Windows Movie Maker
This section provides information about the following:
The benefits of Microsoft Windows Movie Maker
How Windows Movie Maker communicates with sites on the Internet
How to control Windows Movie Maker to limit the flow of information to and from the Internet
Important For greater control over the communication between components in Windows XP and sites on the Internet, use Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 instead of with Service Pack 1. Windows XP Service Pack 2 provides a number of new Group Policy settings that control communication between components in the operating system and sites on the Internet. For more information, see the Microsoft Web site at:
On This Page
Benefits and Purposes of Windows Movie Maker
Overview: Using Windows Movie Maker in a Managed Environment
How Windows Movie Maker Communicates with Sites on the Internet
Procedure for Configuration of Windows Movie Maker
Related Links
Benefits and Purposes of Windows Movie Maker
With Windows Movie Maker, users can bring together video, audio, and other multimedia content, then arrange and edit the content to create a finished movie. After creating the movie, users can save it on a hard disk or CD, send it in an e-mail, or send it to a video hosting provider on the Web. These tasks are kept simple with an interface based mostly on drag-and-drop and on short lists of tasks from which to choose.
As part of keeping tasks simple, Windows Movie Maker can display links to Web sites, such as a link to a potential video hosting provider, and can automatically download missing codecs for audio and video files. (A codec—compressor/decompressor—is software that compresses or decompresses audio or video data.)
Overview: Using Windows Movie Maker in a Managed Environment
If you want to prevent users from running Windows Movie Maker, you can use Group Policy. You can also use a firewall to prevent users from accessing Web sites used by Windows Movie Maker, such as https://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/default.mspx. These Web sites are listed in the next section, “How Windows Movie Maker Communicates with Sites on the Internet.”
How Windows Movie Maker Communicates with Sites on the Internet
The following list describes how Windows Movie Maker communicates with sites on the Internet:
Specific information sent or received: The following list describes the information that is sent or received in specific situations.
When the user clicks Help and then clicks Windows Movie Maker on the Web, Windows Movie Maker displays the following Web site:
When the user chooses to save a movie to the Web, through a wizard, a connection is made to the following Web site in order to obtain a list of potential hosting providers to offer to the user:
https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=26247
This occurs when, after creating a Windows Movie Maker project, the user clicks the task Send Movie To Web Server. Dialog boxes then guide the user through the process of saving the movie and sending it to a video hosting provider’s Web site.
When the user imports an audio or video file for which no codec is available locally, Windows Movie Maker connects to the following Web site to locate a codec to download:
Default settings: By default, Windows Movie Maker offers options that allow the user to link to Web sites for information or for saving a movie, as described in the previous item. Also by default, Windows Movie automatically downloads codecs if the user imports an audio or video file for which no codec is available on the local computer.
Triggers and user notification: Connection with the codec server is triggered when the user imports an audio or video file for which no codec is available on the local computer.
Logging: On the sites to which Windows Movie Maker connects, the only data saved by Microsoft is the number of downloads of a given codec. No computer is identified in the process of a codec download.
Encryption: There is no encryption of the requests for Web sites or of the codec downloads that can occur through Windows Movie Maker.
Transmission protocol and port: When Windows Movie Maker communicates with sites on the Internet, it uses HTTP with port 80.
Ability to disable: You can prevent users from starting Windows Movie Maker by using Group Policy.
Procedure for Configuration of Windows Movie Maker
This subsection provides a procedure for preventing users from starting Windows Movie Maker by using Group Policy. You can also use a firewall to prevent users from accessing Web sites used by Windows Movie Maker, such as https://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/default.mspx. These Web sites are listed in the previous section, “How Windows Movie Maker Communicates with Sites on the Internet.”
To Prevent Users from Starting Windows Movie Maker by Using Group Policy
See Appendix B, "Learning About Group Policy and Updating Administrative Templates,” for information about using Group Policy. Ensure that your Administrative templates have been updated, and then edit an appropriate GPO.
Click User Configuration, click Administrative Templates, and then click System.
In the details pane, double-click Don’t run specified Windows applications.
Select Enabled, click Show, click Add, and then type:
Moviemk.exe
Related Links
For more information about Windows Movie Maker, see Help in Windows Movie Maker, or see the Windows Movie Maker page on the Microsoft Web site at: