Movie Maker - Publishing problems

Hello,

I have been pulling my hair out trying to resolve a strange issue with a
client's Vista Home Premium PC and Movie Maker (v6 - i.e. the one that comes
with Vista).

Basically, when he tries to publish his movie - to disk - the process gets to
99% complete and hangs - it never finishes.

When he tries to publish his movie - to DVD - the process crawls to say 70%
(with odd variations is % complete sometimes going backwards a point before
going forward again according to the client [i.e. 76% complete, 77%, 75%] and
takes so long (hours) that it never completes.

When I tested this myself I got to 58% complete and then it stopped. In task
manager the process is still active - but is using 0% processor.

The PC is an AMD 5600+ dual core dell with 2gb RAM and a 320gb SATA hard disk.
It has the latest BIOS installed, and all updates from MS. I have googled for
possible resolutions to this issue but have not found a remedy so far.

I cannot see any problems with the machine reported in the event logs.

The Movie is a standard wmv file - there is nothing unusual about it as far as I
can see - and he has been using only the default settings in Movie Maker.

Would appreciate any comments / ideas - I'm stumped at the moment :-(

Thanks.


Steve

When you say 'the movie is a standard wmv file' -- do you mean that your
original source file is .wmv? Or are you referring to the file type that
you are intending to Publish to? Your problem sounds similar to problems
others have reported when using source file types or codecs that WMM does
not like.

Thanks for your swift reply John.

The source file is a .wmv file.

I will have to check the codecs but he has successfully published to DVD in the
past - but of course he might have installed something since then which I did
not spot..........

I have had the same issue with publishing; however, I have found an
imperfect solution.

I can only get WMM to publish clips that are under 10 minutes in
length, so I cut my WMM file into sub-10 min clips (note: make sure you
save each clip as a different WMM file and keep an original full-length
file as well. Also, make sure you cut the sounds and transitions/titles
in each section, not just video.) and then publish each file to my
computer.

Now I have three WMA files (or whatever video format you prefer). I
then open Windows DVD Maker, add all of my published clips, and at last
I have my entire film burned to a DVD.

The published clips play in succession on the DVD, so make sure you add
them to WDM in the desired play order.

I hope this helps