Is my project really too complex?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

Hi- I've used Movie Maker for several projects, and had success. Up until now
I would have called it a great product. I have successfully saved projects
composed of WMV, AVI, MPEG-1 files in the past, including some very large
(over 300MB) files.
But now I have a project composed of 18 original source WMVs (unprotected),
each about 5MB, so a total of only 90MB source video. All I wanted to do was
join them all together, add a logo, and some background music. I also added
some fade in/out to white transitions at a few points in the middle. The
project plays fine inside Movie Maker, but when I try to save it, the
progress bar gets maybe 15% done and then I get an error. So my question is:
What exactly is "complex"? This seems to me to be a very basic project - less
than a half hour of low-quality video.
 
to test it's complexity, try rendering it to one of the PocketPC profle
choices.... they require the least amount of memory to render. If it renders
fine, your project may be too complex for the quality video you want. If it
gets to the same point with the Pocket PC choice and stops, chances are the
compolexity isn't your issue.
 
Thanks, I will try that. Right now I am trying to render the files into one
big file using Windows Media Encoder, but it doesn't have the editing
capabilities of Movie Maker and seems to be going SLOWER than Movie Maker for
the rendering. I am somewhat disillusioned with Movie Maker and Microsoft in
general. I am only trying to render 700kbps - 640x480, and this is really not
a lot of video at all. How are people supposed to use Movie Maker for family
events like weddings, if it chokes on files longer than 30 minutes? (BTW I
tried cutting my project in half and then into quarters and it still choked)
What is the purpose of claiming support for transitions, when including more
than 1 or 2 causes the encoder to blow up?

Honstly, I find myself wondering why I even went down the path with
Microsoft when I could have just bought Premiere Elements for $49?

If Movie Maker is not even going to throw an error inside the program itself
or even give guidelines for what constitutes "complex", to let me know that
the project I'm working on is doomed, it's useless as a tool IMHO. I mean
what is the purpose of having a built-in player inside Movie Maker, if what
we are seeing has no relationship to the capabilitites of the product?

That would be like having a set of developer tools that let you design,
build, test, and prototype an application, but then when you go to build a
distributable runtime, the tool says "Sorry, your project is too complex for
a runtime EXE so you can't distribute it. Better luck next time." It's just
mind-blowing. I mean Movie Maker has some great features, but if the project
window is just an illusion, what is the purpose?...

I knew I should never have relied on MSFT to deliver quality.
 
Back
Top