Movie Maker problems

I have been filming movie clips in SL very successfully using FRAPS - with the initial playback giving superb quality. However when I process the clips through Movie Maker the quality deteriorates dramatically. I think I have experimented with EVERY setting I can in Movie Maker to try to improve things; but still have the same problem....any suggestions?

PS - Does anyone know if Movie Maker is the best software for processing FRAPS clips or am I wasting my time with it?

Movie maker = bad

If you can get a copy of Adobe Premiere Pro, that's not the worst option. If you're on a mac, try Final Cut.

Also, there's a 30 day trial of Sony Vega I think you can try.

Use Virtualdub(free) for direct editing of FRAPS clips.

I use Windows Movie Maker most of the time. But, as usual, evaluation depends on the objective. I make videos to post on YouTube. Any loss of quality from WMM is hard to notice after the loss imposed by the YouTube processing.

I have tried Pinnacle and others, but stick to WMM because it does the best job of cutting my avi files into useful scenes.

I am starting to explore CyberLink PowerDirector 6
http://www.cyberlink.com/multi/products/main_4_ENU.html

It has good recommendations and, at $90, may be worth a try. It also has a free tiral download. I don't think i would pay for any vid editor w/o a free trial.
TM

Movie maker is a toy version.. much like crippleware. However, for those on a tight budget, with a lot of hard work, you could get some good results with it.

If you must use Movie Maker.. use HyperCAM 3 instead of Fraps, it does much the same thing, but allows you to capture in raw avi format (uncompressed), any editing you do with that, will always come out better quality simply because it hasn't gone through a codex.

I personally use HyperCAM and Sony Vegas for my capture and editing, before rolling the movie through several other programmes to gain the file size/quality I want.

Thanks everyone for those suggestions; they have been very useful...