I was playing through this game and several times it just crashed after video sequences. I discovered that only longer sequences cause crashes and that it doesn't matter if the game plays them for you, or you click them in the menu. I tried a lot of fixes, that were suggested on various forums, but nothing worked:

-disabling power management/enabling high performance
-checking/unchecking HQvideos in the game menu
-disabling accelerations and setting options to lowest in the launcher
-compatibility options in the launcher
-setting affinities in the task manager
-windows compatibility options

I even tried to replace binkw32.dll which was the obvious cause for the crashes, but the game didn't start at all after that.

However, I discovered that the game won't crash if the CPU usage is at least 5 % during video playback. I loaded a 10 hour Youtube video, muted it and started the game. The game FMV I tested was (warning:possible spoiler) Roper's Demise and Liftoff. Amazingly, the video plays and ends just fine if the CPU usage is over 5 %. If I exit Firefox, it crashes. Also it crashes if it's under 5 %: I tested VLC mp3 playback with 3 % CPU usage and it crashed as usual.

I hope this helps someone. I discovered this trick too late and the crashing really ruined the game for me :(.

I tried just bumping the CPU usage to 14-20%, but it crashed, anyway. I guess I'll try some of the other "fixes."

Thank you!

This helped me immensely.

I wanted to replay The Longest Journey without compromise, I'm playing it on an old Windows XP PC I keep around for old games, and was frustrated when I ran into the crashes. I tried multiple suggestions....did a driver downgrade to what the store page suggests (didn't work), set the processor affinity to one CPU (would sometimes work), tried setting sound acceleration to basic (didn't work), etc.

TLJ would always crash after playing one of the three Prologue FMVs, without fail.

If I managed to get past the FMV of April shifting and turning around, it would crash and the next FMV where the tree was restored, if through some rare instance I made it through that, it would crash when that dark cloud thing zaps April and she falls. I went through this sequence so many times, I lost count.

...and so far, your solution seems to have worked the best so far, it worked flawlessly for me when coupled with driver 275.33 and setting the affinity to the game to one CPU, which I did when the settings screen comes up when you click the game exe file.

I knew the problem was a binkw32.dll issue and after numerous searches through the forum, I tried your suggestion...figuring I used every other suggestion, so what could it hurt, and it worked.

I loaded up two 10-hr youtube videos in the background and muted them, so the CPU usage was consistently above 5%.

Started the game and went through the sequence with full settings, and none of the scenes crashed. I ran through the prologue again, to make sure it wasn't a one off, and again, no crashes...got through the Prologue flawlessly with all in game settings enabled.

So once again, thanks. I can say this solution worked for me on my old Win XP gaming system from 2005 and hope this solution works for other people having trouble with crashes after the FMVs.

I ran into the same problem. This method helped me, thank you.
Though 10 hour video on youtube wasn't enough for my CPU. So I found a program CPUSTRES that simulates CPU usage. And I needed 20% of CPU use to get rid of this crash.

I never thought this was gonna work, but It was atleast easy to try so I started a 3hr video in HD on youtube, minimized the browser and checked the CPU that showed a constant 10-15%.

And this totally worked! I got through the first long intro film for the first time (with the guardian waking up and April turning around). This has to be the strangest "solution" in my 20 year old career in computing.

By the way nothing on the compatibility tab is checked. That's just crap suggestions.

I bought The Longest Journey recently, got same crash problem, tried different solutions. "Playing youtube video" is the only completely stable solution. But instead of playing video in browser, i ripped .FLV file from youtube and played it in Light Alloy player, and this worked for me. I use short video though, about 3 minutes, i just set it on a loop in Light Alloy options.


update:
I forgot to mention, that i run The Longest Journey on Windows XP, not Windows 7. Considering i have the same crash problem, it is not operating system's fault, i think. It is probably something related to hardware, directx version, or both. Loading my CPU with CPUSTRES program didn't help me, no matter what % of usage i forced, so it's not entirely on CPU load. It is about something that is initiated when we start video playback before starting the game itself.

Strange as it seems this worked for me, although I had to open several tabs with videos for it to work.

There has to be a more reasonable solution to this.

I found a better solution. Play the game in windowed mode. Tada, no crashes and it doesn't require any convoluted methods of keeping the CPU at a certain level or anything like that.

I simply used this utility to force the game into borderless windowed mode.

That's why you use the utility I linked to. Makes it look like it's still full screen.

I can confirm that the CPUSTRES worked for me on my Windows XP PC, even better then the Youtube video solution.

After experimenting, what seemed to work best is when I had Thread 2 checked as Active and set to Maximum activity, while Thread 1 is also checked, but set to low or medium activity.
On my Windows XP PC, setting Thread 1 activity to low provided the smoothest gameplay and FMV playback, though rarely an FMV would crash on a rare occasion. Upping the thread activity to medium or busy seemed to completely eliminate crashing....through gameplay and FMV playback became a little choppy. I think it all depends on how fast your CPU is.

Basically, with using the CPUSTRES as a solution, the key is to have Thread 1 active, but set to an activity that puts use on it, but doesn't max it out....and depending on your CPU, having Thread 2 (and possibly 3 and 4) active and that set to Maximum activity.

I think the Bink FMVs have a serious problem with multithreaded (hyperthreaded) CPUs and multi-core CPUs....basically most CPUs released since 2005.
I think the trick is keeping the additional threads and cores busy at maximum capacity, aside from the 1st one....while putting enough usage on the 1st thread that the game thinks it's running on an older computer.

I tried all kinds of insane things to fix this exact issue until I remembered slash stumbled randomly back into this thread. I can also confirm that CPUSTRES works for us (13% was enough for 4.5ghz 2500k, which was "Busy" only for Thread #1).

A truly ridiculous fix, and I've been around a long time so I've seen some ridiculous fixes. Good work.

Changing bool_HighResVideo to 0 in preferences.ini also works, but is not a desirable method. ;-)

edit: Had to bump it up to Max on Thread #1 (24% usage) after getting another new crash later on, but this now seems to have fixed it again. Hope it sticks now!

Solution with CPUSTRES works for me also :-). Thank you, no other fix worked. I have thread 1 set to medium and went through 1st long animation without crash. (i5-4670K 3.4GHz - about 7% load)

Using CPUSTRES with Thread 1 set to medium also works for me, where nothing else seemed to, around 5-8% load. i5-2550K 3.4GHz overclocked to 3.9GHz