Expert: Joseph Silver - 1/21/2012

Question
I am using Blender 2.61 for a BPA project and have successfully aquired most knowledge for use of the program on my own, but I have now encountered a problem that I can't seem to fix on my own, good news is that it may be fairly simple, hopefully. Here are the details.

I am recreating our solar system with detail including atmosphere for a presentation under 2 minutes in length. The file size is 6.0 MB. I have set up all keyframes I need. I have the resolution set to HDTV 720p. There are 1700 frames to be rendered, at 24 fps.I am outputting to my desktop in an AVI Codec format.

Now that you know the basic outline, here is the actually problem. I have rendered the animation five times now, and everytime I try to play the video from my desktop a pop up reads to me "Windows Media Player encountered a problem while playing the file." Meaning, it won't play the rendered file. Frankly I'm tired of rendering the animation (which takes about 5 hours to complete with my processor) only to come to a conclusion that my video will not be able to be played. It would be incredibly appreciated if you could help me fixfigure out why the project is not playing!!

Thanks for taking your time in readying this extensive question.

Answer
Hi there, this question is out of my expertise given that I don't use Blender - and also work primarily on a Mac platform. I'm wondering if either your system is having problems with the movie being too large to play and/or the Codec you're rendering to is not compatible with your setup. I might try rendering a small segment of your animation with different Codecs and at smaller sizes than 720p to see if that helps...