What's the difference between "Windows Movie Maker" and "Windows Live Movie Maker"?

 

When you search "windows movie maker" on popular search engines such as google/yahoo/bing, you may get "windows live movie maker" or even the "windows live" setup package. What's wrong? Where is my familiar windows movie maker? I still need this software to make videos from my images and videos collection.

As you may already know, "Windows Live Movie Maker" is the later version of "Windows Movie Maker". But the thing is not so simple. Firstly, the later version does not support previous Windows Edition including the popular used Windows XP. Secondly, later version may not as easy & powerful as the previous versions.

Here is a table of Windows Movie Maker versions and a brief description.

Version Supported OS Brief
Windows Movie Maker 2.1, 2.6 Windows XP and later The only versions works on Windows XP.
Windows Movie Maker 6.0 Windows Vista and later Latest version of Windows Movie Maker. Later version changes name.
Windows Live Movie Maker 2009, 2011 Windows Vista and later Here Windows Movie Maker is part of the Windows Live Software package.
Windows Live Movie Maker 2012 Windows 7, 8 Latest Version of Windows Movie Maker. Only supports Windows 7 and later.