I’m using Windows 32-bit Blender, in Windows XP. Since the upgrade to 2.55 I have had massive issues saving renders. Most of the AVI formats (including the xvid with default presets) often fail to save, with only a “failure to initiate video stream” message. When they do save (at the moment, only AVI Raw seems to even save a file), I then find I can’t reload them into the VSE, nor can I play them in Windows Media Player.
I can’t quite work out the pattern: sometimes if I only save 100 frames or so it still works but longer sequences (I’m trying to edit a 5000 frame sequence) never do. There are also differences between compositor output, which is where most of the problems are, and VSE output which sometimes comes out fine. What I’m clear about is that none of the above were problems for me with release 2.54. So I think the issue has to be within Blender rather than related to drivers, codecs, etc.
There are other basic interface issues too: mouse wheel zoom and Ctrl-A animate don’t seem to work as they should. But it’s the render formats that are really slowing me down. I don’t want to fill my whole hard-drive with single-frame .pngs but that might be my only option.
To be best of my knowledge, the error you get means that one of the required video codecs is missing. Make sure that the requisite codecs are installed on your system. You could also download a windoze blender build which comes with bundled ffmpeg. This should resolve the error you get and allow rendering to the desired container/codec combo.
The other problems you mention and especially the differences in output between VSE and compositor are very weird. Coupled with the interface problems it seems like you got a broken build or something. Regressing to an earlier/newer one might help.
Finally, rendering to pngs is the highly recommened route. You could use that as your master and encode to other formats very easily plus it allows you to recover from blender crashes and genral system failures.
Thanks for all the advice. Outcome:
1… downloaded the latest windows Xvid codec: no difference, still the same error message.
2… uninstalled Blender 2.55, reinstalled Blender 2.54 - problem solved, Xvid now saves properly.
Curious to know if anyone else has had similar problems with 2.55.