Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Technical Help and How To's Movie Maker Glitches...

Hello all! I am new to making movies and vids, but from what I've seen since my venture into this fun arena of art, is that a lot of people have problems with Windows Movie Maker software.

It seems a lot of us (me included) have to contend with obstinate software that tries to lock up every few minutes (which can really be irritating if you've forgotten to backup/save your file before it locks up).

I just got a new laptop - a Dell. If I thought Movie Maker was tricky before... it's impossible now. I can't even do 2 things before it locks up. So I got on the internet and did some digging.

The 2 things I found that were recommended to try are these:

First Fix:
1. Open Movie Maker.
2. Click on Tools
3. Go to Options
4. When the options window opens, click on the "compatibility" tab.
5. There will be some "codecs" or "filters" listed in a list with boxes that you can check or uncheck. If you think these filters or codecs could be contributing to the problem, uncheck them. It won't affect any other programs on your computer.
6. Click OK


Second Fix:
1. Go to your desktop (wallpaper)
2. Right click on it and choose "properties"
3. When the properties window opens up, choose the "settings" tab.
4. In the settings tab, choose "advanced"
5. In the advanced tab, choose "troubleshoot"
6. In the troubleshoot tab, grab the slider (which is probably all the way to the right - on "Full") and slide it to the left until it's on the first notch (the first one to the right of "None"). The description will say: Disable all but basic accelerations. Use this setting to correct more severe problems.

Put your hardware acceleration on this low setting while using Windows Movie Maker. Then when you are done using it, you can go back in and put the acceleration back up to full.

I have done the two fixes mentioned above and mine seems to be working like a dream (at least for now - at least I can do more than 2 things without it locking up).

Anyway, you all may have already known of these fixes and/or already tried them, but I just thought I'd share what I had found out.

Happy vidding!!!

-- DJ

Thank you so much, DJ. I have been working on my first vid this week and have been having the freeze problems myself. I will definitely try these.

While we are on the subject does anyone know how to do either of the following?

1 - The only way I know to set a time for a clip is on the slide on the timeline. But this isn't precise at all, varying by as much as .3 of a second. This is very frustrating when you are trying to line up image changes with music beats. Is there a better way to do it?

2 - All the clips for all the projects I am working on appear in the collection area, even though I only opened one project. Is there any way to only see the clips I imported for that particular project?

Does anyone use a program other than WMM that they would recommend?

(And does anyone have a handy way of remembering how to spell recommend? I can never remember if it is 2 Cs or 2 Ms. Have to look it up every time.)

Lisa