The ShadowEditFile folder is a temporary storage folder, the contents are normally deleted when you close PowerDirector, however, files can remain if PD7 crashes. You can safely delete the contents of this folder.

Robert Intel i7 930, 16GB ram, Radeon HD 5770 1Gb,Ver. 14.12 Win7 64 bit
Intel i7 7700 HQ, 16 GB ram Nvidia GTX 1050Ti 4GB dual drives 1 TB SSD + 1 TB HDD Win 10

PDtoots

ONYA Robert
I was wondering about that myself.

Tony (from the other side of OZ) Tread gently and you'll hear the daisies grow...

Quote: The ShadowEditFile folder is a temporary storage folder, the contents are normally deleted when you close PowerDirector, however, files can remain if PD7 crashes. You can safely delete the contents of this folder.

Robert

I disagree with parts of that advice. My "shadow files" are copies of AVCHD files which are created if I use the "smart proxy" feature. They are not deleted when I close a project and I am glad as then they would have to be re-created every time I open the project.

Worth noting, JL, my ShadowEditFiles folder has never had anything in it, so everything PD puts there would seem to be removed when closed.

Robert Intel i7 930, 16GB ram, Radeon HD 5770 1Gb,Ver. 14.12 Win7 64 bit
Intel i7 7700 HQ, 16 GB ram Nvidia GTX 1050Ti 4GB dual drives 1 TB SSD + 1 TB HDD Win 10

PDtoots

I have also noticed this (hidden) folder a few months ago.

I discovered the folder when I was working on a project and noticed that I was quickly running out of hard disk space (but could not initially figure out why).

It appears that when I place a video in the library window (in my case .MTS files), a .MPG version of it is created in this folder.

Yes; these files can really take up a lot of space.

In my experience so far, these files ARE NOT automatically deleted.

I have had to manually remove them when I was finished with the project.

Peace

Well this throws open a question.
Some of the people in this thread said it gets deleted automatically while a few others said it did not.
This brings us to the OS e.g., Windows XP or Windows Vista.
It would shed some light on the solution if people shared which OS they are working with PD PC specs :
OS Windows 10.0 Pro
MB - AS rock Z77 extreme 11
Intel 3770K @ 4.0 Ghz OC
Gskill 32 GB RAM 1800 Mhz
6 TB HDD, SSD bootable
nVidia ASUS GTX 660 Ti
BenQ 22" LCD monitor 1920x1080

XP Pro SP2

hi Guys,

Sadly, I had some time to look at ShadowEditFiles :

XP MCE
Athlone 64X2 4600+ 2.4GHz 3GB RAM Radeon X1600 SATA 1x 500GB 1x 320GB

Using 5 .mp4 files from 15,168KB to 48,000KB, new project, import to library, ShadowEditFiles produced as .mpg in order of original file size (smallest first) took c.3mins for PD to complete. Nothing in timeline.

Save project, Delete out Shadow files, reopen project with nothing in timeline but with files in library, shadow files rebuilt as above.

Mediainfo on shadow files :
General
Complete name : D:\Documents and Settings\win user\My Documents\ShadowEditFiles\shadowedit4_0.MPG
Format : MPEG-PS
File size : 40.7 MiB
Duration : 42s 600ms
Overall bit rate : 8 015 Kbps

Video
ID : 224 (0xE0)
Format : MPEG Video
Format version : Version 2
Format profile : Main@Main
Format settings, Matrix : Default
Duration : 42s 575ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 7 266 Kbps
Nominal bit rate : 8 300 Kbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16/9
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Standard : NTSC
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.801

Audio
ID : 192 (0xC0)
Format : MPEG Audio
Format version : Version 1
Format profile : Layer 2
Duration : 42s 600ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 192 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Resolution : 16 bits
Video delay : -67ms

These files seem to be used by the preview player??? - if I try to play them with PD open,they play but strange things can happen to PD!

All shadow files seem to have the same format.

Removing files from PD library has no effect on content of shadow file folder ie once there, the shadow files remain.

Produce the project to .mpg 720p and the produced file is also built in the shadow edit folder with the above format.

Produce to a mpg dvd hq and no shadow file is produced. I haven't done any other formats.

Add in .avi files to library - no shadowfiles produced.

I haven't had the time to do a full comparison of what produces what files but I surmise that when some file types are used or produced and have a higer than SD??? res, the system needs to produce shadow files for preview purposes.

It is worth noting the time taken to produce these files (in the background) and how that might affect the way we should approach PD with large libraries of HD files that will require PD to work hard in the background for some time whilst we eagerly start editing straight away!!!

Interestingly, it doesn't seem to make a difference to the load/play preview times if the shadowfiles are deleted and the project re-loaded - they just get built again in the background.

Back to some real work now.

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.

It has to be for the previewer to reduce the processor overhead of decoding the heavily compressed h.264 formats.

However, since this folder is usually hidden, I'm sure it will get fragmented and I'm not sure the defrag utilities will run on hidden files, which will be on most users PC's.

Also, when I discovered this folder it contained 10GB of old stuff, which isn't trivial and it doesn't keep itself cleaned up. Win8 64-bit Pro Retail
Intel i7-4770
16GB DDR3 1600 8-8-8-24
MSI Z87-G45 Motherboard
ASUS GTX 660 Direct CU II OC 2GB GPU
1 TB RAID 1 (mirrored) Drive Array
Several scratch drives for video, TMP, pagefile.

I agree, given the folder is produced in the 'default' export location (which I never use anyway) when I last looked it had 19Gb in it, as you say, not so trivial - depending on your system and housekeeping routines.

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.

OK; this is pretty interesting and I think I may be on to something here. Please bear with me, as it may seem like a bit of rambling, but I think this is worth at least mentioning.

I started a new project the other day and I was experiencing VERY frequent program crashes.

I tried various techniques to remedy this like closing applications and processes (virus scan etc.) as well as upgrading to patch 2519, un-installing and re-installing PD7. None of what I did seemed to make a difference.

After zeroing in on the video files themselves, the crashes seemed to be related to one file in particular I had on the timeline. The name of the file was 00004.MTS (Raw file copied directly from my Sony HDR-SR12). Whenever I included this file in the timeline and began to manipulate it, PD would crash.

I also noticed that when I right clicked this file in the Library window and selected “Properties”, it would give me all the info about the file, but once it was on the timeline and I right clicked it there, most of the info about the file was missing (not the case with other files on the timeline). In addition, I noticed that I was not able to change the aspect ratio from the native 16:9 from the video camera to 4:3 (by cropping), when it was on the timeline. The file simply remained 16:9.

I tried re-naming the file (with PD closed of course), then dragging the re-named file back to the Library window. I could then drag the file down to the timeline and work on it with no crashes. I got the same favorable result when I simply copied the file to a different folder on my hard drive, then re-imported from the new location to PD. No problem dragging the file to the timeline and manipulating it.

Thinking that it was possibly a problem with the file residing in a bad sector of the hard drive, I was about to run a chkdsk as well as a de-frag utility to see if that made any difference.

In scanning the forums for possible clues to my problem, I happened upon this thread. It caught my attention because I had actually noticed the shadoweditfiles a few months back and could not find anything in the forums about it. I was actually going to post a question regarding them, but got side-tracked (as I often do).

After reading the recent posts in this thread, I wondered if these files could possibly be a factor in my crashes. I decided to try deleting the shadoweditfiles (.MPG) version of my problem file and let PD rebuild it (thinking it may have been corrupted.

Upon reopening PD, I was very pleased to discover I could once again, place the file on the timeline and manipulate it with no crashes! I was even able to view the properties as well as change the aspect ratio when it was on the timeline.

Everything seemed to be working fine…that is until PD finished rebuilding the .MPG version of my problem file in the shadoweditfiles folder.

Then, I was back to crashing.


I am still experimenting…

Update (for what it's worth).

There was definitely something about the .MPG version of my problem file (in the shadoweditfiles folder) that was causing PD to crash.

Simply re-naming the file from 00004.MTS to 00004test.MTS has made the difference between crashing and not crashing.

PD generated a file called 0004test_0.MPG in the shadoweditfiles folder.

I have been working for a few days now with no crashes.

I have updated my support ticket (link to this thread) so Cyberlink Tech Support is aware of it.

Dan

Does the files suppose to be deleted after we close the project?

Quote: Does the files suppose to be deleted after we close the project?

Perhaps this will help (from Help files):

Enable HD video processing (shadow file): select this to speed up the editing of high definition video by enabling CyberLink PowerDirector to process the file faster. Enabling this consumes more CPU resources.

· Auto delete temporary files every: select to have CyberLink PowerDirector automatically delete temporary files created while editing, every specified number of days. Click on the Manually Delete button if you want to select and delete specific temporary files to free up disc space.


re: Shadow files are helpful only if you have a slow computer. Do you? If not disable it and you don't have to worry about it.


.
.
BoilerPlate: To posters who ask for help -- it is nice to thank the volunteers who try to answer your questions !
Anything I post unless stated with a reference is my personal opinion.

Since no-one has so far explained the purpose of shadow files I'll have a try:

High-definition video files are large, with a lot of data, which can bog down a slow computer. To get round this these so-called shadow files are created which are low-resolution copies of the HD files and therefore much smaller. These are then edited on the timeline giving the computer an easier time.

The important thing to understand is that once the editing is completed and you go to produce the finished video the edit decisions used on the shadow files are applied to the original HD files to generate the final output.

Knowing this it is easy to see that if the shadow files and the originals get out of sync for any reason the whole operation breaks down. PD tries to keep them in sync by re-creating any that get changed, added or deleted but one suspects that corruptions can occur in this process.

Therefore, as stevek says, if your computer is powerful enough these files are best avoided and can be turned off in the settings. Regards,
Mike

Home-build system:
Intel Core i5 Quad Core 3.3GHz, 2 x 4GB DDR3 1333MHz,
Asus Nvidia GT440 1GB, 2 x Western Digital WD10EARS 1TB, 1 x Seagate ST1000DM010 1TB,
Windows 7 Prof 64-bit, PD 9 Ultra 64, PD 13 Ultimate 64

Thanks people.
This is a resurrected/hijacked thread (see initial start date 05/02/2009) and any issues you have with Shadow Edit files should be posted as a NEW TOPIC.

Thread closed.

Forum Moderator