While my Transitions, effects and titles work for the majority of people, there are some instances when they do not. While I am a keen amateur I do not have the requisite skills to overcome some potential pitfalls (which is why I do not have the cheek to charge for them !). With that in mind I have written a description of the three most common problems and how they may be overcome . If the effects still do not respond I would advise un-installing them - Sorry !
Before getting to hung up on fault finding please first make sure that your operating system is Windows XP and you are using Movie Maker 2.0 or 2.1. These are windows XP custom effects - Not Vista ! They are very specific to the XP version and WILL NOT WORK ON VISTA
Also - if installing PIP+ FX please ensure that you have the pip+ plugin installed ! (Note - because the pip+ effects I have done involve only static windows, they should work fine with just the trial version)
PIP+ FX MUST HAVE THE PIP+ PLUGIN INSTALLED
So let's look at some of the most common problems :
Problem 1 - Transitions appear in Movie Maker but do nothing
Cause - Operating system not installed on the "C"drive
Solution - Edit the XML file
Microsoft Windows Movie Maker enables programmers to add their own custom special effects and transitions to the Windows Movie Maker interface. These effects can be created with an XML file that modifies the supplied effects or transitions. All of the Movie maker effects I have created use such xml files with many using referenced image files. Unfortunately when specifying image file paths within the xml file, the location can only be specified with an absolute file location .For example, one of my transitions in transition set 1 (BFXTransitionsset1swirls.xml ) makes full use of a "wipe mask" image (BFX1a.jpg) - This image location is specified within the xml file as:
C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\shared\AddOnTFX\BFXtransitionsset1\BFX1a.jpg
Now here is the problem. While the majority of windows users run their XP operating system on the "C" drive, there are some that don't. A user who for example has their system running on the "E" drive will find that the image location of the same wipe mask after installing the transition set is:
E:\Program Files\Movie Maker\shared\AddOnTFX\BFXtransitionsset1\BFX1a.jpg
Now that is fine, BUT we now have a problem because the xml file is still looking for an image file on the "C" drive. The result is that the transitions will appear in the Movie Maker window transitions menu, but won't actually work because the mask image is not being referenced.
To remedy the situation, the xml file BFXTransitionsset1swirls.xml found in AddOnTFX folder needs to be manually edited in something like notepad (Start, All Programs, accessories) or my personal favourite XML Copy Editor. All references to:
C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\shared\AddOnTFX\BFXtransitionsset1\BFX1a.jpg
would be replaced with :
E:\Program Files\Movie Maker\shared\AddOnTFX\BFXtransitionsset1\BFX1a.jpg
Once edited and saved back as an xml file the transitions will hopefully work.
NOTE - Curiously Microsoft allows images associated with custom titles to be referenced by relative file paths which largely overcomes such problems - shame that transitions can not be referenced in the same way.
Problem 2 - Transitions appear in Movie Maker but do nothing
Cause - A non English version of XP is being used
Solution - Edit the XML file
Foreign language versions (non English) of XP can cause similar problems to problem 1 because the file paths may be specified slightly differently. For example, there is one version that has the Movie Maker folder located in
C:\Programas\Movie Maker\... and not C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\... as is the English version of XP
Users with this problem would again need to edit the xml files to reflect the actual stored locations of the referenced image files. For example:
C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\shared\AddOnTFX\BFXtransitionsset1\BFX1a.jpg
would become:
C:\Programas\Movie Maker\shared\AddOnTFX\BFXtransitionsset1\BFX1a.jpg