Editing Canon 7D Video using Windows Movie Maker Live
Are you looking to edit video on your Canon 7D DSLR using Windows Movie Maker Live for free? Windows Movie Maker Live is a free download from the Microsoft website and includes a number of enhanced features that are not in the standard Windows Movie Maker packaged with Windows XP/Vista/7.
Windows Movie Maker Live will not work with the standard MOV Apple Quicktime files that are produced from the Canon 7D camera. The files need to be converted into AVI format first that will allow them to be opened in Windows Movie Maker Live. The software I use is Cineform Neoscene which costs approx £60 but having spend over £1000 on your Canon 7D it is a small price to pay to be able to easily edit video from the camera with free Windows Movie Maker Live software rather than Adobe Premier or similar. Even if you bought Adobe Premier Elements for a similar price you would have problems with the performance editing Canon 7D movie files on anything other than an incredibly high spec PC. Once converted to AVI a much more modest spec PC can be used.
As soon as the MOV files are converted to AVI format they can be imported into Windows Movie Maker Live and the project created. From personal experience I would always recommend saving regularly and particularly before publishing a project to avoid a crash losing your hard work.
Windows Movie Maker Live allows you to publish the results of your editing direct to YouTube and other social media sites saving time compared to the older version of Windows Movie Maker.
