Movie Maker problems!?

Question

Windows Movie Maker problem with Vista. When I try and import a video from my brand new Sony digital harddrive

camcorder movie maker says it experienced an error and shuts down. It is not a specific error though and just shuts down. The video files are mpg's. Any suggestions on how to fix this? Or are there other FREE programs out on the net I can download?

Answer 1

The support for .mpg files was supposed to be incorporated in winmoviemaker v.6 in Vista Home Premium & Ultimate versions w/ MPEG-2 codec.

Check wmmaker version (Help->about wmmaker)

If wmmaker is still version 2, this does not support .mpg. As such , the mpg file has to be converted to avi or wmv before import/edit to wmmaker2.  Try Super or Kates vid converters.

Answer 2

WMM can't handle videos in MPEG-2 format, which is what your camcorder is recording in.  You can either buy an editor that can handle it (that's most of them) or convert the video to a format that WMM can handle, such as WMV.  You can get free converters such as Super, but you'll degrade the quality by converting.

<edit>

TiddiVisual is right - WMM under Vista should be at V6, and should include MPEG-2 support.  Microsoft's recently released a fix for some graphic card problems and you may find you're running V2.6!  V6 should still be on your system though - have a look under \Program Files.