Duration of ownership: 3 Years

Strengths: very easy to use

Weaknesses: importing an 83mb DiVX file requires WMM to break it down to 27-36 files. (importing 3 such files to make one movie revealed that) the total of files imported was 250mb and the final product was only 140mb. the whole process took less than an hour and the final product played back well but quality was not quite as good as the originals.

Overall Evaluation: for sharing files this is all you need but for archiving i suggest googling the net for something with more features

Duration of ownership: 3 Years

Strengths: Very easy to use. Don't really need it to make DVD's, as long as it makes WMV files to import into a good DVD burning program.

Weaknesses: Weak on the text formating on a photo, but all you need to do is use any of the many free photo editing programs and add text there first. PhotoStory3 has better text editing.

Overall Evaluation: I couldn't make a movie over 50 minutes as it wouldn't save to my computer due to too much data. Easiest way around this was to make half hour WMV files then merge them in my DVD burning progam, Power Producer, which will make separate albums of each WMV file but they will play in DVD player seamlessly. If I only have Photos I will use PhotoStory3 as It makes the same WMV files. If I have Video and Photos then only option is Win MM. I pick the highest quality output in the settings then save it to my computer and I get great DVD quality, not HD though. Video does take a long time to create; I'm using a P4 2.8 gig machine and for 300 photos and a lot of AVI video files, it took 1 &1/2 hours to save the high quality movie to my computer, then another half hour or so to burn to DVD.

Duration of ownership: 3 Years

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

Overall Evaluation:

Duration of ownership: 1 Weeks

Strengths: Quick - easy to use software to ingest video (capture) to hard disk. Nicely create clip snap shot after capture. Using PC with Core 2 Dual 3 ghz, 4 Gig ram, Nvidia 8600 -512meg ddr2, and 1.2T HDD Raid 0.

Weaknesses: Limited editing feature. No trimming feature (in-out), I use Windows media file editor for that.

Overall Evaluation: After years of thinking to transfer video from family Hi-8 and DV collections (16 years) I finally have time and energy to do this. I try to use Nero Vision to capture video but there is some issue with quality. This Windows free software is a big safe. So far I have capture and catalog 40 hours of videos onto my PC. After 1 week of usage, no crash, no lock up, and have not reboot PC once (XP).

Duration of ownership: 1 Weeks

Strengths:

Weaknesses: You cannot save large files nor create DVD's with this product.

Overall Evaluation: After thinking that I had made a wonderful slide show, I was utterly dismayed to discover that I could not creat a DVD that is playable. Don't waste your time

Duration of ownership: 0 Years

Strengths: None

Weaknesses: Too many to mention.

Overall Evaluation: It will not work if you have HP video software installed. Or Sonic, AoA, Roxio or any other video software!

Duration of ownership: 36 Months

Strengths: Very basic. Entry level editing

Weaknesses: Stand alone. If you install almost any other video editing software WMM ceases to work.

Overall Evaluation: A good way to get your feet wet but very limited and problematic.

Duration of ownership: 18 Months

Strengths: Included with Windows, free, produces basic effects

Weaknesses: Not very stable, somewhat limited in features

Overall Evaluation: For a free product, Windows Movie Maker is useful for putting together home movies or small video productions. The application suffers from instability, and there is no autoSave feature, so remember to save often when working with it