Looking for Windows Movie Maker tips, or recommendations for better alternatives

[Bob]

I'm going to make a small presentation of some pictures taken on a company trip. In short, it is going to be a rather simple slide show, with the pictures synchronized to the beat of a music track (using Eye of the Tiger, so this just have to be good :boxing:). My first idea was to try Windows Movie Maker. I've never used it before, but from what I've heard it's pretty simple - and it turned out to be easy as well.

My first problem was that I noticed that the latest version of Windows Movie Maker (now "Windows Live Movie Maker, version 2011"...) doesn't have the time line mode - which makes it a pain to get proper synching between the music and the pictures. Luckily, I found I could download an older version (version 6.1), which has the time line. Problem solved.

The next challenge was that I didn't find it as smooth and easy to set up the presentation the way I want. Basically, I want to create a series of time frames mapped/in synch with the music, and when I have that I would like to fill every time frame with different pictures (and be able to move pictures around without changing the duration of the time frames). The way I do it now, is that I have all the pictures in a line, and drag them to be as long/short as a small piece of the music. If I then decide that I want to move a picture, it seems that the duration follows the picture, and I will have to re-synch the whole line affected by moving that one picture.

So, questions:

• Does somebody with experience with Windows Movie maker have any tips for me to make this job a bit easier?
• Or is there perhaps some other piece of software that is better suited for this kind of task? It would (preferable) have to be free, as I only need it for this one thing (and it ought to be ready for this weekend).

[T-Bag]

If you're trying to synch pictures with music I'd have thought Flash might be easier. I know a fairly decent looking movie editor just got made open source but can't for the life of me remember what it was. I was going to check it out.

[BrotherTobious]

Dl the trail of Adobe premier mate really easy to use.  I used movie make and managed timing ok but premier is much better.

I think its a 30 day trail.

[Bob]

@BrotherTobious: I have Adobe Premier a try. It for sure is a very powerful program. Lots of really cool features But for my use right now, it is a bit too advanced. I understand the basics, but there are way too many options, features, stuff to click on etc. I often found myself in the situation that I had clicked some kind of short-cut key by accident, and now isn't able to click on the stuff I'd like to etc... If I had a week or two to play around with it, it would be great, but I won't have time in just a couple of days.

@T-Bag: interested to hear if you remember what it is


And btw: I've also just tried out Video Spin (from Pinnacle Studio), but I found that one to be utter crap. So for now at least, it's back to Movie Maker.

[suicidal_monkey]

From my brief search...
Virtualdub
Avidemux
Wax