Zwift Video File with 0 Byte - Windows PC [November 2023]

The video function is enabled in the Zwift game on my PC (Win11 Home - Ryzen 7) and the button is also active in the game. Clicking the button creates an mp4 file of 0KB in size (in the Zwift folder on my PC).

Obviously a file with no content will not launch.

What could be wrong?

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Exactly the same problem on Win11 Home Ryzen 7. Was there any resolution to this?

Hi @Dave_Brodmann_TFC, thank you for posting! I’m Gian from Zwift.

I’m sorry to hear that video screenshots aren’t working for you. After looking at your app sessions, it seems this may be related to a setting on your computer. Does running the app as an administrator change anything?

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Hello. I just right clicked Zwift and selected “Run as administrator”, and answered yes to the box that pops up asking if I really want to allow zwiftlauncher.exe to run as admin. The results were the same though, 0 byte files are created in the videos/zwift folder.

Hi @Gian and @Dave_Brodmann_TFC

I have also tried to run as administrator withe the same result 0 byte video files. Only the photo function is still working

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@Gian @Uwe_Knoll it’s odd that the video’s were working for me until 13 February, but since then it just creates a zero byte. After todays ride I looked in the zwift log file and saw this line:
[12:47:54] ERROR LEVEL: VIDEO_CAPTURE : WindowsFailure, 2 of 10, reasons=[“SaveMovieWriter: CreateSinkWriter failed”, “SaveMovie: reader or writer failed”, “Encoder: SaveMovie failed”, “VCW_StateMachine: Encoder failed”]

13 February appears to be the start of the 1.58 release rollout

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This weekend I discovered that when I try to capture a video screenshot on Windows using F9 the file that is created is zero bytes (empty).

This has always worked before Saturday (11/23/24) and the problem has persisted through Monday.

The only thing that has changed is that there was a Windows 11 update that I installed after the last time I used Zwift on Thursday.

Regular screenshots (not video) continue to work, it’s just video screenshots that have stopped working.

Has anyone else updated Windows 11 Home recently and had a similar issue?

I’ve attached photos of the build information for Windows and Zwift.

Thanks!


As a followup, tonight I tried uninstalling Zwift, rebooting, and reinstalling, but the problem still persists.

The computer is a dedicated cycling computer and Zwift has been running without a single problem for over a year, so I suspect that the Windows update did something that prevents Zwift from successfully performing a video screenshot capture.

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Yes there are several other reports of this. No solutions AFAIK.

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I have the same problem since a few days.
Windows App

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+1 here, since upgrading to Windows 11 Pro 24H2.

Video screen shots, which had previously been automatically captured, simply stopped being produced. I checked settings and they were enabled. I toggled off and back on again. Still no video screenshots since the upgrade.

I have not tried a manual video screenshot. I’m not that fussed about them. But their absence is quite evident.

Oh, and FWIW, I’m using an Asus ROG Flow X16 laptop with i9-13900H, RTX 4070, 32GB, 1TB SSD. Plenty of free storage space. No other games, just Office and browsers.

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Exactly the same s…t, here. Win 11 Pro 24h2 intel 9 no video screenshots, only God and maybe Zwift HQ know why… :thinking:

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I’ve had the problem for some time that Zwift doesn’t save my videos anymore. Files > Videos > Zwift are created for the video, but the file is empty. No more videos are stored on my phone. I checked the setting at Zwift, uninstalled and reinstalled Zwift and restarted my phone. I have no idea anymore. Does anyone know the problem and can tell me what else I can do?

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I feel your pain, definitely. :pray:

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I’ve now hunted down my Zwift video captures and, sure enough, zero byte files from 5th December onwards…

Windows.old folder was created late on 4th December, so it seems a reasonable conclusion to draw that the update to 24H2 was the point from which Zwift video captures broke.

So is this a Windows bug or a Zwift bug? How do we get it fixed?

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@shooj Hi, Shuji. Is this your department? If not, can you please pass it on to wherever it needs to go? Thanks.

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That’s a good question, definitely. :thinking:

Hello, same problem here on Windows 24H2.

From the logs, it comes from “CreateSinkWriter” :

[21:24:38] ERROR LEVEL: [VIDEO_CAPTURE] WindowsFailure, 1 of 10, reasons=["SaveMovieWriter: CreateSinkWriter failed", "SaveMovie: reader or writer failed", "Encoder: SaveMovie failed", "VCW_StateMachine: Encoder failed"]

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