I need to make a simple "video" to youtube, just music with one still picture. I've googled for how to do it, and most suggest using Windows Movie Maker.

However, it seems Movie Maker was discontinued this January by Microsoft, and a version I downloaded and installed required a license key (purchased) in order to allow the project to be exported as a video file (so that it could be uploaded to Youtube). So in essence, useless. Too bad because it did seem quite easy to use and did exactly what I wanted.

I've googled for a free Movie Maker replacement, but it seems quite hard to find one. Any suggestions? As said, I just need a still picture and that it plays a song I have on a wav or ogg or flac.

Some I've tried so far:

- Some site praised EZVid for being easy to use. Yeah, except that it doesn't allow you to use your own music (audio files) due to potential copyright infringements, instead you are only allowed to use from some online library of free music. Ummm, ok, useless for me as the point for me is to publish the audio file, not the picture.

- Some site suggested using Open Office's presentation tool, as it allows exporting it to a video file. I have Libre Office 5 already installed so I figured I use its presentation tool instead. I was indeed able to create a presentation that I wanted (a picture with that audio file playing in the background)... but as far as I could tell, it didn't offer an option to export the presentation as a video file (e.g. MP4).

- Some sites suggested using some online web sites (tools) which do that. I don't recall the names of those sites anymore, but one was in some Asian language (Japanese, Chinese or Korean, no idea), and another web site tool asked me for my Youtube username and password so that it could automatically upload the video to Youtube. Umm, how about HELL NO! I may look like I was born yesterday, but I am not that stupid ok? Pass.

- There was also some site which presented several free software, but as I tried to download one of them, Avira Antivirus blocked the whole web site saying it is a known fraudulent site. Sorry I don't recall which site it was, but I decided to steer clear.

- AVIDeMux 2.6.18: it keeps crashing as I try to add the audio file, plus it is oddly hard to use.

- VirtualDub 1.10.4: I had hard time understanding how to do anything with the tool.

- VideoLAN Movie Creator: this sounded interesting (I already use the VLC player all the time)... but apparently it is still work in progress, it hasn't been released yet. At least I didn't find any download link from their site, and the site stated it is not ready yet even for beta testing.

Also, I already have OBS Studio installed, but I am unsure if it allows making such video presentation projects, or is it only for capturing live video?

I've used both VirtualDub and AviDemux and I don't think they fit your needs... but I've a better alternative: Shotcut.
https://www.shotcut.org/download/

I played around with it for a while and it took a while for me to "get it"... but it now seems relative simple. I'd recommend the tutorial section: https://www.shotcut.org/tutorials/

If you're into more advanced editing I can recommend Lightworks (https://www.lwks.com/) Don't be fooled, there's a free version too. I haven't used it personally but perhaps I should at some point. I quote "In the last 25 years Lightworks has been used to edit some of the finest films in cinema history: The Wolf of Wall Street, LA Confidential, Pulp Fiction, Heat, Road to Perdition, Hugo, The King’s Speech and many more!"

I saw that suggested too somewhere and I visited that site earlier, but I thought the Free version is apparently very restricted, as it said:

"Lightworks Free offers you full editing power, and export to our preferred upload partner Vimeo at 1080p resolution."

I took that to mean that you can only export your project directly to Vimeo, and only with the paid version you can e.g. export it to any video file format you want (and any service you want, like Youtube)? I probably misunderstood it.

I'll check some from the earlier list, Shotcut is mentioned there too as one Movie Maker replacement.

I actually use Blender.
It's not perfect as it can be a little fiddly to do some stuff, but for what you want to do it should be relatively alright.
And for me, as I already have Blender installed (I like to pretend I might do some 3D modelling...) it means not having an extra program. Obviously that doesn't apply if you don't have Blender already.


Edit: And I always find thefreecountry is quite a good resource for stuff like that, though I haven't tried any of the video editors they list.

For basic editing and encoding VirtualDub works.

I would recommend Openshot if you're looking for something simple but more capable than Movie Maker. It can interface with Inkscape and Blender also for additional functionality of you have those programs installed. All three of them are free, open source, and cross-platform.

If you want something more powerful and capable, but also free ... well... Blender itself is a full fledged video editor, however it has a larger learning curve, but there are plenty of free tutorials on Youtube also.

Another possible option which isn't a video editor, is OBS. Depending on what you are doing, in some cases OBS itself can do what is needed in real time and can be edited later in some other program if desired.

I installed and tried OpenShot (2.2.0) yesterday, and so far it is maybe the best option I've tried. It feels quite intuitive and easy to use, I just added two tracks in the timeline, a PNG picture to one and a mp3 file on the other, then extended the photo track to be the same length as the mp3 music, and maybe a simply fade in/fade out effect to the start and the end of the picture.

But it has some stability problems. If I preview that simple presentation, towards the end of it the music it becomes garbled, and the program doesn't do anything anymore. I have to exit the program, at which point Windows complains it has become unresponsive etc.

If I try to export that project to a MP4 video file (without previewing it), it proceeds until 74%, but then stops there and doesn't do anything anymore. So I don't know if there is e.g. some problem with the mp3 file, but at least it plays just fine in VLC player, from start to end.

I also tried Shotcut, but I had hard time understanding how to do what I wanted (just that simple "add a picture, and an audio file to play in the background"), plus it seemed VERY unstable. The program kept crashing here and there, e.g. if I made the timeline visible, added a track, and then merely right-clicked on that track... poof, the program crashed. It happened quite often when pressing different buttons etc. which didn't have a description what they even do. OBS Studio? I have it installed already, but I couldn't figure out how to do what I want (ie. just add a picture and an audio file). Not sure if this is more like a live video capture program (and editor?), rather than a "movie maker"?

I was thinking of that too as I've been playing around with it for recording things, but wasn't sure how to do what you need.

I suppose if you set the capture source to a program with the picture you want open (paint or something) and then played the Mp3 and recorded you could so what you need. You'd just have to make sure you start and end the recording quickly so you don't have dead space you'd need to trim off. But that's easy enough if you set recording hot key.

https://youtu.be/eGuykZQuvI8
You want to do this right?
I just made it by VLC.

I haven't checked KDENLive for Windows, but I have been using it on my Linux laptop and it's perhaps the best free open source video editor I have ever used.

There really are no free good alternatives.

Personally I was lucky enough to find a nice Corel package deal for PaintShop Pro and video editor, so I would recommend hunting for such, as both are one-time payments and can be installed on multiple computers too, unlike some other products.

But, if you only need to do something as plain as you described, you can do that with almost any software.

You can, for instance, use PowerPoint or its free alternatives to create a presentation that features both audio and pictures and even some easy animations.

Put that in fullscreen mode, and use some screen recording software to capture that, and there you have your video.

In theory, you don't even need PowerPoint. Just a screen recording software will do, although in that case you need to manually first start the music and then put some image viewer to full screen, which may or may not work depending on how fast you can do that.

Ah shit, no kidding? I'm lucky to still be on Windows 8 then, with my copy of microsoft's movie maker long installed on my computer.

If you like, I uploaded a copy of mine. See if it works (Pm'ed you the link).

ffmpeg -loop 1 -i image.jpg -i audio.mp3 -codec:v libx264 -tune stillimage -codec:a copy -pix_fmt yuv420p -shortest output.mkv