Microsoft KB Archive/143230

= 3D Movie Maker: Movies Cannot be Saved in AVI Format =

Article ID: 143230

Article Last Modified on 8/17/2005

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft 3D Movie Maker
 * Microsoft Nickelodeon 3D Movie Maker

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This article was previously published under Q143230



SUMMARY
Microsoft 3D Movie Maker files are saved in a proprietary format (*.3mm). 3D Movie Maker files cannot be saved to a standard Audio Video Interleave (.avi) format.



MORE INFORMATION
Audio Video Interleave (.avi) is the technology that allows animation and video clips to be played on a PC under Windows.

There are several reasons why .avi is not used by 3D Movie Maker:
 * Full size. 3D Movie Maker files are essentially events lists with pointers to content (actors, backgrounds, sounds) that resides on the compact disc. This feature allows hours of movies to be stored on a single floppy. If the movies were stored as .avi files, even highly compressed .avi files, you wouldn't get more than a very brief movie on a floppy disk.
 * Compression time. The time it would take to compress an .avi as efficiently as possible is prohibitive. It would take several times longer to compress and save a 3D Movie Maker movie than the movie takes to play.
 * Music/MIDI cannot be saved to an .avi file. Much of the richness of a 3D Movie Maker movie would be lost without music.

Additional query words: avi kids mczee kbmm director animated movies melanie 3-d three dimensional 3dmm three-d mskids

Keywords: kbmm kbsound kbfaq kbusage KB143230

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