Solving the Camtasia-WMV Import Issue in Less Than a Minute

As a user of Camtasia Video Editing Software I have many times ran into an issue that cost me lots of time. I suppose if I’d taken the time to visit the TechSmith knowledge base or perhaps looked for a solution online I may have found an answer to my problem right away. Fact of the matter, I took neither of those options. We’ll just chalk it up to the male thing that is akin to not stopping and asking for directions. I did devise a work around method to get past the issue but that method is far from ideal.

I don’t know how many people edit WMV files with Camtasia; I on occasion have the calling to do so. Most of the time I deal with the Camtasia file known as .camrec or AVI files as the input source for a video project. These two types of input files work great in Camtasia and never cause an issue. It’s the WMV file type that has an incompatibility issue with Camtasia Studio.

The issue I’m referring to occurs when importing a WMV file that causes the following warning message:

C:/bla/bla/blablabla/xx-xx-xxxx-xx.wvm has an abnormal script stream which may cause production problems.

For me there is no “may” about it, there is a production problem and even sometimes an editing problem. What I use to do to solve this issue was use the Camtasia screen recorder to re-record the WMV video to the .camrec format. As you can imagine this was extremely time consuming and a colossal waste of time. You see there is another statement in the error message that would have saved me lots of time if only I had acted on it. It sounds rather complicated so I opted to find another solution – my mistake.

“For best results, you may use the Windows Media File Editor to move this video clip’s script stream to its header before importing into Camtasia Studio.”

After a little poking around recently, I found the Windows Media File editor on my PC. With a bit more poking around in the WMFE I was able to find a one click command that solved the problem. Under the File tab in the upper tool bar is an option to “Move Scripts to Header...”. Needless to say I’m kicking myself for not a taking the time to take the action the warning message provides. Hopefully this has not happened to you.

Here’s the steps to resolve this issue in less than a minute.

-          Open the Windows Media File Editor. In Windows 7 and Vista I found it in Start - All Programs – Windows Media/Utilities/Windows Media File Editor.  

-          Under the File tab, click Open to load your WMV file.

-          Once the file is open go back to the File tab. Click the Move Scripts to Header… option.

-          Again under the Files tab, click on the Save and Index… option.

Now all that’s left to do is to import the WMV into Camtasia to complete your project.