Help me understand M2T files / use in Windows Movie Maker
 

I'll likely get killed on this one now that I've disclosed my editing software of choice.

Now, onto the question... after a very expensive camera upgrade and likely purchase of a MRC1K unit, is there a simple way to drop the files the MRC1K creates into Windows Movie Maker (as AVI perhaps) for on the fly editing?

I do sports interviews / press conferences for the web and speed is the name of the game. The MRC1K was to be my time saver, eliminating the need to import.... If I have to convert these files, then it might not be the savior I had hoped for...

Please dont kill me too much on the editing suite, it's just what I've gotten comfortable with for its ease of use, and its doubtful I'm going to invest the time, money, or energy at this stage to try any other software. Movie Maker is on every computer i have which also makes it key.

HELP!!!

You need the WMM-HD that comes with Vista Home Premium or Ultimate, or Windows Live Movie Maker that comes with Win7, which support HD.

You could record to your MRC as DV AVI, but then you'd be wasting all that lovely high def-ness.

EDIT: In looking a little further, it appears that while the latest versions on WMM do handle HD, they don't allow for direct import of m2t. So I think the answer is, you can't. But I could be wrong.

But really, with an FX1000 and MRC1k, using WMM in any form is like having a Ferrari and trying to run it on diesel. Okay, that analogy sucks but you know what I mean. And as the versions you likely have on your PCs won't do what you want anyway, their ubiquity is irrelevant. Nothing wrong with WMM if it'll do what you want it to do, but in this case it looks like it won't.

software suggestions
 

Wow.. that is really upsetting news.

For years I have been avoiding changing editing software, but I suppose the time has come with all of this new equipment that I'm going to have to make the leap, might even have to take a class or 2.

I guess the next question would be which program is the most basic, cookie cutter, similar to WMM out there, that readily accepts the M2T files and outputs WMV files without taking too long to generate the finalized WMV file.

Lets put it this way, I just took Vegas Platinum for a spin ((trial version) and I'm way over my head. Theres way too much control and tweaking there, I just need the basics

If you found Vegas Movie Studio Platinum too complicated, I'm not sure what to tell you. Perhaps give Adobe Premiere Elements a try... its interface is a little more similar to WMM.

Go over to the editing forums and look around; there are a variety of packages discussed there.