Windows Media Player Error

[Yontjak]

I just finished a 30-second animation and rendered it. It saved in the default place (sessions) as an .avi file. However when I try to play it using the only program I have (Windows Media Player), it comes up with 'Windows Media Player encountered a problem while playing the file'. The Media Player help site is garbage.

I just want to know if anyone else has had this problem while using SFM and if so, how did you fix it. Thanks in advance to anyone who knows!

[surfer171]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=375229570

[Zappy]

Well, you did just try to play a corrupted video, so I don't blame Windows Media Player for failing.

Source FilmMaker exports uncompressed AVIs, which are huge file-size wise, and is a 32-bit program, limiting it to about 4 gigabytes of RAM, so if a session is too long, the full video can't be exported without breaching the file-size limit of Source FilmMaker, thus the video gets corrupted.
And QuickTime is needed for MP4 and MOV exports, but don't install it, as MP4s and MOVs don't get exported correctly (too bright or dark depending on compression codec), plus QuickTime has security holes and is no longer being updated for Windows. (Other programs can export MP4s and MOVs correctly, though.)
What you want to do instead is to use an image sequence export. Correct colours, fairly good quality compression, etcetera, provided the options are configured correctly. Here's a tutorial for it specifically for Blender:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=375229570 If you use another program, just import the image sequence and sound, set the frame-rate correctly, and then export it. (That's pretty much also what you do for it with Blender.) Just know that Windows (Live) Movie Maker can't be used correctly for this.

[Yontjak]

Originally posted by Zappy:

Well, you did just try to play a corrupted video, so I don't blame Windows Media Player for failing.

Source FilmMaker exports uncompressed AVIs, which are huge file-size wise, and is a 32-bit program, limiting it to about 4 gigabytes of RAM, so if a session is too long, the full video can't be exported without breaching the file-size limit of Source FilmMaker, thus the video gets corrupted.
And QuickTime is needed for MP4 and MOV exports, but don't install it, as MP4s and MOVs don't get exported correctly (too bright or dark depending on compression codec), plus QuickTime has security holes and is no longer being updated for Windows. (Other programs can export MP4s and MOVs correctly, though.)
What you want to do instead is to use an image sequence export. Correct colours, fairly good quality compression, etcetera, provided the options are configured correctly. Here's a tutorial for it specifically for Blender:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=375229570 If you use another program, just import the image sequence and sound, set the frame-rate correctly, and then export it. (That's pretty much also what you do for it with Blender.) Just know that Windows (Live) Movie Maker can't be used correctly for this.

Do you think you can give me the quick version? I can't seem to get the video to play. Do I just click file>export>image... then what?

[Marco Skoll]

Originally posted by Mr. Juice:

Do you think you can give me the quick version? I can't seem to get the video to play. Do I just click file>export>image... then what?

File > Export > Video.

Set the export type to Image Sequence (I can't remember what the drop-down menu is called, but it is there), and then set the filetype to PNG. Set everything else as appropriate.

Render the image sequence.

Once done, you will now have a number of individual frames and a .wav file in your export folder, which need to be put together for the final video. Most decent video editors will load image sequences (although make sure you have the frame rate set properly) - but as Zappy says, Live Movie Maker will not (However, free offerings like Blender and VirtualDub can).

Once you've got the sequence and WAV loaded in your editor, export that with your desired video type/settings. (This process is be much much quicker than SFM's render - a matter of moments).

That's the very quick version. If you need more detail, googling for "SFM image sequence guide" should turn up several guides that don't need you to watch a video.

[ConfederateJoe]

Also, get media player classic, it can handle that and many more file types compared to widow's standard media player.
https://mpc-hc.org/

[Yontjak]

Originally posted by Marco Skoll:

Originally posted by Mr. Juice:

Do you think you can give me the quick version? I can't seem to get the video to play. Do I just click file>export>image... then what?

File > Export > Video.

Set the export type to Image Sequence (I can't remember what the drop-down menu is called, but it is there), and then set the filetype to PNG. Set everything else as appropriate.

Render the image sequence.

Once done, you will now have a number of individual frames and a .wav file in your export folder, which need to be put together for the final video. Most decent video editors will load image sequences (although make sure you have the frame rate set properly) - but as Zappy says, Live Movie Maker will not (However, free offerings like Blender and VirtualDub can).

Once you've got the sequence and WAV loaded in your editor, export that with your desired video type/settings. (This process is be much much quicker than SFM's render - a matter of moments).

That's the very quick version. If you need more detail, googling for "SFM image sequence guide" should turn up several guides that don't need you to watch a video.

Thanks :D thats really helpful. Final question: is this a common problem or do I just have a go awful computer?

[Marco Skoll]

It's a common problem. SFM's AVI export is just broken.

[Yontjak]

Originally posted by Marco Skoll:

It's a common problem. SFM's AVI export is just broken.

Thanks so much for all your help. Really appreciate it.

[Zappy]

Originally posted by Marco Skoll:

- but as Zappy says, Live Movie Maker will not [work]. -

I'd just like to say that I'm not referring to whether Windows (Live) Movie Maker supports image sequences or not, since (from what I remember,) it does support just loading all the images at once, but as individual "clips" rather than a single "clip", and you can then adjust their lengths with all of them selected.

I'm talking about that regardless of the target frame-rate, Windows (Live) Movie Maker works in 100ths of a second, which means that you can't use it well if you rendered at 60, 30, 24, or other frame rates besides 100, 50, 25, 20, 10, etcetera frames per second, none of which are really common or useful.

[Marco Skoll]

Originally posted by Zappy:

I'd just like to say that I'm not referring to whether Windows (Live) Movie Maker supports image sequences or not

Fair enough. It certainly didn't support image sequences when I last used it, but I guess that was actually a great many years ago now.

or other frame rates besides 100, 50, 25, 20, 10, etcetera frames per second, none of which are really common or useful.

... not exactly.

25 fps is used by both the PAL and SECAM television formats, which between them cover Europe, Africa, Oceania, (most of) Asia, and the larger part of South America (Brazil, Argentina and a few others).

The 30 fps NTSC format is mainly just North America and Japan. Now, because Japan is the source of a LOT of modern digital cameras (Canon, Fujifilm, Pentax, Olympus, Nikon, Casio, Sony, Samsung, etc), you're a lot more likely to see 30 fps format around the world, but 25 fps (and increasingly 50 fps) are definitely common formats.

Mildly interesting trivia: For regions set up for 25 fps TV, it's fairly normal for the common 24 fps film format to simply be sped up slightly to play at 25 fps. Trying to interpolate it causes really quite weird quality issues.

[Zappy]

Originally posted by Marco Skoll:

Originally posted by Zappy:

or other frame rates besides 100, 50, 25, 20, 10, etcetera frames per second, none of which are really common or useful.

... not exactly. -Snip-

I was specifically talking about in the case of Source FilmMaker. The default is 24, and most people who change it go with either 30 or 60. (Not all people, but very likely most.) Plus most computer monitors are 60 (or 120 or 144) hertz.