Blank timeline view.

[Guest]

I've felt reluctant to post on the forum, but this is driving me crazy, I
need to get some work done, but the new version of Movie maker isn't working.
I imported my files from a data DVD, and the preview works fine, but when I
put the clips into the timeline, they don't show me the visual, but the audio
still plays.

I've tried everything I can think of, and varios bits of advice I've found
from looking through the forums.

Changing the GraphicsHardware Acceleration Setting didn't work, and the
files are .avi, which should work fine.

The codecs don't seem to be a problem, but I'm not really sure how to work
with those.

I also tried to work around the problem by trying to save, but it doesn't
let me save.

I'm really just at my wits end. If nothing else I would at least like to
have the old movie maker back, it worked perfectly fine despite how slow it
was. All advice would really be helpful.

Thanks in advance.

 

[PapaJohn]

avi files can be made with many codecs that don't work with Movie Maker,
such as Divx and Xvid.... see my website's Import Movie Source Files > Video

AVI page

and the Setup MM2 in XP > MM2.0 page includes a section about setting up
Movie Maker version 1 so you can use it in addition to MM2.

 

[Guest]

I too have a very similar problem and have burned seroius hours on it. I
tried PapaJohn's suggestion for MM1 (I can Email files if you need them) but
this is still not working quite right. Let's compare detailed notes.

I start with a Panasonic FX01 camera MOV file, and convert using
MP4Cam2AVI_v2.51 Beta to AVI, which plays fine in Media Player and also "ok"
in PowerPoint (maybe a bit jumpy). Some of my AVI files go into MovieMaker2
just fine, both on preview and timeline. Interesting to note that the sound
on the timeline view is significantly degraded, and this propagates all the
way to WMV. Some AVI files preview fine, but are totally blank in timeline
mode and when written to WMV. By the way, I've tried at least a dozen
MOV-AVI converters; let me know if you have better suggestions. The GSpot
utility says this is pure MJPG format. I can see the offending movie in MM1
timeline, but the highest quality output WMV is mostly blank with occasional
blips of video.

All I really want to do is compress to smaller format that can be supported
by MM for minor editing, and eventually go into PowerPoint for "Grandma"
picture/video CD. By the way PP2003 is cool in that you can burn a CD with
executable, so Grandma doesn't have to own MS Office.

Thanks for any time and suggestions, Mark

 

[Graham Hughes]

AVI is just a wrapper and can contain 100's of different file types. What
you need to convert to is DV-AVI, not mjpeg-avi.
Your best bet is to find a converter to convert from mov to WMV.
Several here, which I suspect you may already have
http://www.myvideoproblems.com/WebPages/UsefulProgrammes.htm