WMM export issues, and codec questions.

[fluidstatic]

I'm hitting a wall with WMM and it makes me angry.

I've got about half of an AMV made. I'm aware that WMM is bitchy so I want to export what I have and reimport so that I'm working with fewer clips. Unfortunately, the first time I tried to export, WMM worked for five minutes and then began to count backwards. 6 minutes left... 9 minutes left... 12 minutes left, 15 minutes, etc etc for the next four hours. The percentage never went up.

Soooo, first I got rid of DivX (stupid that i ws using it to begin with, i know). Unfortunately, I'm not sure this was wise, because now WMM is even bitchier than before. It refuses to export at all, and won't import any files either.

I tried installing Huffyuv but i get the feeling WMM is still trying to reference divx, given that I downloaded my original clips off of [redacted] and they are all marked with a divx logo. I assume this means that they only work with a divx codec. am I wrong? do I need to use avisynth to change their format?

At this point I'm in over my head and don't have any effing clue what I'm doing. I'm desperate for a solution to this problem that does NOT require that I delete the project in progress. I know I probably haven't made my problem entirely clear, but that's because I'm a n00b. T_T

I've read the FAQ and a link about converting divx files with avisynth, but I'm more confused the more I read. anyone who can explain it to me step-by-step in plain english would be greatly, greatly appreciated.

[MOD258: Removed site name. Please don't point to sites that contain illegal downloads of copyrighted material, as that goes against the rules]

[mirkosp]

If you got VirtualDub (or VirtualDubMod) and Huffyuv installed, this is what you do:
1) Open up VirtualDub and open your DivX video in it
2) Choose Video > Fast Recompress
3) Go to Video > Compression, pick "Huffyuv v1.3.1" from the list and click on Configure. Make sure that the only option selected is "Always suggest RGB format for output" and then click OK and OK again.
4) If you wish to disable the audio, just choose Audio > No Audio. Otherwise, just make sure it's using the source audio and doing the Direct Stream Copy (should be doing that by default).
5) Go to File > Save as AVI to choose where and with which filename you want to save your huffyuv file.

One thing you will want to keep in mind is that huffyuv files weight a *LOT*. A single episode will weigh quite a few Gigabytes, so what you should be doing is making clips of the scenes that you want to use. In order to make clips, scrub through the virtualdub timeline, and choose the start and ending point with the arrows.