"could not open output file" error with ffmpeg renderings

I have been using the blender sequence editor to edit footage from a dv camera and I have never had this problem before. Now, whenever I try to use ffmpeg to render an edited video, or whenever I try to make a mixdown blender gives me either the message “could not open file for writing” with the full render or “Can’t Open output file” when I try to do a mixdown. Normal still renders work fine as do animations that do not use ffmpeg. FFmpeg still does not work even if the option to multiplex audio is turned off.

The only change that I have made recently is installing and then uninstalling ffdshow in an effort to get virtual dub to use a greater variety of compression codecs.

I’ve already tried to reinstall blender with no luck. I really need to get this to work, otherwise its straight back to windows moviemaker for all video editing projects. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

I really don’t know what any of this means, but if its any help…

Starting output to C: mp"breaking down the door sound test0001_0013.avi(ffmpeg
)…
Using type=7, codec=2, audio_codec=65536,
video_bitrate=6000, audio_bitrate=128,
gop_size=18, multiplex=1, autosplit=0
render width=720, render height=480
Closing ffmpeg…
Starting output to C: mp"breaking down the door sound test0001_0013.avi(ffmpeg
)…
Using type=7, codec=2, audio_codec=65536,
video_bitrate=6000, audio_bitrate=128,
gop_size=18, multiplex=1, autosplit=0
render width=720, render height=480
Closing ffmpeg…
Starting output to C: mp"breaking down the door sound test0001_0250.avi(ffmpeg
)…
Using type=7, codec=2, audio_codec=65536,
video_bitrate=6000, audio_bitrate=128,
gop_size=18, multiplex=1, autosplit=0
render width=720, render height=480
Closing ffmpeg…
Starting output to C: mp"breaking down the door sound test0001_0250.avi(ffmpeg
)…
Using type=7, codec=2, audio_codec=65536,
video_bitrate=6000, audio_bitrate=128,
gop_size=18, multiplex=1, autosplit=0
render width=720, render height=480
Closing ffmpeg…
Starting output to C: mp"breaking down the door sound test0001_0250.avi(ffmpeg
)…
Using type=7, codec=2, audio_codec=65536,
video_bitrate=6000, audio_bitrate=128,
gop_size=18, multiplex=1, autosplit=0
render width=720, render height=480
Closing ffmpeg…
Starting output to C: mp"breaking down the door sound test0001_0250.avi(ffmpeg
)…
Using type=7, codec=2, audio_codec=65536,
video_bitrate=6000, audio_bitrate=128,
gop_size=18, multiplex=1, autosplit=0
render width=720, render height=480
Closing ffmpeg…

ok, I’ve played with the thing for a while and blender seems to work so far with other blend files, but I still have a fair amount of work left on that blend file and, more importantly, I would like to know what not to do so that I don’t have this problem again when I’ve just finished.

Again, any help at all would be appreciated.

i would suspect the codec is at fault and crashing behind the scenes. Try using a known good codec, like DivX or XviD, in the Video tab.

The video I’m trying to render should be in the normal microsoft DV format. I captured it using WinDV and then adjusted the framerate with Virtual Dub. THe format I’ve been rendering to is the Xvid, although for the final project I would want to use just avi raw or perhaps the ffmpeg DV codec.

I really cant afford the harddrive space to convert all of that DV footage to raw avi using virtual dub and I don’t want to take the sacfrafices in quality for Xvid.

I loaded the same source video (unedited of course) into another window of blender and it rendered fine so I was hoping that maybe it was just that I had accidentally scewed something up with the settings.