Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Technical Help and How To's How to...stop WMM crashing?

I know that there may not be a way to stop Windows Movie Maker crashing sometimes, but does it have to crash constantly? And just when I'm trying so hard to make my very first L&C music video? *sigh*

Does anyone know of any way to placate the WMM gods and stop it crashing over every little change/click? Is more memory and a bigger hard drive likely to help at all? Maybe the problem is my processor is too slow? Maybe? Possibly? Could that be why I always get the 'Not Responding' message?

I'm getting more RAM and an extra hard drive soon anyway...

Any advice on this would be much appreciated.

~Anna.

More RAM will help. HDD space may not make so much of a difference.

Exit all other programs while using WMM to maximize the amount of RAM and processor power it has available.

Auto-save is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it will save changes as you go, allowing you to recover from the numerous (and mostly inevitable) crashes. On the other hand, it's been known to cause crashes in and of itself, as saving requires a lot of time and effort. If you try to do something complex while auto-save is doing its thing, the whole thing will crash before the save completes.

If you want to keep auto-save, do things slowly and keep an eye out for the little statusbar icon that shows auto-save is working. You may also want to reduce the frequency of the saves.

You can also turn auto-save off, which will prevent some crashes. But if you do, make sure to save regularly, and don't try to do anything else while the project is saving.

Another thing that can help is minimizing the amount of RAM the program needs. Keep your clip library as small as possible. Keep the project size small, too, if you can. Break it up into multiple parts if you have to.

If all that fails and you're still having more crashes than you know how to handle... try another program.

Paul, do you have any suggestions?

I don't know if you tried researching Papa John's site. If you have, I'm sorry for being redundant. I first heard about Papa John by following the link to tutorials for Windows Movie Maker in Zoomway's screen capture post on the other site. I learned so much from Papa John and even ordered a couple of his books, which I highly recommend. I hope it helps you too!

Click here: http://papajohn.org/ and you'll see a list on the left hand side of the screen. If you click on the plus sign next to Problem Solving XP, there's a section on 'crashes and hangs'. It will address some of the problems you’re having with Movie Maker.

Good luck!

Hi Anna.

Something that I've also noticed that helps is to lower your Hardware acceleration (I read this on a page for help with WMM).

To do this, go to your desktop screen (wallpaper) right-click on the screen and choose "Properties". That will open up the window where you can change your display properties. Click on the tab at the top that says "Settings". In that window, click on the button at the bottom that says "Advanced".

That will open up a new window with advanced options. Click on the tab at the top that says "Troubleshoot". In that tab there is a slider in the middle of the screen that says "Hardware acceleration". Slide that slider from FULL down to NONE. Then click apply/OK and close out.

I have noticed that this seems to help. It still crashes occasionally on me but not nearly as often. Other than that, all I can say is for you to "save often". Every 2 or 3 changes I make, I go up and hit save.

Hope that helps!

Oh, and once you're done playing in WMM, you'll want to go back in and move that slider back up to "FULL" because it could slow down other applications.

C-ya

-- DJ

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I've tried what DJ suggested and am waiting to see if it works.

Paul, I've tried the free trial of Camtasia Studio which is supposed to be similar to use to WMM, but it was too different and in the time I was allowed to have it, I didn't have the time to spend working out those differences. I also tried the free trial of Sony Vegas - same thing.

Can you suggest any others that you've heard of? Something easy would be appreciated.

I've been having one other problem with WMM other than the crashing. The song I choose will play all the way through the first couple of times I try it, but after that it stops at a certain point each time I try and play my storyboard. I even tried changing songs, but it still did the same thing. Could this be because I've got a lower amount of hard drive space right now?

Thanks for any and all help guys. I want to solve these problems and finish my L&C video, even if it ends up being the only one!

EDIT: I give up. It's not working - the programme still keeps crashing and the song stops after the tiniest little intro. Thanks for trying guys. Anyone feel like making a video for me? I can provide the music and suggestions... *sigh* Maybe I'll just wait until late July when I'm visiting my brother in Auckland and I'll borrow the use of his Mac and use IMovie. Supposed to be a much more stable programme...

~Anna.

PS I find yelling works, and its a very liberating thing

Also, try spliting your movies up into smaller files, save them, then import them back into WMM, and put them all together. That cuts down on the amount of times it freezes and shuts down on you. Don't know if that was mentioned before but hope that helps.

~Lois Lane Wanna Be

Thanks Lois Lane Wanna Be. I already tried that though. *sigh* Stupid programme just doesn't like me.

And yes, yelling is good too. It definitely is liberating!

Seriously, if anyone feels like taking on a video project, I have a song already picked out...

~Anna.

What kind of file is your song, Anna? I read somewhere that sometimes WMM likes .wma files better than MP3s.

Really? Hmm...maybe I should rip it from my CD again and try it with a .wma file...

I'll get back and let everyone know whether that worked or not. Thanks Emrys.

EDIT: Nope. *sigh* It did the same thing. Played the audio file fine the first time or so, then cut out the audio a little way into the song after a couple of plays.

~Anna.

I found a way to stop it crashing! I just turned off all the filters. Yay!

Maybe I should now start turning them back on again to see which of them was causing it...

Thanks for everyone's help. Much appreciated.

~Anna.