage of "major advancements in hardware accelerated graphics" in Windows 8 with the use of video stabilization. "Wobbly" videos taken with phones and smaller video cameras can now be smoothed out using this option. Users simply choose between three selections: anti-shake, anti-shake and wobble correction (low), and anti-shake and wobble correction (high).
Movie Maker also now allows users to insert music from AudioMicro, Free Music Archive and the Vimeo Music Store. Once inserted, users will be greeted with a visual audio track in wave form under the video frames so that they can see where the song ends within the clip. A third track has also been added for narration in video or audio format if needed.
"With sound coming from three different sources, the audio of your movie may be hard to hear," he said. "So, we’ve added some ways to choose which form of audio you want to emphasize. This makes it easy to clean up and enhance the audio for your entire movie project with just a single click. With enhancements to audio and music support, we’ve made it easy to find, add and control both music and narration."
The new Movie Maker also includes new text effects, and saves video in the h.264 format by default. "Now Movie Maker saves to this format by default making it easier to publish your video to popular sharing websites, managing your videos and your files between services and devices," Weed added.
As for Photo Gallery, Weed emphasized that "Windows Photo Gallery is the number one way to organize, fix, find and share your photos and videos" in Windows 8. The app has been updated with a cool Auto Collage feature which crams seven images together to make a unique wallpaper-like arrangement. Vimeo is also now the official publisher for both Photo Gallery and Movie Maker so that Windows 7 and Windows 8 artists can share their creations to the world.
"We’re hope you’re as excited as we are about the new Windows Movie Maker," he concluded. "We’ve listened to your feedback and have added better audio support and finer control within the storyboard. Our new music partners make it that much easier to bring your videos to life with great music that is optimized for making movies. With video stabilization from Windows 8 and other features that help you refine and share your creation, Movie Maker brings you one step closer to being the awesome filmmaker you always knew you were."
To get the updated Windows Essentials 2012, head here.
i wonder what the price difference is between Photoshop and Premiere compared to movie maker...
How many soccer moms have Photoshop or Premiere? How many soccer moms can use Photoshop and Premiere? Oh the list could go on and on . . . But yes Adobe makes a more featured product.
I think even a typical novice maybe able to figure it out within 5~30minutes... depending how smart they are.
You do realize that metro is the start button, only full-screen? Play with Windows 8 instead of blinding bashing something because it is new. It is not as familiar as previous versions of Windows, but once you get the hang of it, it is actually works quite well.
You do realize that metro is the start button, only full-screen? Play with Windows 8 instead of blinding bashing something because it is new. It is not as familiar as previous versions of Windows, but once you get the hang of it, it is actually works quite well.
Yes I did try Win8, and metro is not the start button, all's metro is, is a modified version of media center with less eye candy, and the ability to launch apps.
You do realize that metro is the start button, only full-screen? Play with Windows 8 instead of blinding bashing something because it is new. It is not as familiar as previous versions of Windows, but once you get the hang of it, it is actually works quite well.
I don't mind the 'Metro" gui that much. One thing that I don't like is that I wish that there was a way to make the tiles larger, and change colors etc. I also wish that in the 'Metro' Internet Explorer, that one could access their existing I.E. favorites.
Overall, It appears to be a faster o/s than Windows 7. Granted, I have not really installed anything onto it on my 20gb partition.
Danny, you have a good suggestion for win 8. They also need a sleep,shut down, and restart button, that is quick to get to.
Danny, you have a good suggestion for win 8. They also need a sleep,shut down, and restart button, that is quick to get to.
I agree with you keither5150 on the sleep/shut down suggestion that you've made.
IE 10 and the whole o/s seems a lot more responsive to me and I'm only running an Intel Core 2 Duo with 6gb and an Nvidia 9800 GT.
I also really like the fact that they've finnally added a builit-in spellcheck/autocorrect feather for the whole o/s. So when you're typing posts/comments into Facebook, they get corrected as you type (I'm currently on the Windows 7 partition, so excuse any typos/spellings).
You can install a new start menu (several such programs do this for free and still work in the RTM because they're installing a new stat menu rather than trying to use MS's version) and you can simply not use Metro. There you go; both of your problems with Windows 8 are resolved and you didn't even have to get used to the new UI if you don't want to.
Example programs that could be used include ViStart/ViOrb and Classic Shell.
Fair enough. You get what you pay for (and not always).
I use Windows Movie Maker 2.6 on Windows 8; I also used it on Windows 7; They deleted the timeline feature starting in Vista I believe; They basically made it not usable other than to upload it to your computer from the camcorder.