Windows Movie Maker question

[Ree]

This is probably a dumb question.

I created a movie for my daughter for Mother's Day, but I could only show it to her on the computer, because my aging computer doesn't seem to have enough memory to allow me to save it as a movie.
It will only save it as a project file.
That computer is running Windows XP.

Can I copy the files and move them to a different computer that has more memory and is running Windows Vista without any problems? I noticed the version of Movie Maker on the Vista computer has a few different effects than the older version on my older computer, so I would also like to take advantage of that fact.

I have heard of people having problems with it not playing properly on the new computer because of codecs or some other thing.

I know I will have to reassign the links to the original files or I will end up with all red X's.
I don't want to have to redo the whole thing on the new computer, because I had edited some songs for the soundtrack and it took me a while to get them to transition just perfectly.

What's the easiest way to do this?

[TheSHAD0W]

Sounds like it's complaining about disk space - which makes me think you have the wrong encoding options set, and are trying to write it out raw. If not that, then you're low on disk space, and should go to Sam's or Costco and pick up a USB hard drive to save to.

[Chanlin]

A few questions for ya Ree:

Are you editing raw video or is it a picture slide show or a little bit of both?

How long are the songs you are adding to the video, and what format are they in? MP3, WAV or some other format?

How much available disk space do you have?

Your average DVD can hold up to 8GB of space but most good quality DVD videos with sound don't take up the full amount of space.

Depending on the file format your average 30 minute video will only take up approximately 200MB of space.

A few screen shots below, this is the 3rd screen you come to when you choose "save movie file"

The lower right corner shows you what your current file format settings will require in disk space and how much space you have. If you click show more choices you can fiddle with the settings until you find a format that will fit your computer. Or you can try to force it to a specific file size.

If you are trying to force it to a size less than 200MB the quality of the video will suffer drastically if it is over 30 minutes long. - EDIT: I should add this is for 30 minutes of video not pictures + transitions. Basically the smaller amount of data you try to make the video fit into the less quality the end product will have.

Most AMV's (animated music videos), which is where I have experience with using movie maker, saved in WMV format (the default format for windows movie maker) of about 5 minutes will take up around 15 to 30MB or more again depending on the video quality, the audio quality and the transitions or other special effects in it.

I would second the suggestion that the easiest solution would be to invest in a USB drive or other removable media that you could save the file to unless you can feasibly free up the disk space your video is requiring.

[Ree]

It's a slide show of pictures and titles set to music, with no video.

It's about 16 minutes long, but I may add one more song and a few more pictures that will bring it to 20 minutes.
All but one sound file is in mp3 format. One is in wav format.

I tried saving it to a removable drive and I still got the error about a lack of space.

I don't have all the details on file size, disk space, etc., but I will get them and add them when I have time later.

I'm being taken out for dinner by my daughter very shortly, so I have to run.

[Chanlin]

It's a slide show of pictures and titles set to music, with no video.

The approximate file size then will be the size of all of the pictures + about an additional 4 - 10MB per music file. Changing the pictures to one of a lower quality might help if disk space is the issue.

All but one sound file is in mp3 format. One is in wav format.

The wav format file shouldn't really effect things too much since it should be converting the audio to something the video file can work with, typically MP3.

I tried saving it to a removable drive and I still got the error about a lack of space.

Do you know the size/available space on the removable drive? This strikes me as somewhat odd. It may be a ram issue if its trying to compress/convert etc alot of pictures and music files, but then windows movie maker isn't that process intensive. I've done a school project putting together 100+ digital photos, +raw digitally shot video from several sources without any serious need for more than 1GB of ram.

While your at it the specs of your machine might help. Just right click on my computer and select properties to see this.

You might see if you can convert the wav file to MP3 separately and then try the video again if ram(memory) turns out to be the problem.

Just in case here is the link the Microsoft's minimum/recommended system specs for movie maker.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/d...viemaker2.mspx