Sunday 14 August 2011

How do I fix the black screen on Windows Movie maker?


I've recently found a problem with Windows Movie Maker having a black screen in the video that is rendered after publishing. The video appears fine in preview but after publishing the final video produced plays to start with but at a certain point during the video the picture goes black although the sound continues as normal.

One suggestion I found was that audio clips that were muted could cause this behaviour so I set those sound clips to not be muted and just set the volume to be 0. This improved the output slightly in that the black screen at a later point in the video but it still appeared and turned the screen black.

One suggestion was that the Windows Movie Maker project included too many clips and transitions and that to fix the black screen error you could split the project into two parts and once those videos were created then combine them again. Having tried this it works perfectly and although annoying to do, it does enable you to use all the transitions and audio that you included in the project.

I did also investigate whether Windows Movie Maker Live 2011 would fix the problem but it doesnt appear to allow multiple sound tracks to overlay as the Vista version does.