The most common reason for this is forgetting to close the Explorer window that is displaying the contents of the external device.

What happened when you tried to shut down the computer? That should have taken care of it. Jerry Schwartz

Quote: I tried shutting down the computer; turned off the camera power, and even went to the E drive (the camera) and right clicked on the E drive and clicked "eject", but no matter what I tried I was never able to successfully open the project from Power-director without the camera being connected. Later with the camera connected I found I could open the project but only with the camera connected.

I am going to respond first to the issue of not being able to re-open the project without the camera hooked up.

Power Director does not copy the media files off the camera when you import the files to the project. The reason you cannot open the project files is that Power Director cannot find the media files unless the camera is connected.

You have to copy the files to a hard drive on your computer before importing them to Power Director. Your camera most likely has software for transfering the media to your PC. You can use that software or copy the actual files on your own.

Create a folder on your hard drive and copy the files to the folder. Re-open your project file and when asked if you want to 'Ignore' or 'Browse', browse to the location of the folder and that will point Power Director the folder where you copied the media.

The project file (.pds file) that you save is only a text file that contains the location of the media and the edits you have made. It does not contain any of the media files.

Disconnecting the camera from the computer:
After copying your files to your hard drive, close the software you used for the copy (Windows Explorer or Supplied software). then disconnect the USB cable from either the camera or the computer. Normally you do not Power off the camera until after disconnecting the USB cable.

Hope this helps.

Hal
OS - Win11 Pro, Alienware R13, CPU - Intel Core I7-12700KF 12 CPUs), 16g DDR5 4400 RAM, Video - Geeforce RTX 3080ti 12g, PD11 & PD365
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My Sony vdieo camera crashes by shuting down the USB connection first. I then have had to reboot the camera.
I use MSN Explore to cut/copy and paste on to PC HD. Amature does it till he gets it right. A Pro does it till he can't get it wrong.

Thanks for the help. I found I was missing a step in loading my files.