2012: Windows Live Writer Top 10 Plug-ins - Most Useful

Windows Live Writer is a fantastic offline blogging tool with a WYSIWYG editor. It interfaces with just about any blog service [Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress, etc.] If you're a blogger you'll find this tool incredibly helpful- and it's refreshingly free from Microsoft.

A large number of bloggers use Windows and use Windows Live Writer to post to their blogs from virtually anywhere. Windows Live Writer is considered the bar at which all other offline blog editors are judged.

One of the things that makes Windows Live Writer so popular is the ability to edit and compose your articles in a WYSIWYG editor. So as you are composing, what you are looking at is exactly how it's going to look one the information has been published. But another reason is the fact that the application has the ability to extend it's abilities to do other things not natively covered; allowing outside developers to generate plug-ins that'll enrich the overall experience and functionality of Windows Live Writer.

I have compiled a list of uber-useful plug-ins that are the most common and suggested plug-ins from the Windows Live Writer support forum from this year 2011 [and going on to 2012].

Here they are…

Blogger has seemingly changed it's API without telling anyone; or it's just broke.

I was reportng on one problem when I found two others. The Google blogger support forums are teaming with reports of people having problems with not being able to post to BLOGGER using outside applications like Zoundry Raven or Windows Live Writer.

There's a small range of problems right now; they're not being able to publish, not being able to pull old posts to edit them and the problem with the SLUG not being created properly. The problems are for sure a result of something that Google changed recently with the Blogger handling of remote posting applications; or basically, mucking with the base API that allows outside applications to post articles to BLOGGER.

The forums have been busy with reports for a couple of days and yet I've seen no responses from Google Blogger support over the issue; which isn't encouraging. You would really expect to see more participation from Google on issues of this nature.

Notice: Blogger is creating the wrong SLUG for Blogs

This started like last week [or more]. People using Windows Live Writer and blogger may have noticed this; mainly because Windows Live Writer is the de facto standard for offline blogging.

Basically, the problem is that when people compose blogs and then submit them to their respective blogs to be posted, the SLUG or URL they uses is typically composed of the words use in the title of the blog post. and as of recently, this hasn't been happening with blogger.

Blogger is taking the first sentence of the blog, not the title, and creating the default SLUG or URL for the post. it's really nothing more than irritation, but it should get some notice because it doesn't create a very efficient SEO tagged blog post.

Zemanta still problems with it's plug-in with Windows Live Writer 2011

I reported a problem way back with Zemanta and the plug-in for Windows Live Writer; it was the one where Zemanta's plug-in would crash Windows Live Writer at right about 460+ - 500 words. I got their attention and then I was able to get one of their developers to remote in to my machine and they were able to see the problem in action.

Later Zemanta released another version of the plug with a fix; but it was only a slight fix… the bug was still there; only in a different spot.

Now, the plug-in has recently gotten worse; it crashes if you even so much as hover over the related articles listing…

I contacted them again and I sent them a screenshot, but sometimes videos work a lot better.

Windows Live Writer: my 500 Internal Server Error -just weird

As everyone knows [hopefully], Windows Live Writer is a fantastic offline blogging tool with a WYSIWYG editor. It interfaces with just about any blog service [Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress, etc.]

But then again, there's the crap like this…

I was running in to an issues where Windows Live Writer is having a problem with a specific post…

I could and have published other posts, and even older posts just for testing... my problem was showing up when I was making an attempt to publish this one SPECIFIC post.

Windows Live Movie Maker: How to take a video Snapshot/screenshot

Windows Live Movie Maker is a free offering from Microsoft that offers novice and average users the ability to edit video and from there, be able to share/publish it to Facebook, YouTube, eMail, DVD and even custom resolutions. It's a basic editor with very simplified interface, and it's part of the Windows Live Essentials Suite of applications.
The question comes up in the support forum about how to grab Snapshots or screen captures of the videos that are playing.
The process is actually pretty easy…

Windows Live Movie Maker - Error 80070003 - Path Not specified

In the Windows Live Movie Maker forums, there's an ongoing issues with the installation of the application where users aren't able to launch the program.

Windows Live Movie Maker is a free offering from Microsoft that offers novice and average users the ability to edit video and from there, be able to share/publish it to Facebook, YouTube, eMail, DVD and even custom resolutions. It's a basic editor with very simplified interface, and it's part of the Windows Live Essentials Suite of applications.

But how can you use it if it'll never start? well, hopefully this will help you…

Windows Live Movie Maker Exclamation Marks

Windows Live Movie Maker is one of those under developed application that don't handle variance very well.

The exclamation marks; they can mean basically one of a couple of things when you are dealing with Windows Live Movie Maker. They can mean the video you are attempting to work with isn't supported [or is, or has become corrupt], or you are out of system resources, etc. And there are suggestions for all those issues.

A lot of the time, it's codecs…

CODECS; What you need to know about codecs, in a nutshell, is that they dictate whether or not the audio, video or both are recognized properly by Windows Live Movie Maker, and it's important to have the right codecs installed/updated. It affects the performance of Windows Live Movie Maker and it also affects the rendering of the videos/audio inside the application— And Windows Live Movie Maker offers no automated assistance in resolving the issues of codecs. And if you're under the illusion that just because Windows Media Player can play the file, it should be good? That'd be wrong. Loading codecs for Windows Live Movie Maker is left to the users/customers to find and install...

Windows Live Movie Maker: How to export to MP4?

This is another question that keeps coming up in the support fourm… How do you export videos from Windows Live Movie Maker to MP4?

This actually goes for other formats as well, because the straightest answer is you can't.

Windows Live Movie Maker only exports to WMV; there are no other options. You can change the resolution and the dimensions of the movies you export, but all the videos you export will be to WMV. Even when the file is written to a DVD; it's exported to WMV and then Windows DVD Maker converts that to VOB [for DVD].

Here's some more resources…

Windows Live Movie Maker: Supported File Formats

Windows Live Movie Maker support forums are littered with problems with getting users media files in to the program the mesh wwith the application.

Windows Live Movie Maker is a free offering from Microsoft that offers novice and average users the ability to edit video and from there, be able to share/publish it to Facebook, YouTube, eMail, DVD and even custom resolutions. It's a basic editor with very simplified interface, and it's part of the Windows Live Essentials Suite of applications.

Honestly, the application should be able to handle all these formats, considering that they're all considered standard, but there are some exceptions. If Microsoft was smart about it, they'd devote some time to finding, recommending or writing an app that'd find the right codec and loading of the Windows Live Movie Maker users.

Windows Live Movie Maker supports many formats; but what's not provided to the public [regular users] is that Windows Live Movie Maker doesn't recognize those various formats unless the CODEC for that format is installed in the operating system; it's not built-in to Windows Live Movie Maker. And Windows Live Movie Maker doesn't make any attempts to identify or get those codecs for you. 

Windows Live Movie Maker Add/Remove Automatic Captions

Windows Live Movie Maker is a free offering from Microsoft that offers novice and average users the ability to edit video and from there, be able to share/publish it to Facebook, YouTube, eMail, DVD and even custom resolutions. It's a basic editor with very simplified interface, and it's part of the Windows Live Essentials Suite of applications.
There's this reoccuring question in the Windows Live Movie Maker forums; it how to remove or add automatic captions to the videos and pictures.

The solution is actually pretty easy.