Hi Ken -

I don't pretend to understand coding, but what I understand is that when you import media into PD there is no actual physical import. What is "imported" is the file directory for each clip, image, audio clip etc.

That means that when the same media, or its parent folder, is moved or renamed on your PC - PD can't find them, hence the prompt to "Browse".

The easiest way to overcome any issues you may be having is to
(a) copy all media needed for a project into a folder at the outset
(b) Pack the project - which effectively does the same thing... Director's Chair > File > Export > Pack Project Materials

Custom menus, PiP objects etc are kept in C:\Users\(name)\Documents\CyberLink\PowerDirector\8.0

Cheers - Tony
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(b) Pack the project - which effectively does the same thing... Director's Chair > File > Export > Pack Project Materials

A pack does a good job for vid, pics, music in the timeline but does not catch the background menu music and other items in the menu which I thought may have been his issue from the title. For these it's a manual job as far as I know and yes the path is hard coded into the files and Tony gave a path that these files are stored and the menus are back a dir C:\Documents and Settings\USER\My Documents\CyberLink\Custom Menus

Jeff

It could be considered poor coding under some circumstances. However, with so many versions of Windows out, My Documents doesn't always follow the same absolute path. A reference to a special folder could be used, but what if I use a folder that I created. Broken. In my opinion, a program that uses this many imported files is just easier to create using absolute paths. Relative paths work better when the program can control the files being used. I believe that is what packing the project does for you. __________________________________
CORNBLOSSOM

Thanks, my issue is why convert the virtual path to a hard coded one, it defeats the purpose of these Special Folders. My %HOMEPATH%\My Documents is on E: drive today and maybe I: drive tomorrow, but any program maintaining the Special Folder path won't need to know that or care. Now due to different versions of Windows, maybe that is harder to code for or won't work on a MAC.

This comes from the Wikipedia definition of "My Documents"
Note that "My Documents" in these operating systems is one of a number of Special Folders - a concept introduced in Windows 2000 to add a layer of abstraction between the user interface's presentation of the folder and its physical location and contents. As such, "My Documents" in file load/save dialogs (and in Windows Explorer) doesn't appear as an absolute path. A user can change the physical location of "My Documents" by right-clicking on the "My Documents" icon, selecting the Properties option, and entering a new folder location (path) in the Target tab.

Windows Vista renames "My Documents" as, simply, "Documents". "My Music", "My Pictures" and "My Videos" have also lost their prefix, and have moved to directly under the user's profile directory (C:\Users\[user name]).

As of Windows 7, The "Documents", "Pictures", "Music" and "Videos" folders appear displayed in Windows Explorer with a "My" prefix but are actually still stored in the file system without the prefix (as in Windows Vista).

An application can convert environment strings in a user-supplied path (e.g. "%HOMEPATH%\My Documents") to an actual path by (for example) calling the function ExpandEnvironmentStrings.
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