Windows Live Movie Maker 1.0 has been released. There's no separate installer for Movie Maker so download the installer at the Windows Live page and run it to install or update Movie Maker to 1.0.

So... considering that I basically spat vast amounts of acid at the beta release of Windows Live Movie Maker. How did I find version 1.0 after giving it an initial run through?

I LOVE IT!

The timeline view which I used to arrange my movies previously in Windows Movie Maker is GONE! There isn't a timeline view in WINDOWS LIVE Movie Maker. Because there isn't a NEED for it! Not only did they integrated the split function into the storyboard, each clip occupies the same visual size in the storyboard, meaning even if I had short few second clips in a multi minute video, I don't have to zoom in to my timeline to find it! For someone who has been using the clip function to make my movie previously this is FANTASTIC!!

As someone who wants to tweak the encoding profile to my own liking and purpose (say maybe I need a custom profile for my custom Silverlight app) I really appreciated the fact that Windows Movie Maker allowed me to hack in my own Windows Media Encoding Profile files to tune the encoding output. And yes!! I can do this with WINDOWS LIVE Movie Maker as well! So I have control over the output process! GREAT!

The whole process of making a movie if you're a casual user feels much more simpler than even Windows Movie Maker was previously. And yet, for people like me who want to tweak dials, the dials are there. LOVELY!

So... if you edit movies on your PC. WINDOWS LIVE Movie Maker just became a viable choice again.

Why is it WINDOWS LIVE Movie Maker? Cause I want to diffrentiate the name from the old Windows Movie Maker that came with XP and Vista.

A new release of the Windows Live Apps Beta has been released. Or as the Windows Live team likes to call them the Windows Live Essentials!

Everything looks smashingly great, Live Writer is as good as always. Though I wish they didn't enable all the smart quotes and other character replacements by default. I feel that'll cause some amount of grief to some people.

Live Messenger looks spiffy! But they removed the signature sound which allows me to set a sound to be played on my friend's system when I get online, I liked that feature even if I did get scared by it sometimes. Hope they put it back in as a setting that can be switched on or off.

Live Photo Gallery... works, interesting point to note is that now the autofix tries to straigthen you photo as well. Somehow I don't think that's a good idea since the problem is that the program doesn't know the intent of the photographer's angle. Or actually understands the subject being photographed.

And then there's Live Movie Maker... oh god... what have they done to the Movie Maker name? I really LIKE Movie Maker, in my opinion it's a very underappreciated program that comes with Windows. It just works! you can easier trim and create movie clips, add captions, etc. etc. You can even customize your own encoding profiles so you can make WMV files for any usage. In the name of simplification.. They've redesigned the whole UI, and basically removed everything that gave Movie Maker it's charm previously. The team mentions that the engine powering Windows Live Movie Maker is capable of great things, and I WANT to believe them, I WANT to believe that there's a program capable of being as good as the old Windows Movie Maker. In it's state right now I call attention to this old Mac vs PC ad.

If you asked me how bad does the output of Windows Live Movie Maker looks right now? It's WORSE than the PC movie being depicted in the Ad! Come on guys, make me BELIEVE that Windows Live Movie Maker works!!!

Other then Live Movie Maker, everything else in the Live Apps suite works great!