Movie Maker
Subdividing a Project
There are a number of possible reasons why Movie Maker can't successfully save a movie. One of them, not mentioned in the standard error message, is that the rendering needs more than 2 GB of computer memory.
Movie Maker can't effectively use more than 2 GB of memory, even if it's available... and it doesn't tell you that it's out of memory. That's when you need to break the project into parts that can each be rendered using less than 2 GB of memory, and then assemble the parts into the finished movie.
This page provides info about how we work together to divide a project into parts and then assemble them into the final movie.
PapaJohn's Products and Services
The Assessment Phase
The project file (.MSWMM extension) is the only one I need to review, to confirm that project complexity looks like a reasonable reason why you can't successfully save the movie. Email a copy to me at papajohn@chartermi.net
I open your project file in Movie Maker and preview it. Of course I can't see any of your pictures or video clips, or hear your music as I don't have the source files. That doesn't effect me when sub-dividing the project into more easily saved parts.
I'll comment on the project file. If I see you're using file types that Movie Maker doesn't work well with (such as MPEG2 files), I might suggest source file conversions rather than subdividing.
If at this point we're aligned on the need to sub-divide the project and you want my services to do it, you'll need to commit to the $49.95 fee. If you'd rather do it yourself, or redo the project, there's no charge for the help assessing it.
The Sub-Dividing Phase
The worst case I've seen was a project that needed dividing into one minute segments... most of the time slide-show type movies, which are more complex than those with video clips, need to be divided into segments about 5 minutes long.
I usually make a new project file for 'Part A' and ask you to render it to a movie. This confirms there are no other issues beyond complexity. If there are other issues, we can abort the effort at no cost to you. If the initial render works fine, we continue with the rest of the project.
I'll email you parts A, B, C, D, etc... as many as we need. You render each to a DV-AVI or WMV file. If you can't render one of the parts, I'll sub-divide it into two smaller parts, like part C becomes C-1 and C-2.
When all the parts are saved as video files, you import them into Movie Maker, put them into a new project and render the full movie.