Microsoft Windows Movie Maker 2: Visual Quickstart Guide

Appendix C. Windows Media Encoder and Tools

As discussed throughout this book, Windows Movie Maker is part of an extensive suite of tools and accessories developed by Microsoft for producing or compressing digital video. This appendix discusses two components of another such tool suite: the Windows Media Encoder 9 Series.

First up is Windows Media File Editor, which can trim videos encoded in the Windows Media Video (WMV) format without re-encoding. In contrast, though Movie Maker can certainly trim video files, it always re-encodes them, which takes longer and potentially degrades the quality of the output file. File Editor can also insert markers into the video stream, enhancing interactivity, and can change the file's attributes, or the title, ...