Windows Movie Maker stalling when compiling final video.

tomstickland

I've spent 2 long nights working on a video.
I've got about 60 minutes of raw material down to 10.5 minutes of final video.
The trouble is that when I save the final movie file it stalls at 33%, with no CPU activity. The timer keeps counting, but no progress is made.

My current plan is to split the project into 3 source files, save each one as an output video and then splice them back together in a 4th project.

I'm just wondering if there are any known issues with movie maker, or known fixes for this - it seems quite unstable at the best of times.

OK_Sauce

How are you saving the file. What option are you using?

tomstickland

The same settings I've used for all the other videos I've ever made,
default "save to hard drive" settings.

rmg1

I had the same problem. The good news is, it will get going again, it just takes time. When creating the files, I used to set it going and just walk away.
A 15 minute piece of film with sound took about 45 minutes, maybe more to "compile" onto the hard-drive.

tomstickland

I've done a bit of google searcing and it turns out that many people have suffered problems with this unreliable program.

If your video is any longer than 3 minutes, the program tends to freeze quite a bit. If you have a huge amount of video footage downloaded into the program, it tends to freeze quite a bit. Basicly... this thing freezes more than the North Pole. Plus, if you have alot of previous archives that you don't have any use for anymore, there's no feature that allows you to clear your archives.

rdpro

WMM is really bad, but in some cases it's a necessary evil. Try afterdawn.com or doom9.net for more reliable encoders.

exup

WMM can struggle as the amount of memory allocated is small - the way around it is to save often - and split the movie into sections.
If you have audio then seperate it and save it as a seperate file (such as mp3 or WAV). then if you have quite a bit of video edited - say about 10 minutes worth - use WMM to complete the film, and start on the next bit.

You should then end up with a few WMV files which you can now link together using WMM as it saves on memory usage - plus you can add the audio back in. I did a few films for a gaming clan which you can find on youtube (look for exup35 ) which show what WMM is capable of.

tomstickland

Yes, that is in agreement with my cunning plan and definitely works well.

me_earlier_today wrote:

My current plan is to split the project into 3 source files, save each one as an output video and then splice them back together in a 4th project.

My guess from my experience today is that 5 minute sections are about the max if there are a lot of cuts.
This also gives the advantage of more "zero points" in the film. If it's all one big file then moving early parts then affects any later alignment of audio and titles.