Some will work in Vista and some won't. I'll note them.

PapaJohn's Products and Services

Additional items from Microsoft and third party software suppliers extend Movie Maker. With Movie Maker open, use the pull down menu > Help > Windows Movie Maker on the Web

Additional Software that adds or expands to the features of Movie Maker, such as additional effects, transitions, and sound effects.

• Creativity Fun Pack (XP) - this free pack adds a new c:\Documents and Settings\(User Name)\My Documents\My Videos\Creativity Fun Packs folder, with 4 sub-folders of audio, image and video clips, like the 5 second countdown clip in the figure. To use the clips in Movie Maker, import them as usual.

• Winter Fun Pack 2003 (XP and Vista)

This free Windows XP Movie Maker 2 extra adds new FunPackFX DLL and XML files for a new video effect (Snowflakes) and 2 new video transitions (Snow Burst and Snow Wipe) for MM2 in XP. They don't work in Vista.

It also creates a new c:\Documents and Settings\(User Name)\My Documents\My Videos\Windows XP Fun Pack\Winter 2003 folder on XP, with 4 sub-folders containing 7 'WMA Music Tracks and Music Transitions', 10 JPG 'Pictures', 92 WMA 'Sound Effects', and 8 WMV 'Video Animations'. On Vista, the set of folders is under c:\Documents and Settings\(User Name)\Videos\Windows XP Fun Pack\Winter 2003

To use the clips in Movie Maker, import them into your collections as usual.

Newsletter #181 is about this pack of 'Winter Video Goodies'. Click the image to read it.

Here are links to sample videos that show what's in the pack...

Part 1 - Some Sound Effects

Part 2 - More Sound Effects

Part 3 - Holiday Music.

The pinball, race cars and snowboarding video clips shown in parts 2 and 3 are not included in the pack.

• Plus! Digital Media Edition (XP) from Microsoft, or the Microsoft Plus! SuperPack from Amazon, includes 50 video effects & transitions. After installation, they appear in the collections with those that came with MM2. A free Plus Pack Update was released on 10/14/03.

• In December 2009 Windows Live provided a Windows Live Holiday Package, set of 13 images (11 JPG and 2 PNG), and a set of 6 music files (MP3). Click the image at the right to download the zip file. Unzip to your folder of choice.

• SpiceFX Packs (XP and Vista)

Pixelan is a leading plug-in developer of add-on packs for Movie Maker.

Their SpiceFX 4.0 software for XP and Vista was released in early June 2008. 14 add-on packs of Video Effects and Transitions install 676 items in Movie Maker's collections... the new DepthFX and PageFX packs run only on Vista.

Here's an album at vimeo with sample videos that demo Pixelan effects and transitions.

The PanZoom Maker in the v3 packs has been considerably expanded to be the Wizards 4.0 utility that lets you make, among other things, custom Picture-in-Picture and 'TranJelly' transitions. Produce custom effects and transitions on the sideline, selecting from over 57 million choices of settings, and send them to Movie Maker when ready. With the new technology of Vista, two of the new transition packs, Depth and Page Peels, are for Vista only. Here's a sample clip showing a transition from each of the two packs.

Sample Clip - Vista only transitions

Here's a link to my first Bright Hub article about... Pixelan SpiceFX 4.0 for Movie Maker

Newsletter #125 was about v3 Pixelan Transitions and Effects. Click the image to read it.

The packs provide about 600 additional transitions and video effects that are automatically integrated into Movie Maker's collections.

• PanZoom Maker (XP and Vista) is a Pixelan utility that lets you easily make great custom pan and zoom effects.

Newsletter #122 is a tutorial about PanZoom Maker v1.1... now superceded by the Wizards of v4.

Here's a sample clip made with the new v4 Wizard, showing the compound movements made with the keyframes features and variable movements. The clip was made from a single still image on the timeline (the 9 picture collage was made in Paint), with a duration of 40 seconds and a custom pan/zoom effect applied.

Another short sample (click the picture of Detroit), this one part of a tutorial being written for Bright Hub about how to make such pans/zooms with the Pixelan utility.

If that's not enough, I have a number of test clips at vimeo

• Kaleidoscope is a pack of custom transitions from IT-Forces, a plug-in developer that expanded into supporting Movie Maker.

• Rehan's Movie Maker Corner (XP and Vista) has the popular PIP PLUS, a custom plugin for Movie Maker that allows making advanced level custom effects and transitions via xml interface to do Picture-In-Picture, Picture animations, Borders and Overlays.

• Transition Maker 2 (XP)...

... to make custom transitions. Review some demo transitions, download the trial or full version of the utility, and then use the online tutorial to start making your own.

• In addition to creating Transition Maker 2, Patrick shares much of what he develops. Visit his PatrickL Addons for MovieMaker to browse, be inspired, and download.

• The newest ones.... released in November 2008... are pack #4 (transitions) and pack #5 (effects).

• The two PapaJohn Collections - Volumes 2 and 3 are my personal favorites from the vast libraries of special effects and transitions made by ProDad.

• Adorage for Moviemaker - Vol 1 - a package of special transitions and effects for Movie Maker 2. Click the window at the right to view a demo video that shows the special effects.

... the package also includes 97 custom transitions... here's another Demo Video - Adorage Transitions, using a couple widescreen clips.

If you find your transitions ending too abruptly, check the info in this forum thread.

Other Software...

These don't work directly with Movie Maker. You can move audio and video files to and from other programs, or make things that can be added to Movie Maker.

Photo Story 3.1 (XP and Vista) was released in July 2005 as part of the Digital Image Suite 2006 for 32-bit Windows. It brings back the option of burning a VCD, using the Sonic disc making engine. See the Photo Story 3 > Setup page for more info about this version.

Route Generator is an easy to use and effective tool to annotate a map. Here's a sample clip using their airplane Sample. The graphics that come with it can be replaced with your own. Use the generated clip in your Movie Maker project.

Links to some of my articles at Bright Hub...

• Crazy Talk (thumbs up) for making fun animation clips. Make anything say what you want and add the clip to your movie project.

• Fun Morph (thumbs down) for making morphing-type animation clips

• GoldWave Digital Audio Editor (thumbs up) for editing audio files and the audio channel of a video file

• Acoustica 4 (thumbs up) for editing audio files

• Fx Audio Editor (thumbs down) is also for editing audio... falls short of GoldWave

• IconCool Studio 5 (thumbs down) for making icons

• Logo Design Studio Pro (thumbs up) for making logos

• Serif PagePlus X2 (thumbs up) for desktop publishing

• Ulead PhotoImpact 12 (thumbs up) for managing and prepping still pictures

Utilities

Software to manage files, prepare source files to import, make interesting specialty clips, convert files after saving, or help you understand what's happening. Here are some of my favorites... limiting the list to freeware and shareware:

• Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta (XP and Vista) is an enhanced version of the same app in all versions of Vista. Use it to capture from your camera/camcorder and manage still pictures and video clips.

Newsletter #169 is about it... if you want individual DV-AVI files, split by scenes, when capturing via firewire from a DV camcorder, and feedback about any dropped frames, Windows Live Photo Gallery will do it for you.

• WinDV and Digital Video Input Output (DVIO) capture from or export to a digital8 or mini-DV digital camcorder. They are small, easy to use, effective and free. And they offer some features not included in Movie Maker.

Newsletter #61 is a tutorial about using WinDV. Click the image to read it.

• IrfanView (XP, Vista, Win7) is my all purpose Swiss Army knife for picture cropping, color effects, resizing, converting file formats, etc. It can even take a video clip and make a full set of BMPs for each frame. Maybe print the back of your own pack of playing cards with 52 frames from your favorite clip - put them in order and watch it as you shuffle the deck for the first time. But they might be out of order for the second shuffle.

Newsletter #13 is a tutorial about using IrfanView with Movie Maker 2. Click the image to read it.

In addition to what IrfanView can do by itself, when prepping images for use in stories and movies, it can work with many high-quality filters developed for software such as PhotoShop... Richard Rosenman offers over 20 such filters such as this vignette creator as free downloads. The image is a link to his site.

• Paint.NET (XP and Vista) works hand-in-hand with IrfanView when preparing images for use in stories, movies, and as custom overlays. Newsletter #77 is a tutorial about using it for a couple custom title overlays. Click the image to read it.

• RenderSoft VRLM is something I've been using for years to make introductory or other special effect clips. Create your scene from scratch, add text and movement, pictures, etc. There's lots of things that you can do with it and they all compliment Movie Maker 2. But it's a pretty old techie kind of environment as far as software goes. Few people who look at it end up using it routinely.

Newsletter #88 was about making a standard introductory clip... including a custom 3-D animated text clip made with Rendersoft. Click the image to read it...

To illustrate what you can do with RenderSoft, the frame at the upper right is from the sample video used for the Saving Movies... Sample Video Clips page. I used Premiere to apply the text over the skiing clip, but made the 3D animated text with RenderSoft.

The opening text effect for this 1/2 minute Winter in Saugatuck clip was also done with the utility. And an even longer sample is a 2 minute movie I that I put together (in the days of MM1), using a single picture cropped and textured with IrfanView, and then animated (text and images) in RenderSoft VRLM - Old Friends

Newsletter #39 included tutorials about using the Rendersoft VRLM (above) and Illusionae (below) utilities. Click the image below to read it.

• Illusionae is another software app that I've used for many years. With this one, you play with textures - 2 and 3 dimensional ones, until you find one you like. Then save it and use it as a background for your text effects in MM2. Download it from the same place you get RenderSoft.

• VirtualDub (XP, Vista, Win 7) is great for resizing, cropping and rotating a video (to any angle or degree), and lots of other things....

...and the related VDubMod, AviSynth, and VirtualDub-MPEG2 utilities do even more. VirtualDub-MPEG2 can use WMV video files as inputs (not wmv stories).

All are great additions to your video editing toolbox and free to use. VirtualDub can handle the type I DV-AVI files from Movie Maker.

Newsletters #16 and 36 were about VirtualDub, NanDub and AviSynth. Click the images to read them.

VirtualDub includes a number of filters, and others can be added to its plugins folder. neuron2.net has info and links about many of what is available.

Others include a fun-to-use Cartoonizer from the Compression Project. Here's a sample clip showing the basic painting and drawing options of this filter.

Copy the add-on filter .vdf files to the VirtualDub\plugins folder and they'll be in the picklist when you open the app's Video > Filters > Add list.

Learning VirtualDub by Georgios Diamantopoulos, Sohail Salehi, and PapaJohn (I wrote the introductory chapter) is the first book to be published about it. The book is available as a free pdf download from the publisher... here's the link.

Learning VirtualDub

Get started fast... install and check AviSynth, then master the advanced features of VirtualDub, the leading free Open Source video capture and processing tool.

Capture and process broadcast, digital, home, streaming video. Cut, paste and edit ads, trailers, clips. Demos and walkthroughs of processing sample videos.

HitTheBongo's AviSynth Page shows you how to do 'Brady Bunch' style animations. Even if you aren't ready to jump into learning it, check his sample.

Newsletter 179 was about making a 'Brady Bunch' type video opening using HitTheBongo's AviSynth script. Click the image to read it.

Last but not least for this section is Avidemux, which lets you do about everything that VirtualDub does, but with lots more file types. It's another open source app you can't afford to not have in your toolbox.

• Total Commander (XP and Vista) is my favorite file browsing and management tool since before the first version of Microsoft Windows . If you used Norton Commander, this utility is the continuation of it in the Windows environment.

It includes an ftp feature to easily upload your movies to a website, or to download things like the free old movies from the Prelinger Archives. I use it daily to update this website.

Newsletter 103 is a tutorial about using Total Commander. Click the image to read it.

• Audacity is an open source audio utility that gets rave reviews. It can convert an MP3 file to a WAV, and help you edit or add special effects to a sound track.

Newsletter 63 is an introduction to using Audacity with the audio tracks of Movie Maker and Photo Story.

• BeSweet with its associated GUI Wizard can convert Dolby .ac3 files to WAV files for use in Movie Maker.

Newsletter 53 includes a primer about using BeSweet for this purpose.

If you see differences between your downloaded BeSweet software and the newsletter info, it's because the open source app has been revised since the newsletter was written.

• Inkscape is a vector-based graphics app that's great for doodling, drawing, and writing in calligraphy (good but even better with pen tablets). Newsletter #140 is an intro. Click the image to read it.

• WinRAR - some users want to save a large DV-AVI file to disc, but it doesn't fit on a single one.... there are a number of good tools that you can use to split the file into a number of parts and save them on multiple discs, including WinRAR. When you need the file again you can use the software to put the parts back together.

• Font Viewer is a download from PC Magazine. The fonts you use in Movie Maker or Photo Story are an important part of your project. Rather than pick through them one at a time and wait for the preview, there are utilities that let you see them more easily... have a font-study session and make a list of those you like. Keep it handy doing your projects.

• DVDate from Paul Glagla can do various things with DV-AVI files, including adding date or time code.

The screen shot at the right shows the menu option to use when adding date/time code... after opening a DV-AVI file in it.

Newsletter 144 is about DVDate...

While you're at Paul's site getting DVDate, download some of his other tools also...

Film Merit, Image Grab, CassetteDV, and Capture Flux.

I'll probably be doing future newsletters about other apps in his suite.

• LSMaker (Light Saber Maker) is a very popular utility for making your sabers or any other thing flash or glow (doesn't run on Windows 7)...

Newsletter #56, about a medieval hand-fasting ceremony, included a mini-tutorial about using the utility to change a classical medieval sword fight into one of using light sabers. Click the image to read it.

• Microsoft Cabinet SDK is a free download from Microsoft. Photo Story project files are compressed CAB files. Those with enough geek blood in them who want to extract the XML or other files from them, edit them elsewheres, and put them back... can do unpackaging and repackaging using this tool.

• Movica is an Open Source utility that can do a number of things with video files, including combining WMV files without re-rendering. This is especially important to users who want to combine Photo Story 3 files when the 300 picture limit isn't sufficient for a project... or in my case wanting to add standard intro or closing clips to a story.

• Windows Movie Maker Utility, developed by Bruce Shankle, lists the source files used in your project and tags any missing ones.

• XiberPix provides free downloads of some great utilities that do specialty effects to images and video clips... Sqirlz Lite, Sqirz Morph, and Water Reflections... Newsletter #98 includes a mini-tutorial about using Sqirlz Morph. Click the image to read it.

• Gloodle is a fun app that can make animated map trails and great custom transitions.

Newsletter #189 shows how to use it to enhance a clip. Click the image to read it.

• Sony's ACID XPress is for music creation and mixing. Newsletter #190 was about it... click the image to read it.

• Movica is an open source utility that can do a number of things with video files, including the joining of multiple wmv files made by Movie Maker or Photo Story 3... without re-encoding... and extracting movie segments to new files, again without re-encoding.

If you're a Photo Story user who is constrained by the limit of 300 pictures, this utility will help. I'm thinking of using it as a tool to quickly and easily add leading or trailing clips to existing videos. Without the re-encoding, the splitting or combining of existing clips takes just a few seconds.

Here's a link to a tutorial about Movica, under development...

Movica

Use all the tools in your software toolbox. Digital clips can be easily moved from one software package to another, and each tool you become familiar with adds something special to your productions. Here's a Medley of Intro Clips that I strung together using a number of tools. It's a 3-1/2 MB, 1-1/2 minute video.