Last week the Windows team introduced new versions of Movie Maker and Photo Gallery for Windows 7 and Windows 8 – and not a moment too soon as the last 3 weeks for me has been a marathon of family photos and videos.
Download: Windows Essentials 2012 (Web install)
New capabilities in Movie Maker include video stabilization, a welcome addition to treat those shaky smartphone shot videos. Another feature I needed to use recently is rights ready music. When I posted my recent timelapse of New York to YouTube, a friend commented that it’d be better with a soundtrack but I didn’t know how to find something that has the appropriate rights. Movie Maker solves that by integrating AudioMicro, Free Music Archive and the Vimeo Music Store to make it easy to find music that is not only fitting for video, but also has the proper rights.
Photo Gallery also has some new tricks up its sleeves. Auto Collage has been added to the already impressive Photo Fuse and Panorama features that take advantage of technologies from Microsoft Research and like Movie Maker, Photo Gallery is now best friends with Vimeo, a new publishing partner.
Grab these great, free additions to Windows now using the links above.
