Windows Movie Maker: a Rant

I have a more useful essay to post (perhaps tonight, or in the next few days), but first a Rant.

Not so long ago, Microsoft had a useful program called Windows Movie Maker. I used it for all of my YouTube uploads; so did hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of other people. It was easy to use, and worked fine.

Microsoft has pulled the plug on it. Their current operating system, Windows 10 (which I am using, unwillingly) does not include it, or any equivalent. Win10 has their version of a digital assistant, Cortana, and supposedly you can say “Hey, Cortana!” and get answers to any question. I have found “her” not so useful in general (Wikipedia is a much better starting place), but often fairly useful for specific Windows-related questions.

But not this one. Many people have asked what to do for a Movie Maker equivalent, and the official Microsoft forums carefully dodge the question. There are a number of “apps” available, but a search for one today led me down a two-hour rathole. I installed EZVid, which some sources consider the top choice. But it will not accept audio in WAV form; it accepts only MP3. All of my tracks are WAV. That led to a search for a WAV to MP3 converter. There are many of those; the free ones all seem to install helpful little toolbars and advertisements. Charming.

I gave up. For the tracks that I wanted to upload to support my essay-in-progress, I will use SoundCloud, which does support WAV files. But I am soon going to bump into their size limit for free accounts, and I do not want to commit to a monthly subscription for the rest of my life.

Clearly, the Powers That Be at Microsoft do not want people to do what I do: create music – mind you, not pirated tracks by others; my own creative work – and post it on the Internet to share freely with others.

I gather that this task would be simple and free on Apple products.