"Save Video" does not work

JohnySK

I found Express Animate and I really like the way it works. i created an animated promo video for a pop song and am very pleased with the results, however, Express Animate will not export the project as any sort of usefull video. It usuallly saves the audio and maybe the first frame (often no video at all). The best it has ever managed is the first 7 seconds of video. This essentially makes the software useless for what I need it for.

I messaged Tech support but got a "Request Recieved" messaged that infered I wouldn't get an answer within this lifetime as Express Animate is free software, so any help from forum users would be fantastic - Thank you in advance - J

obtusity

Four (and a half) tips:

Make sure you have plenty of disk space available, including enough for temporary files several times the size of the video as well as the video itself.
Never save large or complex files (including video files and layered image files) directly to a folder that is being synced with an online service (e.g. Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, etc). The files will have a high chance of being corrupted. If you want these types of files in your synced folder, save to a non-synced folder first then copy them to the sync folder after the save is complete.

(Half tip: Also be wary about auto-backup programs or network drives which can both run into similar problems.)
Before saving video, close down any other programs running (web browsers, instant messengers, office programs, games or game frameworks). The best situation would be to restart your computer and only run Express Animate. Note: the more physical memory available the better. Ideally you should have at least an 8GB memory computer.
Be wary about Windows path length limits. Try saving to a short path such as C:\myvideo\this.mp4 (or .avi or whatever)

jon13

I have been using Express Animate for a few months (v2.03) and recently installed version 3, and then immediately experienced the same problem as JohnySK: video saves as sound with no picture. If I try to open the file in Express Animate I get "File format not recognised" which is a bit ironic. I tried saving in different formats with the same result.

This has nothing to do with disc space or anything like that, I uninstalled and reverted to the earlier version and now video - even projects created in version 3 - saves as it should. Plus, it doesn't change all the text to Arial 20 when I Undo but that's another story...