Hello

1st....pressing the reset button is not a good idea. If you manage to pull up the Task Manager as your message suggests. All you need do is select the application that is a problem and right click and select "END TASK" Pressing RESET is a sure fire way of getting programs to subsequently exhibit "Strange Behaviour" next time you power up your machine.

You do not say what type of video it is you are trying to open. Are you certain that this software is able to handle it. If your reply is, "Yes its an MPG or MPEG file" then the next question is, was the encoder used to create that file of a standard type, or, was it one of these so called wonderfull high compression encoders that are almost always free and whos best storage point is the waste bin? Don't want to show any bias here.

You need to supply a lot more information before anyone can help like.....

Physical size of file, Program that created it and on what platform. What platform are you using now. What size of hard drive you have. How much free space it has. How much RAM does your machine have. What processor(s) is installed on your machine. What other applications were running and other usefull information like, Have you ever used this program before, have you created a file your self with it etc etc

Best Wishes, John
www.the-kellys.co.uk

hi john - a agree absolutely about the reset button ... but even the "normal" way to stop non-functioning progs does not function ... the machine gets slow to zero, only the harddisk works and works and works ... so after a while trying to stop the prog with the "end task" thing ... and watching, that this doesn`t work ... finally ...

i try to open a win *.avi movie, but i does not even come to that, `cause the soft starts to "behave strange" after starting the "load video file" function from the menue and clicking on the folder where the video is in.

i`ve also adobe premiere on this computer, and that opens the video files without any problems.

i use win xp service pack 2, a 160gig hd with about 80gig free space on it, the computer has 512k ram. there is an intel p4 3.06 ghz ... as i wrote before - no problems with premiere. i tried to start zs4 with no external progs running, or with ... that does not change anything.

i really would like to work with zs4, it seems to be more flexible in the point of experimental movie maiking than premiere ...

thank you a lot ...

kai

Hello,

Of your 512mb of RAM you probably only have 250mb - 300mb or thereabouts for program execution. The program itself will take a good chunk of that and whats left...well this is nowhere near enough to edit a video. If you check out the Tech areas of Microsoft you will discover that you have just enough RAM to run very basic (and somewhat dated) programs.

The more RAM you have (with regard ALL current Microsoft platforms) the more the platform will reserve for itself. Sorry to be so blunt, but its not even a starter. I run with 4GB and wish for more.

The fact that you can load this avi with Adobe Premier does not mean much.....its a matter of programming and when disk utilization is required. Adobe premier uses the timeline as little more than a video player.....try using it with some heavy editing and effects !!! Premier simply scans and creates an index file when you "load" the video.

Virtual Memory....let your system decide...especially when you have the bare spec for XP....but in general...The size of your virtual memory (an area set aside on your hard drive) needs to be no more than double the size of your RAM plus a little for mapping purposes...any more is a total waste of hard drive AND a total waste of RAM, why? the bigger the virtual memory the more REAL memory is needed to index it !! PLUS more processor time to manipulate it

Hard Drive. Free space. As a general rule of thumb, you need at least 2.5 to 3 times the size of all of the video files being edited on your HD. This is because most Video Editing software packages use the drive as temporary storage.

Dependent on where you are in the world the cost of upgrading your drive is very cheap nowadays compared to just a couple of years ago....A few months ago I upgraded to a 1.2 TB RAID SATA2 system....£280 (approx US$500) !!!!...result...massive increase in video processing. It would have been a lot cheaper if I had resided in the USA

AVI All AVI's are not equal. AVI is a term used to describe a wrapper for a video that might be a RAW file or an extremly highly compressed file. In other words on its own AVI means nothing much at all.....example I have a hardware video encoder which I use to capture pay per view movies. It will deliver 12MB/s of compressed MPG video if needed. Usually though a normal film will not need more than 16 - 19 GB of hard drive. I could store that file as an AVI with almost no change in size....it would still be an MPG internally....I once had problems with such a file and decided to convert it to a RAW format....it occupied just over 500GB of drive space !!

Back to the point.....the internal workings of these files are often very complex and its not just down to the compression method...which frame comes first (if its interlaced) Some programs (like Micrososft Movie Maker) are not able to load files that have certain internal structures. This is why I asked about file type etc.....I previously mention MPG, I shouyld have also mentioned AVI....is it Type 1 or Type 2 ??? Adobe Premier can load both, Movie Maker can not...and it was written by the people who created both Type 1 & Type 2 !!!!ZS4 (I think) can handle both.

If however the AVI contains an MPeg type file I think you might want to read the helpfile on converting it first....I know it sounds daft, but if you convert your AVI of whatever format internally to that which we all think of as a Microsoft AVI you may6 solve your problem. The reason....its to do with something called a CODEC...at this stage dont worry about what that it is.....(Its a COder/DECoder)

I have to go now, she who must be obeyed has issued a summons. If I can give you some more pointers, please ask (in here)

Best Wishes, John
www.the-kellys.co.uk