Error Converting wmv to avi

[snoopy1664]

Hi,

first let me say that this is a great tool. I (and a number of my collegues) have found it very useful and effective.

I keep getting an error which seems to occur right at the end of a wmv to avi conversion. Unfortunately at the moment I cannot remember the error message (fatal error?).

I can overcome the problem by dropping the bitrate right down to about 500.

I had the same problem in the past with an mpg file and again, I was able to overcome it in exactly the same way.

I have a couple of questions:

Is there a way of getting Mediacoder to convert from 1 format to another and getting the highest quality possible? I mean the file I am converting from at the moment seems to have a bitrate of about 1500 and I would like to get the best possible avi file out of it.
I guess that bitrates are not comparable between formats but could somebody confirm that?

Secondly, I don't seem to be able to get MediaCoder to log what it is doing. I have gone into the preferences and set logging on but it doesn't appear to work. The next option (to set the log file location) is always blank. If I enter a path in it and press apply it doesn't complain, but if I go to another option then come back to it, it is blank again.

Thirdly, can anybody tell me what the problem is? I know without supplying much of the essential information this is difficult to answer but I'm hoping what I've described I'm doing rings a bell with someone. If I can get the logging to work I could send that to someone if necessary.

Apologies for the vague nature of this post, but it is a little bit frustrating.

Thank you.