Green bar in Windows Movie Maker
I don’t personally use Movie Maker to render video, but ran across a problem when doing some work for a friend of mine and I thought I’d share the resolution. All credit for this fix goes to the following blog and forum:
http://www.bernzilla.com/item.php?id=884
http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=105025
The answers are there, you just have to dig a bit, and I wanted to put the full solution in one place. What happens is, that when publishing a video, half of the screen is green. This is a codec rendering issue that is addressed here. From what I take from this blog and forum post, is that the XviD codec is used to render the video, and there are settings that have to be made in XviD to fix the problem.
First of all, I didn’t even have XviD loaded, I had DivX codec installed, alongside Final Codecs 2008, a very good codec package that includes a lot of codecs, including a Quicktime alternative and RealPlayer alternative, which I prefer over the full blown advertised to hell product. So I downloaded the XviD encoder package here.
Then the trick is to configure it as mentioned in the blog and forum post:
I have discovered how bad native MPEG4 decoding is under Vista (it seemed to be dropping framerate or something – jerky panning) and found another solution. (re-enable the XviD MPEG-4 Video Decoder again if you turned it off using my previous instruction).
Go to <Start Menu><All Programs><XVid><Configure Decoder>. In the <Output> options, choose <Compatibility Renderer> and click <OK>
This still utilises the XVid MPEG4 codec and resolved the half green screen issue.
Hope this helps.
This still did not fix my problem. In addition to this, I had to do the following inside of Movie Maker:
Try going to Tools\Options…Compatibility. UNcheck the DivX and XVid decoders ‘filters’. Then you should be able to import DivX and XVid movies and you won’t see the green stuff and squashed movie. That has been my experience.
Hope this helps someone else with this problem, and it has apparently been a problem for some time now, so I know this blog is a bit late.
1
THANKYOU!!!
Google brought me here and you have just solved my problem 
Excellent stuff!
2
Glad to be of assistance!
3
ive done everything and it still dosent work!!!! ive downloaded xvid encoder package and done all that other stuff and now the published video just comes up with a black screen
4
Do you have a codec pack installed by chance, such as K-Lite Codec Pack or Final Codecs 2008? These include an xvid encoder that can mess things up.
5
hi i hope you can help me.
i tried the solution and well as the ebrnie solution but un ticking them didnt remove the greeb bar while i edit on the storyboard.
it was working fine before, then suddenly i a file from flv i converted to avi ( which use to be fine before)
acted this green bar below and several followed suit.
When wieved on the righ side of WMM it has NO GREEN but some would only appear ONCE DRAGGED on the stortboard, while the others already had a green without dragging
6
in some instances the lower portion of the video would be repreated by the green bar below
7
As I mentioned I do not use Movie Maker, and came across these fixes, specifically for XvID, when doing research for a friend of mine. If you were converting from FLV to AVI, I’m not sure that you’re working with XvID necessarily?
8
Thank you sooo much! I just spent 4 hours on this and finally found your site. I too found the fix from bernzilla, but that didn’t fix my problem. This finally did. Thank you!!
9
There has to be a boat out on the horizon somewhere. ,
10
Hi!
I am not using Xvid instead i am using Divx. if i go to tools>Options>compatibility>Divx decoder and uncheck this filter than my video goes all black.
11
That was FABBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB!!! Thank you!!!
12
Thanks a lot man, I’ve been stressing over this for a while now and you solved my problem, and for that i am grateful.
Thank you.
13
OOOOOOOHHHHHHH MY GOD THANK YOU SOOOOOO SOOOO MUCH I HAVE BEEN LITERALLY SEARCHING FOR WEEKS ON HOW TO GET RID OF IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (well i do need to thank that lord because i did pray to him yesterday that i find a solution)
14
Thanks for the help, mate!
15
AFTER I CLICK ON XVID it wont let me click on configure decoder a meesage pops up saying error loading xvid.ax the specified module could not be found.
16
Same problem as recent poster…………..
I am not using Xvid instead i am using Divx. if i go to tools>Options>compatibility>Divx decoder and uncheck this filter than my video goes all black.
17
Sorry about the late reply. Are you running a 64 bit O/S? Have a look at this thread:
http://forum.doom9.org/archive/index.php/t-137642.html
18
You need to install Xvid to apply this fix. You can run both Divx and Xvid codec simultaneously, and in fact you should anyway to have multiple codec support. I personally use CCCP, which is short for Combined Community Codec Pack. It installs all the codecs you need to playback all formats, such as DivX avi, Xvid avi, H264 MP4, MKV, etc, etc. Link here http://www.cccp-project.net/download.php?type=cccp. Not sure if this applies directly to the green bar fix or not, so if you’re not interested in multiple codec support, just install Xvid only as per the instructions here.
19
Ok,I’ve tried to use the Xvid and i’m having the same problems as some of the people above. And downloaded the cccp thing that you suggested, but i’m still getting the green bar. I need some help.
20
Sorry, those are all the thoughts I have. I don’t personally use Movie Maker, I prefer Sony Vegas, and codecs are the only thing that this problem has pointed to. Sorry I can’t be of more assistance.
21
I had this problem at one time, and the solution to it was this:
Go to . In the options, choose and click .
Recently, the problem cropped up again when trying to edit a video encoded with Matroska (.mkv) I followed all of the suggestions from various websites, and nothing seemed to work, including the solution to turn off Xvid, DivX, and the ‘Compatibility Renderer’ solution copypasta above (Thanks to Bernie Zimmerman). I was about to give up. Then, I downloaded the most recent DivX codec from http://www.divx.com/en/software/divx-plus, and the Green Bar is gone! I can’t be entirely certain that this will work for you, but if it does…
Glad to be of help
22
Thanks for the additional feedback David!
23
Thank you for sharing this! After learning how to sync audio with this lightweight out of the box video editing software, this really gets the most out of Movie Maker!