How to fix poor rendering in Windows Movie Maker?

Question

I am using CamStudio to make some instructional videos about Visual Studio for our development team, and one of the videos needed some editing to remove audio and video mistakes and to add in a better ending. CamStudio outputs to .avi files, and they look pretty good, with the program source code being quite readable. However, after making the edits using WMM, it has rendered the results to a noticeable loss in quality. It has gone from from fairly sharp in focus and adequately readable to recognizable but somewhat blurred. It has also inflated the size of the new .avi file to three times its original size (before cropping half of the vido out!). And the .wmv I attempted to render was was certainly smaller but simply horrible-looking. The left image here is the original video, and the right image is WMM's rendering in .avi format:

I have to be doing something wrong, but I know nothing about how to use WMM (my first use of it). I am using default settings to the best of my knowledge.

Any suggestions welcomed!

Answer 1

I wasn't getting much "action" here so I asked the question on Microsoft Answers. And I got two responders who posted the following:

From Volunteer J - MS MVP

================================= If your saved video files are not the resolution you require...you may need to use a Custom Profile:

Personally, I find the following .wmv profile to be useful when saving movies. SlideShow-1024x768WMV9

Download from the following site...

Movie Maker - Saving Movies - Custom WMV Profiles http://www.papajohn.org/MM2-SavingMovies-CustomProfiles.html

Right click / Save as...drop it in the following folder: C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared\Profiles folder

If you do not have the Profiles folder...you'll have to create it.

In Movie Maker...the next time you save a movie... Go to File / Save Movie file / Show More Choices / Other Settings / Open the drop window and choose... SlideShow-1024x768WMV9

More info:

Creating Custom Profiles for Windows Movie Maker 2 http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/expert/customprofile.mspx

Even more info Windows Movie Maker Custom Export Formats http://www.jakeludington.com/project_studio/20050909_windows_movie_maker_custom_export_formats.html

Also...the following forum may be worth a look:

Movie Makers http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/Forums/Default.aspx

Good Luck...

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And from Skier Hughes:

Just to add to John's excellent reply.

You need to make your custom profile the same resolution as the screen resolution you are working on.

AVI is a wrapper which can contain hundreds of different file types. I think camstudio uses divx which gives a very good video for a small file size. WMV uses various amounts of compression, so if you choose the best quality output you willl end up with a larger file size.

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My end remark was:

Thanks guys for the great answers! The SlideShow-1024x768WMV9 profile worked marvelously. You know, I just knew that the MM program was capable of producing decent video, it was just that I couldn't locate the "how" anywhere in Microsoft's own documentation, such as it is.