Problems with Movie maker saving to dv-avi

[jbitakis]

I just finished a 46min. long movie maker project with about 370 pictures and about 20 min. of video. When I try to save to my computer I choose the "save to dv-avi" because I have a about 320 gb of free hdd left and I know I have more than enough space. This project will take up about 11Gb using the dv-avi option.
Each and every time I try to do this it says that it is saving it to the location but I see no progress and after 15min. I get an error message that says this:
Windows movie maker cannot save the movie to the specified location. Verify that the original source files used in your movie are still available, that the saving location is still available, and that there is enough free disk space available.

The original source files ARE still available, The saving location IS still available, And there is PLENTY of free disk space available. I do not know what to do. I really don't want to save it using a compressed version.

What can I do?
James

[redwudz]

Make sure the video is 720 X 480 pixels (US) or it won't and can't be saved as a DV file. That may be your problem. And DV is a compressed format, although low, about 5:1. DivX is about 20:1.

[jbitakis]

Video is definately 720x480. So I don't know the problem. I may succomb and just save it to the WMV file that WMM recommends. I just know that the quality is not as good as DV-AVI.

[Safesurfer]

Could it be a FAT32 file size limit? Is your HDD formatted as FAT, or NTFS?

[jbitakis]

How would I know if my HD is formatted NTFS or FAT?? How do I determine this?

[jbitakis]

Ok I just checked, my Hard drive is NTFS.

[Safesurfer]

Could be an available system RAM problem. See the MS page http://support.microsoft.com/kb/814836

If the photos are large, I could see this being the problem. The workaround may be to split the project up in to small pieces and then join the rendered parts together at the end.

[jbitakis]

Thanks Safesurfer for that link to microsoft. I will try one of those. I decided to save it to the compressed WMV just to finish it. But I will try some of those suggestions by microsoft. The other option is increasing my memory (RAM) to 8gb from 2gb. I have plenty of hdd (400gb) but memory (RAM) is only 2GB.