What is causing my videos to be choppy and flicker?

Anonymous
2013-08-01T22:34:21+00:00

I have created numerous movie maker projects without any issue in the past.  Yesterday I created a project which includes both photos and video clips.  Everything played fine.  I saved the project in order that I could burn it to CD.  But once saved, the videos included in the project are choppy and flicker.  Did I miss some kind of change?  Can anyone help?

Windows for home | Other | Music, photos, and video

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Anonymous
2014-10-17T03:57:28+00:00

Thank you for the information above but I don't understand any of it.  I was running Movie Maker 2011 when my issue started.  One of your techs suggested I upgrade to Movie Maker 2012 and that only made things worse by causing all my previous projects that included videos to flicker as well.  I have no idea how to uninstall and reinstall anything and have no intention on trying unless I have very good step by step instructions.  And no one has ever given me any help in that way.  I am the only user on my laptop so don't understand why I would set up a 'new user account'.  I did check my resolution and it is set to 1366 X 768.

My question prior to your last response was to the user who said she was able to do an update that fixed her problem.  I just wanted to know the steps she took to fix her problem.

Lynnette Hay

Hi Lynnette,

Sorry to hear you are still having the video problems.

Just wanted to let you know my video issues seem to be fixed with Windows Movie Maker.

I recently made a new project and short video.

When I opened Movie Maker, Windows Live 2012 automatically downloaded an update.

I let it run, and Movie Maker restarted when the update finished.

When I finished my movie project and saved it as a WMA video file it was totally fine.

No flickering or colour distortion like before.

This may not help you as my computer uses a Nvidia graphics card, and yours is Intel based.

I know its frustrating and you have probably heard this many times.

But have you run your Windows, and Intel updates recently?

To manually find and run Windows Update on your computer

Control Panel\System and Security\Windows Update

Also try opening Movie Maker and see if it automatically runs the update like it did for me.

The Intel website will automatically detect what you need

http://www.intel.com/p/en\_US/support/detect

Kind regards

Brendan

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-02-08T17:44:18+00:00

    Dear Lynnette,

    I have had this problem recently as well with Movie Maker. First on one kids computer and tried updating the video card driver etc as recommended online. Then the same on my other kids computer and she exclaimed "But this didn't happen before!". When I got to thinking about that comment, it made me think of how web browsers can slow down because of the cache (temporary stored files etc). So I wondered if the first few times you use Movie Maker it works fine. Then maybe the cache gets filled up and it doesn't work as well. Instead of a cache, Movie maker has temporary files that are stored in the username\AppData\Local\Temp folder. I went in there and deleted (Shift+delete) all of the mp4 files. Here's the link for the temp file location (https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/forum/moviemaker-wlsettings/windows-7-movie-maker-temporary-files/de7de47d-ec54-4524-90af-8101c135dc80).

    After deleting the temp files, I went back to movie maker and re-exported the video to MP4 and it worked perfectly.  Sometimes it is good to listen to our children :)  I hope this helps solve the problem.

    Naveen

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-06-30T19:18:01+00:00

    This is disheartening as I opened this thread to see if I could get help with the same issue! My videos play perfectly in movie maker but as soon as I save them they begin to jump and drop out of sequence. I have no option to prepare the files for saving... what do I do?

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-08-02T02:29:34+00:00

    Hello,

    Welcome to Microsoft Community Forum. I understand that you're having issues on your project file as it is choppy or flicker when editing your files through Movie Maker. I will assist you on your inquiry.

    There are two possibilities as to why you're having this issue. Please see the information below for the possible causes and how to solve them:

    Insufficient codecs on your computer

    Ensure that you have the proper codecs to play your videos and audio files – audio and video require codecs to play the file and it’s important to have the right codecs installed or updated in your PC.

    • Try running the Microsoft FixIt tool for codecs: **FixIT**

    -Media info will be able to identify any issue with missing or faulty codecs and whether it's already in your computer or not: **Media Info**

    As for the Mediainfo, please follow the steps provided below on how to use the program:

    1. Download Mediainfo
    2. Install the program
    3. Run the program
    4. Open your movie file using Mediainfo
    5. Switch the view of your mediainfo to text. To do this, click the View button on the upper left part of the window and click text
    6. When you see the codec that you're lacking, please download it. You can search for the codec in **http://bing.com**

    Note: If you can't find the codec you need, try converting the video to a supported format (eg. .wmv for movies, .jpeg/.jpg for photos and .wma for audio) and then add it to your Windows Movie Maker project.

    Outdated video card driver

    Ensure that your video card drivers are up to date - Movie Maker makes extensive use of the video card GPU (graphics processing unit). The display driver affects the reliability, performance, and compatibility of the video card with different software.

    To determine the version and video card driver date, run the DirectX Diagnostic Tool (dxdiag):

    DirectX Diagnostic Tool

    1. Click on Start button and type “dxdiag” in the Search programs and files box and press Enter key on the keyboard.
    2. Click on the Display tab and you will see the driver details including the driver version.
    3. If your video card driver seems outdated please go to the video card driver manufacturer and see if a newer version is available.

    Example:

    **http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us**

    **http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx**

    **http://downloadcenter.intel.com/**

    Please let us know the result afterwards.

    Thank you.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-08-01T22:35:54+00:00

    P.S. burning to CD did not help.  The videos are still choppy.

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