# Win Movie Maker-audio download extends length of song??



## Butterfly29 (Mar 16, 2008)

I have mp3 files of songs saved on my hard drive. When I import the song to windows movie maker, it makes the song longer. For example, a song is 4:01 minutes long as saved on the hard drive. When I load it into Movie Maker, it says it's 7:53 minutes long. Any ideas on how to fix this? I've tried numerous songs and it's always the same result.

Thanks!
Tara


----------



## fairnooks (Oct 1, 2007)

are the mp3 tracks encoded variable bit rate? and, if you play it within the project what happens? does it play? is it longer? change in pitch? slow motion? repeats?, etc. feedback on these and any other notable behaviors would be helpful.


----------



## Butterfly29 (Mar 16, 2008)

are the mp3 tracks encoded variable bit rate?---I'm not sure what that means. In the MY MUSIC folder, they're listed as mp3 type vs. media player files. 

One of the songs is You are the sunshine of my life, which is 2:48 on my hard drive. When I import it to MM, it's 5:30. The speed of the song is normal.

Not sure if this helps, but if I play the song from the beginning of the storyboard (0:00), it ends when it's supposed to (2:48). However, if I want to preview a section of the video starting in the middle somewhere (like 2:10), it doesn't end at 2:48. If I preview it starting at 2:10, the words (section) of the song are different than if I started playing it at 0:00

It seems to be just a glitch with trying to listen to the song at any place other than the beginning. In the end after the video is done and saved, it will probably work out okay.
I'm so confused and I'm pretty good at computers. This isn't the first video montage I've made.

Thanks for the help.


----------



## fairnooks (Oct 1, 2007)

I think that's either a bug or something in the way you have things arranged is confusing the graphic interface. Sometimes songs are encoded with variable bit rate so the bit rate is higher when it needs to be and lower when it can be so the overall size might be the same but overall a better job of encoding is done. Some programs only display correct information for constant bit rate encoding and will be mistaken when determining song properties for a variable bit rate encoding. I don't know if that might be the case here but from what you've written the best course of action is to try it out as a finished product assuming what you know to be the real length of the song and see if there actually is a problem or not.


----------



## Azzy (Jan 18, 2007)

I did a search for this problem here before I made a thread about it because this is happening to me.

I'm not technical savvy when it comes to this stuff but I'll tell you what's happening on my end.

The same thing as the thread creator is happening. Basically, I have been making videos to upload to youtube featuring video game music. All I do is bring the mp3 files into Windows Movie Maker and use one image from the game in question to use as the video picture that is played throughout the movie.

When altering the timeline, everything is perfect and before I publish the movie, the video stops when the song ends - exactly what I want.

However, after I have published the movie, when I end up playing it, the actual movie adds a minute (sometimes more, sometimes less) of nothing. This extends the length of the movie, with no audio whatsoever. The image I have used is displayed and disappears at the end of the movie, but the song actually ends about a minute before. Prior to publishing it though, it was perfectly normal.

I don't understand why it's doing it. I believe it has something to do with bit rate, although I don't know anything about it to say much else. All I want is a solution. The only way I could get around it was to publish the movie, then import the new movie back in to movie maker, then chop it down to where the song really ends, then publishing that. That sorts it, but it's way too much effort when I have so many songs to do.

Would a different movie maker solve this problem, or is there an easier solution?

Many thanks!


----------



## fairnooks (Oct 1, 2007)

It sounds like a bug in the program. The only time I get that effect is when the audio file is larger than 2 gigs--depending on how much larger adds more silence to the end of the video. With an mp3 you should be well within that limit. I would try a different editor and/or see if using variable bitrate versus constant bitrate makes any difference, something in the processing is throwing the sync way off it seems.


----------



## Azzy (Jan 18, 2007)

Well, I can tell you I decided to try out Magix Movie Edit Pro. This has worked a lot better and the silence has been removed completely. It simply doesn't happen when I create my videos anymore.

Had some minor problems, such as some audio output becomes terrible when it's put published into an MPEG-4 movie, but fine on other audio files. MPEG1 seems to be fine though. Also, AVI files turned out to be huge - a 2GB file for one movie I made. So I'm going to try doing MPEG1 files and see how it goes.

Shouldn't be any major problems though, but it takes a little getting used to. I don't like how after you make a movie you have to look through your folders in the program again to look for your other music that you want to put into a movie. But of a minus point when compared to Movie Maker there. But at least the silence is gone, and that's the best thing.


----------



## Cigoth (May 28, 2008)

Sorry for digging up this topic, but I had the same problem with movie maker and now I found a solution. 
It's caused by movie maker which changes the Variable bitrate to a constant bitrate when you import a song (e.g. from 224 kbps to 128kbps).

This is how I solved it: 
1. download a (free) audio converter program 
(switch is a good one http://www.nch.com.au/switch/switchsetup.exe) 
2. add songs, and at the bottom of the window press 'encoder options'
3. change the bitrate to a Constant Bitrate (eg to 320 kbps) and press OK
4. Now just press the convert button and import the songs to MM.
They should keep their normal song lenght now.

hope this helped
-Cigoth


----------

