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General discussion

Problems opening and working with Video Files

by JJohnson Mar 24, 2005 12:10PM PST

I am doing a lot of video editing of home movies on my PC. These files sizes range from about a gig to up to 8 gig. I am using Windows Movie Maker v5.1 (service pack 2) to take this from my camcorder to the PC and using Windows Media Player v10 to play them once edited and saved. My process using Windows Movie Maker is to take my tapes from the camcorder and save them as a raw DV-AVI file, then edit them and re-save with the content I want to keep (also as a DV-AVI file).

I am running a DELL PC, windows XP, a gig of memory, Pentium 4 2.8 ghz and a video card with 128 meg of ram.

Here's my problem - my PC is having problems sometimes opening the video files I have created. When I boot up, I can open a file without issue. After one or more files has been opened/viewed, sometimes I have a problem when I double click to open another video file. The window that I am using to view all my files freezes and I get a message that the window is no longer responding. I am then unable to open any more of these files until I re-boot. I am still able to open other windows and launch other applications. This seems to be a problem realated to either WMP or WMM or both? This is causing me a lot of problems.

Please Advise!!!

Discussion is locked

2 Posts

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you lack ram

by glennlee Mar 24, 2005 3:45PM PST

Your problem is trying to use XP to view large files with less than the bare minimum of RAM. At a minimum, you should have 256 meg, and better yet 512 meg. Memory is cheap and it one of the easiest upgrades to do.

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Not a perfect OS.

by r. proffitt Forum moderator Mar 24, 2005 10:50PM PST

"windows XP, a gig of memory, Pentium 4 2.8 ghz and a video card with 128 meg of ram."

You have enough RAM, but your expectations are being dashed as you find out that XP and the application you are using is not perfect.

Unless you can wait for more software upgrades, try to think about the specifics of how you get locked and then... don't do that or reboot before you lock up.

Bob

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