Railfan Technology > Still/video program recommendations?

I would like to present a program of my travels to my local rail club, and heres what I would like
it to be: Start with several stills(Dig.) with a few comments from me and then lead into a 30 to 90
second video(DIg) with background music and then back to a few stills and on and on.

Anyone have any program(windows) recommendations that won't break the bank or better yet for free?
Plus it can be put on a thumb drive and played on a multi-media device...

Thanks, Paul

I got the Sony Movie Studio Platinum 12 Suite from Dell a few months ago for $40. B&H has it for the same price now. Limited supply at that price.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=887370&gclid=Cj0KEQjws8qgBRCLp-aploLbqcQBEiQAm0rD5-YKVDlGjPywfleGESiNqxmh5DfqvG3kiHv-yccfWB4aAlx08P8HAQ&is=REG&Q=&A=details

I had a lot of success with Windows Movie Maker which was free.
I think now you have to download it from Microsoft, but the wmv output format is pretty (open source) universal.

arrowspatial Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I had a lot of success with Windows Movie Maker
> which was free.
> I think now you have to download it from
> Microsoft, but the wmv output format is pretty
> (open source) universal.

The current version available for download, Windows Movie Maker 2012 (for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1) can save in MP4 format in addition to WMV. The published MP4 video can play on Macs without transcoding. I tested it, too, including uploading a few of my recent videos on TO in MP4 instead of WMV. Seems Microsoft's H.264 encoder used with MP4 is a bit inferior to VC-1 encoder with WMV, as I noticed a few more artifacts in MP4 than WMV using the same bandwidth (2 Mbps). In theory, it's supposed to be the opposite.

Since we're talking about Movie Maker, I like the older version better, v2.6 for Vista and XP. I still use it on my XP NetBook when I'm editing videos on the road. It can be made to run on Windows 7 also. I believe this version is still available for download.

Good info on Microsoft's Movie Maker. (And another example where MS has solid products and is under-hyped.)