r/windows • u/TheCelestialDawn • Jun 12 '25

General Question What happened to Windows Movie Maker?

It's the only movie software program I needed. Now it's gone?

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u/Triabolical_ Jun 12 '25

I know the real story. I wrote the UI for DVD maker in Vista and was on the movie maker team.

DVD maker was a popular program, and the team planned a new product we named storyteller. Think of the Ken burns effect for photos but with videos, canned content, etc. A whole bunch of different themes.

Then a reorg happened and we got moved in with the picture folks under their management. Their second level manager said that the team could decide what to do, which was great, and specifically said we could proceed.

I wrote a prototype with still photos only, we tested it in the usability lab with customers, and they loved it.

Then four weeks later our manager changed his mind and told us we couldn't do storyteller and that we should do a rewrite of movie maker.

Of the ten or twelve people on the team, all but two left in a month.

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u/TrustLeft Jun 13 '25 edited Jun 13 '25

I believe it was because they tried transferring it to "Movie Maker Live" which was cloud and people wanted no part of it. Still Don't. I transitioned to Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 11, Still use it and Magix Movie studio 2024 platinum which looks Chinese designed, Blocky lazily created, which the newer isn't as good and has a horrible layout, I like the older 1990-2005 based software, they are just more user friendly without relying on stupid cloud

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u/Triabolical_ Jun 13 '25

I use davinci resolve. It's complex to learn but very robust.