HI,
Ok, I've re-read your previous posts and along with the latest information.

1. when was the last time you defragmented your hard drive?
2. when was the last time you clean out the temporary files?
3. Take a look here as well at the number of temp images and wave form text files. http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/9621.page
Specifically: http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/9621.page#41704

4. From the images supplied I don't see any image content in the selection - have you removed them? Do you normally remove them from your project display?
5. I would prefer a full timeline screen shot of the Edit interface as well please.
6. I note you either have a Color board or replacement file in the tracks - not sure which.
7. re the directories.jpg - Mix matching video file content can be problematic when the frame size and frame rates vary. I'm sure you are aware that even where a declared frame rate of a video from a source is supposed to be 29.97fps or 25 fps that some cameras don't actually provide that rate in reality, making merging of files awkward in the least.

I hope you have the right codec to read all the collection of files you have for your projects, installation of a codec pack will help (like ffdshow).

8. The audio files may be encrypted to prevent use.

For the moment my suggestion is:
1. Create multiple pds files and then reduce the content in the timelines so you have smaller projects.
2. Edit and produce your smaller projects
3. Bring those new video files back into PD8 and with the aid of SVRT create a finished product.
4. I have been recommending editors to save regularly and I see that Carl has eluded to this already. Please save many times. For example in a 3 minute piece I would save anything from 80 to 100 times.

I think upgrading your PC and graphics card will help you a great deal.

I have answered this thread from memory, if I've made any mistakes, sorry.

Dafydd

Hello,

To your last set of questions:

1. I use a 3rd party disk defragmenter which runs in the background, so the hard drives never get more than slightly fragmented.
2. I use CCleaner to clean temporary files, I run it sporadically but just checked and it was about 350M of temp files, most in the recycle bin. (And then ran it again).
3. My shadow files directory has 4 files in it (interesting - all 4 for my current project, and 3 of the 4 are xxx_0,1 & 2 where xxx is one of the video clips in this project). The waveforms directory has 32 files totaling 4.35MB. Looks like I probably want to leave the shadow edit files enabled, but don't have any guidelines about the waveform temp files...??
4. I always remove the media files from the "Media Room" of the project once I've dropped them onto the timeline - this project has nearly 240 jpg files and 5 video files. To track that many media files would be beyond unmanageable... but is there a reason I should leave them there?
5. Full timeline screenshot enclosed - although with that many files you can't really see anything on the timeline.
6. I put black colorboards in for backgrounds for title screens... I think that's what you're seeing?
7. I wasn't aware of the video compatibility issues - but the finished product looks fine with regard to that. (Although, I've only watched the 1920x1080 version, haven't watched the standard-def DVD all the way through to check it...) And I assume that if I were missing some needed codecs that either I wouldn't be able to preview the video clips in PD or PD wouldn't be able to render them into the produced product -- is that right?

8. I have considered in the past, the idea of breaking up the project into smaller projects. Seems like I've heard this suggestion more than once, so I'll definitely be doing that for the next project. (Current project is pretty much complete).

About the graphics card upgrade - is there any information online as to what's the best/optimum graphics card performance for video editing and PD?

Thanks again!

About the graphics card upgrade - is there any information online as to what's the best/optimum graphics card performance for video editing and PD?

http://www.cyberlink.com/products/powerdirector/faster-performance_en_US.html Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Quote:

About the graphics card upgrade - is there any information online as to what's the best/optimum graphics card performance for video editing and PD?

http://www.cyberlink.com/products/powerdirector/faster-performance_en_US.html

Great - thanks!

Seems to me this thread is going good places. I appreciate the shared experiences from which I may be able to overcome the hiccups I'm experiencing. Thanks to kvon for providing the detailed info.

I've quite the newby, but I've been pretty lucky. My PD freezes up and crashes occasionally, too. I've really learned to hit that save button frequently. I've been able to put together a modest 12 minute timeline with transitions just to get on my PD learning curve. So far, I've not been able to successfully complete the produce/render phase past about 9 minutes in AVHD without a crash (varies with each attempt). It makes it in MP4.

Yes, thanks for that, Carl.

I'm surprised that the GeForce GTX 400 series is not listed...as the GTX 460 is a very popular and successful card with CUDA support. Maybe the list is not recently updated.

My issues may be card related as I'm using a 9500 that came with the computer. The other limiting factor may be that I only have 3GB of ram (32-bit...quad core 2.4GHz). It may be time for a card update to take a look to see if things improve...then maybe bring the new card to a new computer when I take that step.

Per your card recommendation question, kvon, this is a pretty good read.

http://www.videoguys.com/Guide/C/DIY+Systems/Videoguys+DIY7+Intel+Core+i7+with+Vista+64/0xe07f65920351fbf3ed8f9892355dfda0.aspx

canweshoot
Welcome to the forum.

A very powerful computer goes a long way to getting good performance from PowerDirector 8.

A four core CPU, full RAM, Big hard drive and ATI Video card that supports AVIVO is really key to getting PowerDirector to behave.

The Minimum specs is just enough to work, but not well.
Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

That is really weird Cyberlink not supporting the GTX 400 series graphics cards. I was just about to upgrade my card to a GTX 460 and as canweshoot says it has received rave reviews and is widely known as the sweet spot between price and performance. My youtube channel====> http://www.youtube.com/user/relate2?feature=mhsn

Quote: That is really weird Cyberlink not supporting the GTX 400 series graphics cards. I was just about to upgrade my card to a GTX 460 and as canweshoot says it has received rave reviews and is widely known as the sweet spot between price and performance.

I'm just guessing, but I don't see any technical reason that the GTX 460 would not work fine. I don't know comparison specs well of cards. I see on the nVidia sight that the 460 has considerably more CUDA cores, but the GPU clock speeds are different, with the 460 being lower. Anybody know how to interpret that? Maybe we can get a little feedback on that from the powers that be.

BTW, on the positive side...I copied the 9 minute beauty short I mentioned earlier onto a flash drive and took it to the PS3. The PQ is as gorgeous as the camera original (HF100 AVCHD mt2s and mts). Resolution, contrast, and color depth are superb. The PD transitions (dissolves and fades to/from black) are perfect. I also made some mild Power (? I forget the term) scene to scene corrections of color and even crop/scale to eliminate visible vignetting. No problem. The simple superimposed title even looks excellent. Now if I can just get my system to settle down and get through the rendering phase.