It fixed itself (Was: No Waveform when displaying (auto-converted) video from Windows Media Center)

pmikep

Senior Member Joined: Nov 26, 2016 22:51 Messages: 285 Offline

Solved by

Jul 02, 2018 00:12

So, I've got Windows Media Center working well now on Windows 7 and use it to record old Noir movies from over-the-air TV.

WMC records to .wtv format.

When I open such a file in PD15, it asks if I want to convert it.

I say "Yes" or "Yes to All."

Then PD15 converts it to an AVCHD video in the .m2ts format.

Fine.

I can edit the movie and SVRT works fantastic (better than when I was using TotalMedia to record same).

BUT - no audio waveform shows in PD15.

I've waited an hour to see if the waveform will complete.

No joy.

The process PDHanumanSvr will run at 25% on my quad core 3.4 GHz CPU for a a long time, as if PD15 was trying to do something. (From what I infer from what I read, that's the ShadowFile maker. But no shadow file shows up in my directory listing.)

As a work around, I can "extract audio" from the movie in a wav file. And that works okay. But an extra step that I shouldn't have to do.

Anyone seeing this issue?

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at Jul 02. 2018 16:32

ynotfish

Senior Contributor Location: N.S.W. Australia Joined: May 08, 2009 02:06 Messages: 9977 Offline

Jul 02, 2018 15:28

Hi pmikep -

I guess you're a bit up against it using "no longer supported" software & proprietary formats, but you've got it functioning. It's not in my experience, I'm afraid, so I grabbed a sample .wtv file someone in another forum had uploaded in a related discussion.

In that forum, they were mainly talking about converting the file before import... so that's the route I initially took. I used MC-TVConverter which (sort of) did the job.

Hang on! Why not just import the original .wtv to see what happens. I did & (after the initial conversion dialogue) it imported and displayed the wave form in the timeline. Screenshot attached.

Maybe there's something different about your recorded files from the one I tested. Have you tried clearing out your WaveForms folder at C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\CyberLink\PowerDirector\15.0\Cache\WaveForms?

Cheers - Tony


Filename	PDR15 WTV Convert.jpg	Download
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pmikep

Senior Member Joined: Nov 26, 2016 22:51 Messages: 285 Offline

Jul 02, 2018 16:31

Hi Tony:

Thanks for taking the time to check this.

Yes, I let PD15 do the automatic conversion of the .wtv file.

Good to know you got a waveform.

I was about to send you a short clip from here of Bonanza to test. (To eliminate locality being a variable.) But when I imported it on my PD15, the waveform showed.

Then I tried my 2 hour recording from yesterday. Now that works too!

I haven't got a clue as to what changed. The only thing (that I can think of) that I did between yesterday and today was to defrag some drives.

But they weren't my OS drive (where PD cache is) and they weren't my working drives for PD.

Maybe there was something that Comodo was blocking? I also disabled DHCP in Windows' Services. But that shouldn't have made a difference.

Perhaps I had left PD open too long working other projects and the cache got too full? (BTW, the cache file was empty when I checked it for you.)

Oh well, alls well that ends well.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Jul 02. 2018 16:41

tomasc

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 25, 2011 12:33 Messages: 6464 Offline

Jul 02, 2018 17:13

I don’t know where pmikep resides but here in the U.S., wtv files convert to mpeg-2 files for ATSC ota broadcasts just as what Tony show. He said his wtv converted to AVCHD video in the .m2ts format. It might be cable TV in which I don’t have to test.

pmikep

Senior Member Joined: Nov 26, 2016 22:51 Messages: 285 Offline

Jul 02, 2018 17:23

I'm in the U.S. too.

The only other thing that "changed" from the time that PD didn't work to when it worked, is that I used PD to burn my first DVD-ROM from PD last night. And so used different parts of the program.

Could that have "reset" some stuff in the program?

Don't know. But glad it fixed itself.

tomasc

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 25, 2011 12:33 Messages: 6464 Offline

Jul 02, 2018 17:33

All the major stations in the U.S. broadcast in mpeg-2 for Over The Air. The standard has not changed. Just saying that the win MC allows capture with h.264 compression. I believe that you are capturing the same stations from cable TV.