Captured Files & Windows Movie Maker

Overview A customer got some U-matic tapes scanned and had trouble importing the files into Windows Movie Maker.

Facts

The customer was using an older PC with Windows XP 32 bit os.  We suspect that he was using an old version of Windows Moive Maker (WMM).  He tried to upgrade to 2016 version and it failed.

Umatic tapes were captured using Black Magic Design (BM) Media Express via the BM Studio 4K card.  Captured using NTSC and 8bit YUV AVI codec.  This resulted in a file UYVY (16bpp uncompressed YUV 4:2:2) codec in an AVI container.

The customer also had a MOV version of the file that Finale created from a 1" tape copy.  This was a SD ProRes HQ (ProRes vers 0 422 HQ) in a MOV container.

We also created a MP4 from the ProRes which created a AVC YUV 4:2:0 (H264?) version with a AAC audio codec.

Testing

Tested our 32 bit os WinXP and WMM on Flag.

Tested all the versions above (MOV, AVI, MP4) and none worked with the WMM.  The MOV and MP4 errored when loading.  The AVI failed to laod with the AAC audio codec.  We change the AVI to a AC# audio codec and the video "loaded" but the image was black!

Solution

What worked was a FFV1 codec and AC3 audio codec in a AVI container!   FFV1 and PCM codecs also worked fine.