Help me with a video workflow

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

Today I was trying to take a part of a YouTube video and getting it inserted into a PowerPoint presentation. I’m pretty sure the workflow that eventually accomplished this feat could use some improvement.

I started by grabbing the FLV and converting it to AVI using Vixy.net.

Then I tried to simply bring the AVI into Windows Movie Maker, and clip part of it. However, that didn’t work. Trying to save the file as a WMV resulted in an error, and playback resulted in sound, but no video. Not good.

So, I took my AVI’s at that point and thanks to this site, used Prism to convert them to WMV, which I could then bring into Movie Maker and get my clip.

So, like I said, there’s an extra step in here that I’m not thrilled with. Is there something about the AVI files that I could correct that allow it to be clipped in Movie Maker, or is there some way to take the FLV direct to WMV? Either one would save a step! 🙂

Tags: VideoConverter, Prism, YouTube
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4 Comments

  1. Mike-

    Hi, my name’s Cody, and I’m working with the Windows Media Outreach Team to help answer questions users might have about their copies of Windows Movie Maker. I noticed you were having some issues, and thought maybe I could help you out.

    When you say that importing the .avi files “didn’t work,” does that mean they totally wouldn’t load? Did you get some kind of error message, or were you just getting sound and no video?

    The “sound, no video” issue is a pretty common one, and could be related to codecs on your system. If this is so, your best bet might be downloading a codec tool (I recommend Gspot, which you can find at http://www.headbands.com/gspot/) Simply plug your file into a codec tool, and it’ll tell you what is needed to playback audio and video for any particular file. If the file requires a codec that your system doesn’t have, then there’s your problem.

    Hopefully, this’ll help eliminate that annoying middle step. Let me know how it goes, if you’re still having problems, we can try and find a few other options!

    Thanks,

    Cody
    Windows Media Outreach Team

    Reply

  2. Cody, thanks for stopping by. I hadn’t thought a codec would be the problem, because the AVI played ok in Windows Media Player, but with sound/no video in Movie Maker. But, I’m willing to take a look at that possibility!

    Reply

  4. Mike-

    No problem, I just hope I was helpful! Let me know how things turn out!

    Cheers,

    Cody
    Windows Media Outreach Team

    Reply

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