Black colourboards replacing clips in timeline (0,0,0)

elbraddo

Newbie Joined: Mar 21, 2010 11:10 Messages: 25 Offline

Solved by

Mar 21, 2010 15:38

Yes - I've seen that there are other topics covering this maddening problem. I've been a user of PD8 for about 6 weeks now, and am close to giving up on this program. So disappinting that a program with such promise, is let down by some fatal flaws.

So here's my story. Took footage of a snowboard holiday. Roughly 200 clips.

Camera - Panasonic HDC-TM10. Outputs mts files.
PC - brand new i7, 4gm ram, 9800GT vid card.
PD8 - didn't have any patched updates prior to this little episode.

My process:

1. Put all MTS files into a folder on desktop of pc
2. Imported all 200 clips into PD8.
3. As first step of editing process, I aimed to just get all the "usable" footage on a timeline. I put each clip on timeline one by one - using multi trim to get rid of unusable video. Took many hours over past week to get through all 200 clips.
4.Two days ago, I went to open my project, and saw black colourboards in place of many of the clips. If I tried to play the clips, I got audio but no video. Maddening! I had had the problem once or twice before but the black boards had just disappeared of their own accord and I'd forgotten abou the issue.

The fix was not just going to be a matter of dragging the clips back onto timeline, as I had spent hours trimming them all down, before placing them on there. (In retrospect, I should have trimmed them and stored them like that, and not just put them straight on timeline)

5. Istalled the 2508 patch, and the 2704 patch,
6. Uninstalled and reinstalled the entire program multiple times
7. Went into the AUTOSAVE file and tried restoring the project to various stages along the way - and interestingly, each stage had the exact same problem. So it clearly isn't a corrupted pds file.

8. I've tried disabling the shadow files thing - but this doesn't seem to be able to help retrospectively. I will edit in this fashion for any future projects that I risk using PD8 on, but I'm seriously considering just abandoning this program.

Anyone got any ideas?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Mar 21. 2010 16:30

PD8, Build 2704.
i7 860 2.8 Ghz, 4G RAM,
Palit brand 9800GT GPU
Win7 - 64bit.
Camera: Panasonic HDC-TM10 - outputs mts files.

vn800rider

Senior Contributor Location: Darwen, UK Joined: May 15, 2008 04:32 Messages: 1949 Offline

Mar 21, 2010 16:14

Hi There,

Before anyone can answer, forum rules are that you need to give yourself a name. If not the Moderator has no option but to lock the post. Just edit your profile with any name within decency and reason.

Cheers
Adrian

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Mar 21. 2010 16:16

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

vn800rider

Senior Contributor Location: Darwen, UK Joined: May 15, 2008 04:32 Messages: 1949 Offline

Mar 21, 2010 16:34

Hi,

You may have picked this up from other posts but :-
PD hard codes the asset file references in the .pds file.
Typically files getting lost/relocated gives the black colourboard.

If this is the case, PD asks when the file loads - Browse/Ignore/Ignore All -and you can manually relocate the assets and PD picks up the location and saves it on the next save.

I assume this is not the case here?

To try to solve the problem, you could take a backup copy of the .pds file, open the backup in a plain text editor - Notepad is OK and look through to see what the .pds file is actually referencing. The location is typically after half way through the .pds file and looks something like this :-

PROJECT VERSION="0700" AEFF_VERSION="8.00.2605" PROJECT_TYPE="0"><INFORMATION PROJECT="" AUTHOR="Adrian" DESCRIPTION="" CREATEDATE="2010/ 3/15 15:46: 3" CLASS="" COMPANY="Company" KEYWORD="" ASPECTRATIO="TRUE" CLVSMODE="2" AUTHORINGDATA="" PACKPROJECT="FALSE"/><LIBRARY><VIDEOSLOT><VIDEOOBJECT ID="5" SRC="F:\Video\Raw video clips\Harry\video 02-04-2009-4.MP4" NAME="video 02-04-2009-4.MP4" MUTE="FALSE"><SUBFOLDER/></VIDEOOBJECT><VIDEOOBJECT ID="6" SRC="F:\Video\Raw video clips\Harry\video 02-04-2009-6.MP4" NAME="video 02-04-2009-6.MP4" MUTE="FALSE"><SUBFOLDER/></VIDEOOBJECT><VIDEOOBJECT ID="7" SRC="F:\Video\Raw video clips\Harry\video 02-04-2009-7.MP4" NAME="video 02-04-2009-7.MP4" MUTE="FALSE"><SUBFOLDER/></VIDEOOBJECT><VIDEOOBJECT ID="8" SRC="F:\Video\Raw video clips\Harry\video 02-04-2009-8.MP4" NAME="video 02-04-2009-8.MP4" MUTE="FALSE"><SUBFOLDER/><

That might give more information as to what is actually happening ??

Cheers
Adrian Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

elbraddo

Newbie Joined: Mar 21, 2010 11:10 Messages: 25 Offline

Mar 21, 2010 18:01

Hi Adrian,

Thanks for your reply, mate.

Few clarifications:

1. The files were never moved, and to this minute, remain in the original folder on the desktop, to where they were transferred srtaight from the camera.

2. PD8 doesn't give me any prompts to locate files. I simply open the pds file and 5 minutes later, I have a timeline on screen, with lots nad lots of black video-less clips!

3. I've had a quick look at the pds file in notepad - and it appears to be referencing the original clips on the desktop.

Should I also be on the lookout for referencing to the shadow file directory? PD8, Build 2704.
i7 860 2.8 Ghz, 4G RAM,
Palit brand 9800GT GPU
Win7 - 64bit.
Camera: Panasonic HDC-TM10 - outputs mts files.

vn800rider

Senior Contributor Location: Darwen, UK Joined: May 15, 2008 04:32 Messages: 1949 Offline

Mar 21, 2010 18:31

I'll need to check a few things with Dafydd tomorrow. He has more extensive experiences with shadow problems from dealing with others as well.

Cheers
Adrian

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

elbraddo

Newbie Joined: Mar 21, 2010 11:10 Messages: 25 Offline

Mar 22, 2010 04:12

Thanks Adrian - much appreciated.

one question I have for yourself and Dafydd; do you know of this problem occuring with anyone who had disabled shadow editing, before commencing a project?

Ie. for future, if I disable shadow editing, can I be reasonably sure that I won't have this problem again?

PD8, Build 2704.
i7 860 2.8 Ghz, 4G RAM,
Palit brand 9800GT GPU
Win7 - 64bit.
Camera: Panasonic HDC-TM10 - outputs mts files.

Dafydd B

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 26, 2006 08:20 Messages: 11973 Offline

Mar 22, 2010 09:15

I'll jump in and give a quick reply. Adrian and i have chatted over your issue this morning.

1. Please zip the pds file and attach it to your next reply. We'd both be interested to see the content.
2. Answer to your question - not as far as I can recall. Once you do away with shadow files, the issue is gone.
3. I've seen your issue happen with mts files and it is mentioned on the forum somewhere.
4. Out of curiosity what length were these video clips - I'm thinking about the maximum size of an mpeg file and whether the shadow edit file exceeded the maximum size.

Adrian and I will confer on this issue. For the moment I think you will have to chalk this up to experience and NOT use shadow edit files. Because you've "played" with the pds/auto saved files we're unlikely to recover your data. We just want to check out a few things and maybe... maybe learn something ourselves.

Dafydd
[Moderator]

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Mar 22. 2010 10:08

elbraddo

Newbie Joined: Mar 21, 2010 11:10 Messages: 25 Offline

Mar 22, 2010 09:26

Hi Dafydd,

Thanks for reply, mate. Very much appreciated! I'm at work now so can't send the pds from here. Will do so later on - although it's possible I won't get to it tonight. I'll do my best though.

The clips varied from a few seconds long, to the longest being maybe 2 minutes long. What may be of interest is that none of the last 10 clips went "black", thus leading me to believe that it's unlikely that one long-ish clip pushed it over the edge and made everything go pear shaped.

FYI - I'm running Windows 7, 64 bit. Is there any setting I need to be tweaking to get the most out of my 4GB RAM when using PD8?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Mar 22. 2010 10:06

PD8, Build 2704.
i7 860 2.8 Ghz, 4G RAM,
Palit brand 9800GT GPU
Win7 - 64bit.
Camera: Panasonic HDC-TM10 - outputs mts files.

just_for_fun

Member Joined: Jan 23, 2010 11:41 Messages: 111 Offline

Mar 22, 2010 12:44

Elbraddo:
I have almost same machine as you. When I first tried PD8 I saw this, but disabled the shadow files and have not seen it since.

Also I have just finished a couple of projects and was moving around some mts files, for one of the projects I moved a mts file I should not have.

PD8 gave me the option to browse and find the file, which I did and it added all the clips back in the time line. The file had even been through auto scene detect and those scenes came back. Just For Fun
i7 Core@3.8ghz 6gig mem 3 HDD geForce8400
Canon HF S20

elbraddo

Newbie Joined: Mar 21, 2010 11:10 Messages: 25 Offline

Mar 23, 2010 05:58

Thanks for feedback Just for fun. I'm quietly confident that if I avoid using shadow files, I'll be ok.

Would still be interested to hear if there's any possibility of recovery based on the info in the pds file.

pds attached.

One thing I should also confess to doing, is that when uninstalling and reinstalling, I deleted the entire Cyberlink folder from my C drive - and also the folder that included the shadow files. However before doing that I did back it all up, and after reinstalling program, I put the files back in their original location(s).

Filename	meribel.zip	Download
Description
Filesize	50 Kbytes
Downloaded:	318 time(s)

PD8, Build 2704.
i7 860 2.8 Ghz, 4G RAM,
Palit brand 9800GT GPU
Win7 - 64bit.
Camera: Panasonic HDC-TM10 - outputs mts files.

Anonymous

Mar 23, 2010 12:09

Before making 'tabula rasa' concerning PDR8 - I've ecountered the very problem you describe.
BUT....
When I closed PD and made a restart and re-load of my project - everything was fine again.
Indeed there was a tiny, but highly effective change between PD8 v2222c and v2508: In "Preferences" go to the "General" tab - and look for the checkbox entitled "Enable file processing to speed up high definition video editing".
This checkbox was de-activated by default in v2222c.
But it was activated (!) by default in v2508 (maybe even in later versions, I don't know -yet.).
v2508 turned out to be highly instable and produced the black-screens 'out of nothing' from never-altered-sourcefiles.
DE-ACTIVATE this option - and your PD8 will be cured from this folly.
And...
give it another chance! It's still one of the most potent pieces of video-editing software (the more, when considering the price!).
I've tried other products, so I know, what I'm writing about (at least a little).
PD turned out to produce the most professional looking videos - despite all flaws it might have.

Michael
(having had lots of 'in-fights' already with PDR5...)

vn800rider

Senior Contributor Location: Darwen, UK Joined: May 15, 2008 04:32 Messages: 1949 Offline

Mar 23, 2010 13:27

HI elbraddo,

I've had a quick look at the pds file :-

There appears to be 231 video objects with ID, I haven't looked through all of them but certainly a majority reference
C:\Users\Braddo\Desktop\snow vids\00279.MTS or similar

but there are a minority- maybe 20/25?? that reference
C:\Users\Braddo\AppData\Roaming\CyberLink\PowerDirector\8.0\ShadowEditFiles\00215_0.MPG or similar - which are the shadows.

There are also a couple that have 0000 after the PD short name code.

If I try and open your .pds, it immediately gives me the option to browse/ignore/ignore all and I can step through the "missing" files which I could then locate if I had them. That also happens when Dafydd tries to open the .pds file

The questions are :-
Is it worth editing the .pds file and replacing all the shadow file references with the main and correct .mts file reference using the same naming protocol and then seeing if the project will open with the manual browse facility being kicked off ?

I have done this successfully in the past just using find and replace and judicial and careful editing.

and

why doesn't the current .pds file give you the choice to browse anyway when it can't find the first file?

I'm almost certain it won't repeat if the shadows are switched off - seems everyone concurs with that but .....

I've sent you a PM with a few more details.

Cheers
Adrian

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Mar 23. 2010 15:22

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

Dafydd B

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 26, 2006 08:20 Messages: 11973 Offline

Mar 23, 2010 15:32

I concur with everything Adrian has written.

To trigger the correct browse response from the activation of the pds I suggest you change the name of the video directory, simply add a character. You should then have to search for the video. Where and when you get asked for the shadow files you should look instead for the correct mts files.

EXAMPLE:
Shadow file "browse message" address: C:\Users\Braddo\AppData\Roaming\CyberLink\PowerDirector\8.0\ShadowEditFiles\00203_0.MPG

Go browse and find: C:\Users\Braddo\Desktop\snow vids\00203.MTS

Dafydd
[Moderator]

elbraddo

Newbie Joined: Mar 21, 2010 11:10 Messages: 25 Offline

Mar 23, 2010 15:39

Hi Guys,

Many thanks for the time and effort you have put into helping me.

Quick question for you, Dafydd; when you say to change the name of the video directory, what exact name do you mean? The folder called "snow vids" on my pc? or what?

sorry - just need clarificatioN!

Cheers!

Brad

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Mar 23. 2010 16:39

PD8, Build 2704.
i7 860 2.8 Ghz, 4G RAM,
Palit brand 9800GT GPU
Win7 - 64bit.
Camera: Panasonic HDC-TM10 - outputs mts files.

Dafydd B

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 26, 2006 08:20 Messages: 11973 Offline

Mar 23, 2010 16:40

The folder called "snow vids"

Yep, that's the one - change it to "snow vids1" or something.

Dafydd
[Moderator]

Dafydd B

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 26, 2006 08:20 Messages: 11973 Offline

Mar 24, 2010 07:32

I forgot to mention - you need to remove all the shadow edit files.

C:\Documents and Settings\PCNAMEHERE\Application Data\CyberLink\PowerDirector\8.0\ShadowEditFiles

Dafydd
[Moderator]

Note: The link includes some hidden directories.

elbraddo

Newbie Joined: Mar 21, 2010 11:10 Messages: 25 Offline

Mar 24, 2010 07:35

Hi GUys,

Quick update. Been manic at work and also at home!

Last night at home: I changed the vid directory name (to "snowvidsa"), and it prompted a "browse to find file". I did that. Project loaded up, but still had all the black colourboards.

This morning at work: Opened the pds file as a word document, and used FIND & REPLACE to replace all references of

C:\Users\Braddo\AppData\Roaming\CyberLink\PowerDirector\8.0\ShadowEditFiles\

with

C:\Users\Braddo\Desktop\snow vidsa\

when I went to save the file on my work PC, it wouldn't allow me to re-save as a pds.

My question therefore is: how do I actually go about editing the pds file and resaving it as a pds?

Many thanks!

Brad

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Mar 24. 2010 07:37

PD8, Build 2704.
i7 860 2.8 Ghz, 4G RAM,
Palit brand 9800GT GPU
Win7 - 64bit.
Camera: Panasonic HDC-TM10 - outputs mts files.

elbraddo

Newbie Joined: Mar 21, 2010 11:10 Messages: 25 Offline

Mar 24, 2010 07:36

Quote: I forgot to mention - you need to remove all the shadow edit files.

C:\Documents and Settings\PCNAMEHERE\Application Data\CyberLink\PowerDirector\8.0\ShadowEditFiles

Dafydd
[Moderator]

Note: The link includes some hidden directories.

Sorry Dafydd, I didn't see this post, until after posting my update. Will attempt to remove all the shadow files tonight and see if that makes a difference.

Would still love some feedback as to how I edit the pds and resave.

Cheers!

Brad

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Mar 24. 2010 07:56

PD8, Build 2704.
i7 860 2.8 Ghz, 4G RAM,
Palit brand 9800GT GPU
Win7 - 64bit.
Camera: Panasonic HDC-TM10 - outputs mts files.

Dafydd B

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 26, 2006 08:20 Messages: 11973 Offline

Mar 24, 2010 07:55

Use a text editor - NotePad or WordPad

You should be able to save it as a .pds

make sure you don't have the pds in use in PD when you edit - Close PD.

Dafydd
[Moderator]

Note: Please ensure you spell names (my name!) correctly - I've edited your post twice now.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at Mar 24. 2010 07:57

vn800rider

Senior Contributor Location: Darwen, UK Joined: May 15, 2008 04:32 Messages: 1949 Offline

Mar 24, 2010 09:27

As a follow up :-

I opened your pds file with PD and had the "immediate error finding ....00279.mts" "Browse,ignore,ignore all" dialogue box.

I chose browse and selected an mts file of mine that I had renamed 00279.mts in a totally unrelated folder on my system.

I then processed the others (one by one - this seems to be important!), that PD asked for - obviously ignoring each one, and the project then opened with all black colourboards except for the "fake" 00279.mts that was present and ticked in the media library and present at 12:23:28 in the timeline.

Therefore, I would expect that you should be able to just browse to each individual file location, when PD asks for it and PD would then bring into the media library each file, subsequently loading them into the timeline.

However, if this is done with shadow files switched OFF in PD then the dialogue box will NOT (as far as I can see) ask for the location of the shadow files named in the project (eg 00236_0.mpg) but only of the .mts files.

If Shadows are ON, it will ask for BOTH the _0.mpg and .mts files so that all files in the project can be located.

The exception will be the shadow edit files that it may ask for and which are not available (or wanted) in which case the original .mts file could be located instead.

I then saved the project and re-examined the .pds file. It had only that file referenced in it with the location on my system.
VIDEOOBJECT ID="132" SRC="D:\Documents and Settings\Adrian\My Documents\00279.MTS" NAME="00279.MTS"

I cant guarantee that it will work completely but you should be able to get back something of the project, maybe all ???

Cheers
Adrian

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Mar 24. 2010 09:29

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.