Infopackets Reader Ernest A. writes:

" Dear Dennis,

I am very far from computer support, and could really use your help!

For the last two weeks, I have been fiddling with Windows Movie Maker in an attempt to create a brief over view of my two back-to-back tours of duty in Iraq. The sequence includes photographs (stills) and some short movie clips that I took with my digital camera and some voice-overs with background music.

Today, I completed the project had Windows Movie Maker render a low-quality sample as a 'trial run'. That went without a hitch, so I decided to render a higher-quality video, but the system has been running non-stop for about 12 hours and hasn't even begun finalizing the project. However, the message, 'Saving movie' is displayed and the estimated time message is displayed with no estimate of time. It won't burn to CD and won't take to the hard drive. The projected end product is approximately 375 megs, I have 19.2 gigs remaining on my hard drive. I am in need of some help on this one! What can I do to correct this problem? This movie is very important to me and my family. "

My response:

Based on my experience with Windows Movie Maker, it's quite buggy [it is a Microsoft product!] and doesn't provide the user with enough freedom. A number of folks over at download.com agree with these sentiments.

Your particular problem is (in all likelihood) related to a bug in the program. But just to be safe: scan your hard drive for file system errors, and if that doesn't work, try rendering the compilation using another video codec. If that doesn't work, I would suggest using another movie-maker program altogether.

Jake Ludington is a self-proclaimed digital media fanatic and (not very long ago) compiled a review on a program called Video Edit Magic for our web site. Similar to Windows Movie Maker, Video Edit Magic handles animation files, still pictures, voice-overs, and sound samples, but has a much wider support for varying media types.

Video Edit Magic can certainly do more than Windows Movie Maker (WMM), has been around a lot longer than WMM, and is a lot more stable. Quite a number of folks have downloaded Video Edit Magic through our web site.

The review on Video Edit Magic version 3 is here:

Video Edit Magic 3 Review

And the link to download Video Edit Magic version 4 is below; also included is a brief overview and a link to a flash video presentation:

Video Edit Magic 4 Review

Good luck!