Hello there,
I have a Dell 8100 laptop (for my sins - I've been waiting three years for
it the break but it won't). The graphics card kindly reports that it is a
Dell 8100 graphics card, and I have the Dell Driver installed.
Thats good, but is it the latest driver? One issued perhaps after DirectX
0.0c ?
I don't have any DVD stuff installed (so I can't play MPEG2 files in any
form). That's probably why there are no Codecs listed.
At least that cuts the search for the solution down. But, just because
Movie Maker fails to properly identify any of the known codecs does not mean
that you do not have them...On one of my machines it reports I have DivX
codec...wrong and it does not report that I have an old version of WinDVD
codecs either.....so take what it says with a pinch of salt.
Another thing - my Movie Maker does not crash at the same point all the
time. So testing the Codecs is a little difficult (or have I
mis-understood
that bit?) I can make movies - I just save after every edit. Sometimes it
dies, then I close/open and go on. I always go on doing the thing where it
dies last, and normally life is fine. I don't see how this can be a Codec
problem. Sounds more like someone got their threads and semaphores messed
up.
(My computer is a specially slow one, a mere 600MHz, so that may explain
why
faster ones work better and crash less).
Hmm yes and no....The only problems you will have are when trying to
Capture large format video. When it comes to proccessing the data it will
run very slowly and thats all...the speed of the processor when working on
non-time-critical-matters is only import when considering how long that
proxess will take...it will have no effect on the quality or cause the
system to lockup or crash.
Codecs are unfortunately difficult to pin down. Movie Maker can fail at
different points and it can still be a codec issue. On a much shorter time
scale than a second (its called a T State) The environment changes. and as
Movie Maker chugs away at doing its "thing" so do other process's. Often
those other process's will have no effect at all on Movie Maker, but, every
now and then a procedure that Movie Maker needs to begin/continue/finish
will have problems primarily from within its own environment but exaserpated
by conditions else where...the end result, a crash.
Today I had about 10 crashes in a row, which is when I got annoyed enough
to
post here. Normally it isn't that bad. I must say that it becomes less
stable
when the movie gets longer.
Yes I know what you mean. For some reason Movie Maker seems to hold all
necessary information/data in Memory and by alocating system resources so
that as the project becomes larger so the the demands on the computer. I
would imagine that this situation arose out of someones less than acceptable
(with hindsight) estimation of what the program might be used for. I have
created a few graphics programs for my employers using Geo-Demographic Data.
The pilot program (the proposition) was made so that all info was in memory
and did not have to be fetched from some where else. It ran pretty fast. The
final program on the same equipment ran maybe 30% slower but it could/does
deal with millions of descrete facts. The cost of a machine that could hold
that data in-memory...well lets say I valued my position
The point of all
of this is that Movie Maker i8s clearly at breaking point with respect to
some of its abilities. The cost of changing that situation might be
expensive and beyond acceptable So I expect we are stuck with it.
Another thing, when it dies it just sits there. It doesn't take CPU, it
doesn't do much. It just waits for itself... Maybe this is what everyone
sees.
Yes I understand exactly what you are saying and have seen that myself. The
explanation is simple...Its waiting for an answer that is never going to
arrive !!! So it just sits there twiddling its thumbs
Before I go through the Codec stuff, can you explain how I will know which
ones make it crash?
Ah, the $64,000 question...the short answer is without experimentation you
don't. There is an easy way to determine which it may be The program on my
website "Rename Codecs" will search for and identify codecs that are known
to cause problems and will display them in a list. At that point you can
select from one to all of them and have them re-named. Running movie maker
afterwards would give you the answer if you only renamed one....If movie
maker no longer crashes then you nailed it...lreaving that one codecs
renamed would probably ensure that a codec problem will never again cause
Movie Maker to crash...but its not a guarantee....going bacjk to what I said
about the environment changing, a situation could occur where one of the
other known problem codecs will cause you trouble. Thats why I always
recomend that you rename them all.
Staying with the rename codec program. It is VERY important that you use the
program to restore those codecs to their original name as soon as you have
finished with Movie Maker. You do this so that any other program using one
of those codecs will function properly. If you decide to use the program
make sure that you read the tutorial on my site before you proceed.
--
Best Wishes.....John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org
www.the-kellys.co.uk
Check out free video hosting at
www.the-kellys.org
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