Movie Maker problems

[Guest]

I am utterly disgusted with your product "Windows Movie Maker". I don't know,
neither do I care, what version it is. It came with XP Home I purchased this
year. After encountering extreme problems which had me reboot, lose projects,
system crashes etc. I refuse to be polite to whoever is responsible for
creating this software.
Whenever I try to open a project, the process of "checking project files"
either takes incredibly long (I'm talking about hours) or freezes.
When I import movies, it freezes.
When I save movies, it freezes or shuts down.
Every click and every step takes 10 seconds on average before the click
results in something, and by something, I also mean crashes.
When playing the time line, it lags and screws up the synchronization of
audio and video.
Frames are skipped or freeze.
Sometimes it just shuts down.
When previewing clips, the player turns black.

And NO, I am not going to reduce quality or remove effects. I demand
perfection from what I spent money on. I don't spend hours or, due to the
"speed" of this program, entire nights, making a video just to reduce it to
mediocre Youtube material. Fix it or refund my purchase of this horrible OS.
Oh btw, the "opening project files" advanced by an amazing 5% since I
accessed this newsgroup. How big is the project you ask? Hmm, by now it's 1
minute and 40 seconds. Ever since opening the project, more than an hour has
passed and only half of the checking process has finished so far.

 

[Graham Hughes]

When you've calmed down a bit, why not give the info you don't care about,
along with the file types you are using in your project and maybe if you are
little more polite someone will help you solve your problem.

Also, these are user groups where other users help you to solve your
problems, if you want to contact MS then do so by direct email.

 

[John Inzer]

I am utterly disgusted with your product "Windows Movie Maker".

<snip<
================================
Don't blame us...we are simply volunteers.

If you have a simple question...post it and
maybe someone can answer it but if you want
to share your thoughts with Microsoft you can
do so at the following link.

Dear Microsoft
http://tinyurl.com/26b395
(scroll to bottom of page)

--
John Inzer
MS Picture It! -
Digital Image MVP

Digital Image
Highlights and FAQs
http://tinyurl.com/aczzp

Notice
This is not tech support
I am a volunteer

Solutions that work for
me may not work for you

Proceed at your own risk

 

[Burgy]

Well, not much to go on here. But from your complaints, sounds like maybe a
little disk cleaning is in order.
I'd start by running disk cleaner. Then reboot and run defragmenter, If that
doesn't change things at all, come back with some more info, like processor
size, amount of ram, empty space on hard drive etc.
Any time you are working with video files, the demand for ram is very high.
If you have a lot of programs running in the background it can have all of
the effects of which you speak. I usually close down all my anti-virus and
most other background programs when I am editing video. Of course, you need
to make sure you are not on the net. I have cable, so I just push the
standby button on my modem. The cleaner the environment, the better when
doing anything video.

 

[Moses]

The last advice you got was worth something. Windows Movie Maker
shouldn't be installed on computers without a lot of RAM, a lot of disk
space and a high speed processor. As was described, nothing should run
in the background that can delay the data flow. Before getting into a
project and before burning a movie, defragment the hard drive. I make
sure no anti-virus or firewall is running and no other applications. I
keep my modem off. Besides clearing other applications I shut down the
processes that aren't needed at this time. That includes several that
service the modem and others that serve the hpq printer/fax. Since
taking these steps I haven't had lock-ups or faulty DVDs. Anytime I
make two or three changes to the storyboard I will save my project.
When writing files to cd or dvd, be sure you use exactly the prescribed
media. Some DVDs won't work well if they're rated at higher speeds than
your burner. When I've finished my MM session and saved my work I need
to reboot the computer so as to restore the processes that were shut down.
Making movie maker work is frustrating at first. If you aren't
seriously committed to turning out a couple movies it may not be worth
the time and expense.