Windows Movie Maker first saw light of day in 2000 when it was introduced along with Windows Me. Both the mother OS and the application itself were not well received, the former blighted by technical glitches and the latter by a woeful lack of features.

Windows XP fared better and with it was bundled v2 of Windows Movie Maker, which supports authoring of WMV8 and AVI files and can handle DV. In 2005, we saw Windows Media Centre Edition and WMM2.5 which can be used for burning DVDs.

Back to the present day and we've a variety of WMMs floating about. For those without Pixel Shader 2.0 support in hardware (a pixel-rendering facility needed to run Windows Vista properly), there's 2.6, while Vista Starter laggards can enjoy a version-hopping v6 that supports standard-res video.

Windows Vista Business users, meanwhile, should be getting on with their work, hence WMM6's HD handling is not for them. Users of Vista Home Premium and Ultimate, though, have the means to capture and manipulate high-definition (HD) video from the latest camcorders and publish it in a variety of forms.

And the questions that such folk are bursting to ask include 'does this latest freebie represent a major improvement on its predecessor and obviate the need for a commercial, entry-level NLE suite?' Well, in a word... doubt it.

Design and layout

The interface is very much improved, reminiscent of Windows Media Player 11. The layout is logical and clear, with oft-accessed facilities in the Tasks list at left, although you can switch this off because everything it contains also features in the dropdown menus at top.

A resizable preview window with transport controls features at right and imported media is shown as icons at centre. Import options are extensive. Video-wise, most popular formats can be hauled in, including DVR-MS, Microsoft's TV-recording format.

There's native support for editing MPEG2, too, which is the format used by HDV camcorders and for commercial DVD releases. Compressed and uncompressed audio can also be accessed, including the usual WAV and MP3, although while AIFF is OK, Apple's AAC format is not supported.

It's when capturing footage from DV tape that a real niggle arises. To test the efficacy of WMM6's capture facilities, we used a standard-res Panasonic NV-GS280 and a HDV Sony HDR-HC3. Both plug into Vista via FireWire with no complaint about drivers.