Windows Movie Maker Error- Not enough memory

Anonymous

Whenever I try to save one of my movies a little bit into the save process it stops and says I do not have enough memory try again with a lower resolution. I've tried every resolution and bit rate and it still doesnt work. I am almost positive its not my computer hardware. I have a 3rd Gen i7 (1.9GHz), 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD (90 GB Free), and Intel HD 4000 Graphics. The movie when saved should be no more than 200 MB so i don't know what the problem is. If I can use a full Autodesk/AutoCAD suite to make parts and do 3D renderings, im sure my computer should be able to handle a slideshow of stills.

Original title: Windows Movie Maker Error- Not enough disk space

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

Error:

Movie Maker

There isn’t enough memory available to save this file. Try saving it at a lower resolution.

I am using Movie Maker 2012 with Windows 7 Professional on an HP Pavilion dv6 notebook with 4 gigs of memory and an Intel Q720 processor at 1.6 Ghz.

My videos are .MOV files from a Canon PowerShot SX260 HS camera.

This error has occurred several times on several projects. The projects are saved and the error is replicable each time I tried to save the move in High Resolution (HD: 1920x1080). The error occurs at the same percentage on the progress bar, upon replication of the problem. Increasing the size of the Windows swap file makes no difference. While the movie is being rendered (before the error occurs) Task Manager shows CPU use at 80%+ and the memory use increases nearly linearly with time until 4 gigs are used. Then the memory use stays at 4 gigs, the CPU drops to near 0, and after a few minutes the error appears. The movies can be saved successfully at “Computer” resolution (854x480) and the memory use never went above 1.55 GB.

I can repeat the error with a single .MOV video of length 47 seconds. I saved the project with just this single video. The error is replicable with this long video at 26% complete. I then split that video, without shortening the total video, using the Split edit command. The movie can now be saved. To clarify, I did not shorten or edit the video, except to add a split at the 21 second point. The movie renders successfully from this split video, and the memory use never went above 1.55 GB.

0 comments

51 additional answers

Deleted

This answer has been deleted due to a violation of our Code of Conduct. The answer was manually reported or identified through automated detection before action was taken. Please refer to our Code of Conduct for more information.

Comments have been turned off. Learn more
Anonymous

2016-05-31T23:31:20+00:00

Thankfully, I just got this method to work for me (on a Windows 10 machine)!

I broke my 53 minute video complete with pictures, songs, transitions, and captions down into 15 smaller parts (the longest was 5 minutes, 30 seconds (104 photos, 1 song, transitions, some captions)) as suggested above by deleting pictures before and after the section I was on. (Note: The music had to be deleted separately from the pictures.) My method of deciding where to stop each segment was based on where each song ended and a new one began. Luckily, each new song started at the beginning of a picture, which helped.

After editing each part, I clicked "Save Movie" to save/create the video for that part using the creative naming scheme of Part 1, Part 2, Part 3... Each compiled/saved without any errors.

Once I had saved all 15 mini-movies, I was ready to try to combine them. I opened up a new Movie Maker file and added all 15 short videos. This took a bit longer than I expected, but everything looked good with all the pictures, audio, transitions, and captions from each mini-movie.

I clicked "Save Movie," not really sure if it would actually work. Creating/saving the movie took quite a while (~45 minutes?). It was such a relief when the count hit 100%!

And...the MP4 video looks great with pictures, audio, and smooth transitions between songs.

As with so many others, I have spent LOTS of hours/days on this. My efforts described above took around 4 hours alone. Hopefully others facing the same challenge will benefit from reading the details of my success and will be able to reduce their frustration and time needed to make this happen for themselves.

Good luck!
Was this answer helpful?

4 people found this answer helpful.

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2016-03-02T07:36:18+00:00

As far as I can tell, Microsoft has no plans to go forward with any updates to Movie Maker. You can probably guess from the name of the program (Windows Essentials 2012) which contains Movie Maker 2012, that the last update was made in 2012.

When they released Windows 10, they didn't even bother to include Windows Essentials in the install, so I'm guessing that Microsoft is just hoping that they can ignore it.

That being said, it does work on smaller projects as long as your file types are supported file types and you aren't using too many pictures. If you find that Movie Maker is overwhelmed, then make your project smaller until you are able to save the movie. Convert problem files to .wmv (for video) or .wma/.wav (for audio).

Good luck. I wish I could tell you more. I'm just a fellow user who has used Movie Maker from the XP days, but is finding that I have to look to other options than Microsoft for video editing going forward.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2016-03-02T06:12:30+00:00

Sooo, three years in to this thread (and I just installed a Microsoft essentials update TODAY, March 2, 2016), and no real response? I'm just using a single video file and a single audio file, so it's not just a slideshow bug. Same error as everyone else -- not enough memory, entirely repeatable.

If you are not going to look into this can you at least say that you aren't going to support Movie Maker or something and close the thread?
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments