Windows Live Essentials 2011 release notes

Windows Live Movie Maker requires some components of Windows Media Player. Movie Maker can't start if it's installed on a version of Windows Vista or Windows 7 that doesn't include Windows Media Player, and you haven't installed Windows Media Player yourself. To solve this problem, install Windows Media Player from the Microsoft Download Center.

For a list of the file types you can use in Windows Live Movie Maker, see What kind of files can I use in Movie Maker? Support for using MPEG-2 and Microsoft Recorded TV Show video files in your movies is available only if your computer is running one of the following versions of Windows: Windows Vista Home Premium, Windows Vista Ultimate, Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Enterprise, or Windows 7 Ultimate. Depending on the camera you use to record video, you might need to install your camera's editing software before you can decode video in Movie Maker.

If you try to run Windows Live Movie Maker from a Remote Desktop session, you might have to restart Movie Maker when you connect back directly to the console.

You can only use TrueType fonts in Windows Live Movie Maker. If you select a Raster font, Movie Maker will default back to the Arial font.

AVCHD is a format for recording and playback of high-definition video compressed in MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 video format, with audio recorded in Dolby Digital. AVCHD video files can be used in Windows Live Movie Maker only if your computer is running one of the following editions of Windows 7: Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Enterprise, or Windows 7 Ultimate.

Windows Live Movie Maker makes extensive use of your video card's GPU (graphics processing unit). PCs with video cards not intended for high-end graphics usage or older cards might encounter problems rendering video and effects in Movie Maker. To resolve this issue, you can try updating your graphics driver. The display driver you are running will affect reliability, performance, and quality. Run Windows Update and see if there are any updated drivers before continuing. If there aren't any updates and you're still having problems, try installing drivers directly from NVIDIA, Intel, or ATI/AMD:

• NVIDIA publically released drivers

• ATI/AMD publicly released drivers

• Intel publicly released drivers

When speeding up video (especially at speeds of 4x or higher, depending on your configuration), the preview might be slow during playback. Encoded video should play correctly.

If you're using Windows Vista, you won't be able to capture video from a webcam. Windows 7 is required for capturing video from a webcam.

If you speed up or slow down video, audio is automatically muted.