Media Source graph errors

PCPete

Newbie Location: Melbourne, Australia Joined: Sep 10, 2008 01:44 Messages: 21 Offline

Solved by

Oct 08, 2008 23:07

I'm using PD7 on WinXP x64 (build 3790, SP2 plus all hotfixes) on a quad core AMD system.

I'm using PD to convert recovered HDAVC (.mts) customer footage files from a drowned camera. I'm converting the HD footage to standard D1 (PAL 720x576,25fps) format DVD (standard MPEG2). It's just amazing to see how fast and fun the PD software is at handling these (unbelievably unwieldy) files! But...

I can open the source file(s) and PD finds the clips and renders them fine.

When I arrange any of the clips in the timeline, they get the green tick, but when I go to produce, I keep getting the error

Media Source Error:
Power Director failed to construct the media source as a graph. This may be due to a lack of decoding filters for the file you are trying to edit

I've tried converting the aquarium.mpg, using the same output format, and it compiles/produces fine (naturally!)

If I try to convert more than about 4 minutes of source video, and I ignore the error, the production continues in the background, but no output file is produced, and if I use (for example) an hour's worth of source video, after the error is raised, the production process stops at about 55 minutes, regardless of how long the source video is.

This is a very complex system, but basically all the swapping happens on a dedicated SATAII drive (G: separate spindle), with all system and user temp routed to another dedicated fast EIDE drive (T: with 200+G free space), and the source material lives on a RAID5 NTFS volume (about a terabyte free or so).

I can definitely reproduce the error with about 4 or 5 clips.

I can use PD to preview the clips in the timeline, and it plays through them all with no error or pauses. It only seems the production process is getting confused.

If you need anything else to help clarify, let me know, I'm happy to help sort this out!

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Oct 09. 2008 12:55

Data is not Information; Information is not Knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom.

PCPete

Newbie Location: Melbourne, Australia Joined: Sep 10, 2008 01:44 Messages: 21 Offline

Oct 08, 2008 23:50

Ah, crap, I just found out that some of the source clips are corrupt.

What seems to happen is that when I import the clips, PD breaks the clip files into subclips. Some of these subclips appear to have length, but no data.

So the "corrupt" clips/subclips display as black squares, and while I can add them to the timeline, I can't actually play them or produce a video containing them.

Am I missing an option to be able to tell if such clips (the entire media files or some of the sub-clips each contains) are actually broken without opening them or playing them first?

I guess this is a bit out of the normal range of problems, but it would be helpful if PD could identify any source media as a problem so I can avoid importing and parsing that material (which takes PD much, much longer to perform, although it doesn't break, which is great). Data is not Information; Information is not Knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom.

Dafydd B

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

Oct 09, 2008 12:59

Mts files will import directly into PD.

There was an issue with the panasonic mts ones which should have been corrected.

What's the camera?

Dafydd