Solved Windows Movie Maker won't save movie

I know, I know, it's an old problem (judging by the number of hits you get when you google this), but my experience tells me that people on here are much more reliable and INTERESTED than your average MicroSoft 'helper'.

I'm operating XP Pro because I like it! I will not be persuaded to move onto Windows 8 (or above) because my wife has Windows 8 and I find it extremely frustrating to work with it.

I'm busy at the moment archiving my musical life of 50 odd years and I have a load of videos that I want to strip down into single song clips. I've been using VideoPad to date, but it takes an AGE to save a single song clip (typically 25 to 30 minutes for a 4-minute clip), so I thought I'd try WMM.

It all seemed to be too easy at first. The Start and Finish clip controls are easier to manipulate and since I'm using WMV files, it seemed logical to try out WMM. Everything went well until it came to saving a 'movie'. The process starts fine, but then just quits and I'm told that 'WMM is unable to save the file'. No explanation, no help.

So I went googling and found that, if I installed Service Pack 3 for XP, I'd get the latest WMM (with the inference that this would solve my problem). Well, what do you know? It didn't. I've since tried different settings for the process, but still no joy.

Any help (including suggestions of better - and free! - video editors) will be extremely welcome.

plodr said:

Have you seen this page of possible reasons why the movie can't be saved?
http://www.windows-movie-maker.org/tutorials_how_to_fix_the_error_saving_movie.html

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Thank you, I'll certainly take a look.

gus said:

Hi there Bernie, I used Movie Maker for a while when I had an older version of Windows and found it more trouble than it was worth, added to the amount of bloatware when it was installed. You need a pretty powerful machine with ample memory for it to run well too. There are many BETTER free and paid for apps out there. The best commercial one I've used is Video Redo HERE but if you want a free one try Avidemux HERE. Just something to consider

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Thanks again, Gus. I'll give it a go.

I'm really sorry not to have got back on this sooner. Had a lot of other stuff going on! (see elsewhere on this site).
I eventually gave up and decided to just put up with the long-winded VideoPad. I DO appreciate your help, though.