FIX: Bad Render Quality at 1080p on Windows Movie Maker 2011

I’ve been working on an intro for the Sleep Code Repeat YouTube channel with Windows Movie Maker. I’ve used WMM previously when I was younger for some LEGO robotics videos, and it was quite simple, and my intro was very simple. So, WMM was an easy choice to quickly put my intro together. However, there was one big problem: the video render quality would look terrible. I even found a way to set the resolution to 4K, and the video looked the exact same.

Eventually, after some experimenting, I managed to render a crisp intro for my channel using WMM. So anyways, to the point!

Because Microsoft killed Windows Movie Maker back in January of 2017, most people have resorted to third party sites to procure a copy of the software. As a result, it’s harder for people to pick and choose which version of WMM they get. My problem was that I had installed a 2011 version of WMM. For some reason, the render quality with the version I had seemed to be stuck at a low resolution, or it was being heavily compressed.

To fix the issue, download an official Microsoft offline installer here(US). With the latest 2012 version, the bug is fixed, and MPEG-4(.mp4)/H.264 export option was added!

Here’s a comparison of between the two versions:

TL;DR Use the official offline installer to get the latest version of the software, instead of versions off third party sites.