Problems with Video Creation

Here is some information about my experience with various video making tools that I have recently used.

Google Photos

Within Google Photos, short and simple videos can be created in a very simple way: just select up to 50 images, and Google Photos merges them into a video. One can arbitrarily select for each picture how long it should stay. No explicit duration can be selected, nor can be any transition be chosen. Royalty-free Music is automatically added by Google Photos. 

Here is an example:

Adobe Premiere Elements 12

This is an ancient software - I got it, I think in 2012. Paid. It still works fine, but is not very well compatible with Windows 10: the high-res screen GUI resolution is translated into tiny fonts, as there is no Windows-controlled scaling of the GUI. But it works ok and has great professional features: several video tracks and audio tracks, good transition features, fading in/out. 

Disadvantage: it cannot have arbitrary video sizes, e.g. no portrait. There are many fixed size templates with various resolutions and compression, but it is not straightforward to choose the one that would fit best. And there are no recent video Codecs. 

Example: 

Microsoft Movie Maker

That was a good program once - have used it in the past for several little video projects. But when trying to add a series of about 150 3000x4000 pictures, the encoding crept out: stood steady at 2%. Wheel rolling, but no action. Also accidentally clicking on something caused the app to halt. Something is not OK with this software.

I upgraded to PRO, because the standard version allows no saving of projects, only saving of video. But the same problem occurred with that PRO version.

This is all what MovieMaker is showing:

And no further progress.... had to abort and close the app.

Microsoft Video Editor

In Windows 10 hidden is a tool simply called "Video Editor". Simple to use, not many options. No transition between photos. But at least it worked and did not crash after importing the same 150 images as I had tried with the MovieMaker. Duration of each image could be set. Background music could be selected from a range of pre-recorded royalty-free pieces. Not great, but can be used for simple videos.

Here is an example:

I also downloaded "ClipChamp" which was recommended when I started the "Video Editor". Have not yet tried it, but looks simple and contemporary.