Windows Movie Maker troubleshoot help

[Celtic_Emperor]

Recently I decided I wanted to start making videos for my art, showing how I drew it, the progression of a piece, add music for the viewers' and my enjoyment, etc., and upload them to youtube. Now, I heard that youtube recommends windows movie maker, since most newer computers come with this program already installed and it is an excellent, easy to use program. My computer is still pretty new and it has the program. Good. Everything is going good and I test out the program, but then comes the error messages.

Whenever I finish recording a video, and the program is in the process of saving it, an error message pops up telling me that WMM (windows movie maker) experienced a problem and needs to shut down. You have no choice but to send an error report, debug it or close it (doing either of these closes the program as does choosing not to send it). The file itself gets recorded and sent to where I placed it, though, which is ok, but the problem is that it cannot be opened through WMM any longer. This is true whether it's video or audio that I'm opening into the program. It gives me the error message and closes down. The only time it doesn't close is for image files, but for audio and video it won't open and audio and video saving or opening closes the program.

I checked the internet a bit last night and found out lots of other people are having the same problem and there are various solutions I see, such as renaming certain files, etc. It's really confusing because for every solution someone offers, someone says it doesn't work, so it's really complicating this for me. I admit to not being computer savvy, either, and not knowing what to do and I'd like to see if someone here can help me before I have a professional fix it, which I'll bet isn't even necessary, and would probably only take a few moments for the cash they'd be making.

I know when someone is trying to take advantage of my ignorance, so I want to avoid that, if possible.

Here's the error signature:

AppName: moviemk.exe AppVer: 2.1.4026.0 ModName: libavcodec.dll

ModVer: 0.0.0.0 Offset: 00091834

Here's the file the error report says it will send:

C:\Docume~1\HP_ADM~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\56bf_appcompat.txt

 

[MistressValerie1]

Try here: http://www.papajohn.org -- click the link marked "resolve problems with Movie Maker 2" which is about halfway down the page.

 

[Celtic_Emperor]

Actually, thats one of the sites my searching led me too last night, but the problem is I have just regular movie maker, not 2, and his technical support seems derived from the second program and not the first. So, I downloaded movie maker 2 and tried to install it, but it said only windows vista computers can have it installed.

Unless his support is universal, wouldn't it make a difference that it's a different version?

I'll read up on it, either way. Thanks for responding and for any additional help you may be able to give me. I'll definitely welcome it. 🙂

 

[Celtic_Emperor]

Ok, never mind a lot of what I just said. Apparently I do have WMM2 installed.

I've got a lot of reading to do....

If anyone can point me to something more specific that I should be looking at, that would probably save me hours of reading and comprehension.

 

[Celtic_Emperor]

Here is a screen capture of a log I took from the event viewer, that was logged as an error. This one is exactly the same as all the other ones. There are about 15 or so of these, since I tried to make a movie about 15 times.

Is this information helpful to anyone or give any clarity to the problem? It would seem it's a codec or module error at this point. I went to the link provided, but I either didn't understand it or there were too many links leading to different issues. It didn't really help me.

 

[His Divine Shadow]

A codec is giving that error. Windows Movie Maker is trying to write the file but is running into some difficulties using libavcodec.dll, apparently an MPEG-4 codec. Have you tried recording the file in a different format? Say in a Windows Media Video (WMV) or DiVX (AVI) format? If you avoid the faulty codec it might work.

It almost looks like you have third party codecs installed instead of Windows' own. If you have Windows Media Player 10 you might want to update it to version 11 via Windows Update as that should update codecs. If not, I can probably find a download site for the latest version of that codec.

 

[Celtic_Emperor]

Have you tried recording the file in a different format? Say in a Windows Media Video (WMV) or DiVX (AVI) format? If you avoid the faulty codec it might work.

It says that the files are WMV files when I look at them, before and after they're recorded, so thats not it. I'm beginning to think it's just a faulty codec, which hopefully makes this situation simpler to resolve.

It almost looks like you have third party codecs installed instead of Windows' own. If you have Windows Media Player 10 you might want to update it to version 11 via Windows Update as that should update codecs. If not, I can probably find a download site for the latest version of that codec.

I will look into this shortly and then tell you if updating it fixes the problem. If it doesn't, or if I'm already updated, then we'll probably have to go with your last suggestion and find the latest codec.

Thanks, my Controdictio, I'll post again to tell you what happens.

 

[Celtic_Emperor]

Well, I have WMP 11 already installed it says, so I'm going to need that codec update you're refering to, afterall. Thanks again. ^^

EDIT:

I messed around with the program more and thankfully I'm able to create video of my artwork and add music to them, which is what I wanted, but it seems that I still cannot make a live video with my webcam. I still get the same crash and same error messege and info I shared with you.

Since the program works fine under certain conditions, I'm beginning to wonder if maybe it's a compatibility issue with my webcam. Although, I doubt that, since I'm able to open the program, record the video to WMM with my webcam, but it still crashes when I save it. The file gets saved, and I can view it outside of WMM, but it doesn't get saved as a wmm file, only a WMA file. The artwork movie is a wmm, file and gets saved as such which is why it can be opened and then editted.

I'll try renaming the videos and different things to see if it works, but I'd still appreciate if you could track down that codec for me, just in case my attempts continue to fail. It may just be an incompatibility issue with my webcam, but I want to exhaust that doubt first...


EDIT 2:

I recorded a webcam video in a different program, and it opened fine and played in WMM. Maybe it is just a codec issue keeping me from recording the videos straight in movie maker.

EDIT 3:

Ok, now this is wierd. Now the program closes (no error messages though) when I open a video I made. It wasn't doing this last night. The program closes immediately after it loads the video into WMM. So now this is a whole new problem that might not be related to the codec issue...

EDIT 4:

It seems the reason I cannot open the video I made is because WMM is saying the file is not compatible, but it most definitely is as it says it's a WMM file, but it says it cannot open it when I definitely could last night. Either the file has become corrupted or the problem is spreading.

EDIT 5:

Now the program isn't let me make videos or import audio files anymore and is giving the exact same error message that I've already supplied you with.

EDIT 6:

Ok, now it's suddenly working again. It seems perhaps the program can only handle so much of a workload. It probably was closing down because each frame in the video was hi-res. While my system can handle it, the program probably could not.

However, the codec problem that is not enabling me to make live web videos in the program itself is still the main issue.

EDIT 7:

I seem to have solved the problem myself. I'm able to do almost everything I want to with no shutdowns, crashes, or error messages. Thanks for both your help, guys. 🙂