Hi pmikep -

What I usually do is either (a) expand then shrink the timeline or (b) scroll along the timeline then back again.

Occasionally, in desperation, I've ditched all the files in C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\CyberLink\PowerDirector\16.0\Cache\WaveForms but I'm not sure that has any impact.

Cheers - Tony
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Okay, thanks. I think it was your tip I had seen brforehand, but couldn't find.

I have expanded the audio track and scrolled around, but it doesn't force the waveform to paint. I'll try clearing the cache next.

These are 1.5 to 2 hour TV movies. I get the sense that PD is kinda creating "shadow" files for the audio wafeform. (Or PD 15 is waiting on something to complete.) Have moved audio from track to track. No joy there either.

Ordinarily I wouldn't care. But as someone else has said here, syncing audio & editing is a lot easier when you can see the waveform.

I can't call this "Solved," but at least I know why the waveform doesn't show right away.

I opened the /PD15/cache/Waveform folder and watched as a text file slowly buit up after importing a video. After the file is done building, then the audio waveform shows.

I don't know why it takes so long. (Minutes.) It's only a 5 Kb file. The video thumbnails on the timeline show almost instantaneously. I can scrub thru a 2 hour video without hesitation. But my CPU doesn't go to 100‰ while this waveform .txt file is being built. It's like CL set this to be a low priority background thread. (Can't be the hard drive. In addition to the fact that the video shows up instantaneously, I have a fast RAID 10 setup.)

Looks like it will need a patch from CL to speed up. (I looked at the file. A whole bunch of gibberish.I wonder why it's a text file, as opposed to a binary file?)

Quote I can't call this "Solved," but at least I know why the waveform doesn't show right away.

I opened the /PD15/cache/Waveform folder and watched as a text file slowly buit up after importing a video. After the file is done building, then the audio waveform shows.

I don't know why it takes so long. (Minutes.) It's only a 5 Kb file. The video thumbnails on the timeline show almost instantaneously. I can scrub thru a 2 hour video without hesitation. But my CPU doesn't go to 100‰ while this waveform .txt file is being built. It's like CL set this to be a low priority background thread. (Can't be the hard drive. In addition to the fact that the video shows up instantaneously, I have a fast RAID 10 setup.)

Looks like it will need a patch from CL to speed up. (I looked at the file. A whole bunch of gibberish.I wonder why it's a text file, as opposed to a binary file?)

I think your comment "These are 1.5 to 2 hour TV movies." helped in my similar issue:

I am using PD15 and am working on a large video and while doing an "Edit Audio > Trim..." (when right-clicking on a song on an audio timeline), instead of seeing the usual waveform, it was white with the message "Analyzing waveform for display. You can trim the waveform now."

So your comment on the large project got me to do a simple test: I closed out the project and started a new one and simply imported a few songs. With no video files, the test project is really tiny and when doing the "Edit Audio > Trim..." I immediately saw the usual waveform. So I'm guessing it is simply a memory limitation or something and I'm not too concerned of a corrupted program. However, PD should be able to handle this better.

The ironic - and counterintuitive - thing is, PD 15 will paint the (presumably more complex) video thumbnails of a 1.5 hour video in seconds. But it takes minutes to paint the (presumably less complex) audio waveform.

I'm still thinking that using a text file to store/cache the audio waveform was a bad idea, Maybe PD will fix this with a patch?

I did some Spring Cleaning on my computer and installed a fresh (and NTLite'd) Win7 64 HP on a second partition. After tuning it up and applying the latest security patches, I reinstalled PD15 from DVD. Then I did one update to 3424.

To my surprise, the audio waveform on my one and a half hour TV Noir movies paints after about a minute now. Still not as fast as the video thumbs in the time line. But better than before.

So perhaps my problem had been caused by junked up Windows. Or junked up PD, from about 5 or 6 patches (including betas} to get to the latest?

(Oh, I also recently disabled HPET in my BIOS. Some Gamers say that gave them more frame rates.)

In the PD 16 thread I see that there's a new patch. Among other things, the patch fixes a problem of the audio waveform not always showing in PD 16. I don't know if that problem/fix is applicable to PD 15. But I wonder if we'll be seeing a patch for PD 15 soon?