Quote ===========================================

Hey everyone, i have just had a rather frustrating issue come up with power director 18.



I have never encountered this problem until now,



I finished the video i was editing and go to render it, the video
was approx 21 minutes long, however, it's actually only rendering 3.34
minutes of the video.... Can someone help me figure this out please?



i tried saving the project once it was finished to see if that
would change it and it didn't i also added a timeline marker and
highlighted the whole video adn tried to produce it that way (on the
rendering screen it was showing the whoole video) but once it got to
3;34 mark again it didnt render the rest. I have shut down the program
and rebooted and even done the same with my computer and still had the
same result....



I then tried just uploading straight to youtube and it done the same thing again.



Please someone help if you can, I'm so frustrated with it honestly and feeling a littel defeated



Thanks

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You'll need to post your technical specs in order for the techies here to try and understand what's going on. On a very simplistic level, does your computer have sufficient disk space to record your project?

Hi thanks for replying.

Yeah I understand that and I'll go through it and find out but I have plenty of space on the computer and also on the program itself. I have only just come across this issue and I've made a few videos. I will however take what you've said and try and clear more space - thank you.

TDK1044's main suggestion was to supply the detailed computer specs, not check your disk space. Please follow the steps here then use the Attachments button below the forum's text box to upload the results.

It would also help if you took two screenshots showing the Produce page at the start of producing and then again anywhere after it passed 3:34 point on your 21 minute video. We're having to guess about almost everything here and the more details you can provide, the more quickly we'll be able to understand what's happening.

Hi:

I'm having exactly the same problem as the OP (@zombibex) -- amazingly, also occurring at 3:34! I am running PD-18 Essential and my DxDiag file is attached.

I have a 9-minute movie -- straight cuts with a bunch of titles -- with 2 video tracks, 2 audio tracks and 1 title track. It plays all the way through in Preview mode.

When I render the movie, I get an excellent first 3:34. The remaining ~6 minutes renders as black and silent.


Any ideas?


Also, the is my first time trying PD. I still don't get why my timeline has all those tabs. Many of them look like earlier versions of my video but with the tracks all collapsed. (Interestingly, the timeline on those other tabs abruptly cuts off at 3:34. Why?)



Thanks so much for your attention to this,


ArV

Quote

You'll need to post your technical specs in order for the techies here to try and understand what's going on. On a very simplistic level, does your computer have sufficient disk space to record your project?

Thank you for your DxDiag.txt. Please read this sticky: https://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/80133.page#post_box_329488 and take a screenshot of the Timeline and a screenshot of the Produce page as requested by Optodata and paste them as attachments in your next reply. This will help to narrow down the issue here.

Quote I'm having exactly the same problem as the OP (@zombibex) -- amazingly, also occurring at 3:34! I am running PD-18 Essential and my DxDiag file is attached.

Your video driver is almost 3 years old. This is the latest driver from Intel (15.40.45.5126), however many people have trouble updating drivers on Dell systems that aren't "officially supported" by Dell, so you should visit their support website and get the most recent video driver (20.19.15.5063 from last Sept) for your Latitude ES250.

There also seem to be some urgent updates for your system and the Detect Drivers button will probably be the easiest way to make sure your system is fully updated.

Quote Also, the is my first time trying PD. I still don't get why my timeline has all those tabs. Many of them look like earlier versions of my video but with the tracks all collapsed. (Interestingly, the timeline on those other tabs abruptly cuts off at 3:34. Why?)

As tomasc mentioned, screenshots will be key to understanding, although from your description you seem to have nested projects on your timeline. There have been other users recently who somehow ended up with the same situation but hadn't done it intentionally. Take a look at Screenshot (3).png in this post and see if that's showing the same tabs as your timeline.

Thanks optodata and tomasc:

I will look into your suggestions about updating my video driver and other updates.

Meanwhile, I'll also attach 3 screen shots:

• the first shows what my multiple tabs look like. Are these nested tabs? How can I get rid of them?


• the second screen shot shows my preview window parked at around 5 minutes. You can see there is an image there. The timeliine is populated beyone the 9-minute mark


• the third shot is the render window, paused around the 5-minute mark. It's a black screen that stays black for another 4 minutes

Note that the first 3:34 rendered fine.


Thanks for your help with this,


ArV

Quote

Your video driver is almost 3 years old. This is the latest driver from Intel (15.40.45.5126), however many people have trouble updating drivers on Dell systems that aren't "officially supported" by Dell, so you should visit their support website and get the most recent video driver (20.19.15.5063 from last Sept) for your Latitude ES250.

There also seem to be some urgent updates for your system and the Detect Drivers button will probably be the easiest way to make sure your system is fully updated.



As tomasc mentioned, screenshots will be key to understanding, although from your description you seem to have nested projects on your timeline. There have been other users recently who somehow ended up with the same situation but hadn't done it intentionally. Take a look at Screenshot (3).png in this post and see if that's showing the same tabs as your timeline.

Yes, those are nested project tabs and if you didn't intentionally place them there, they're definitely causing your produce problems.

I can't find the link to the other post where the user had this problem, but I think he was continually saving new copies of his project to the same folder as the original project, and each version of the project somehow became a nested project added to the timeline of his current project.

I imagine that the the right-most tab is the most recent version of your edits. In your screenshots, the content you're seeing belongs only to that tabbed project and that should be the key to unravelling this knot.

Click anywhere on the timeline under that tab then type Ctrl+A to select all clips, titles, etc. Go to File > New Project and paste the contents onto the new timeline, then save the new project anywhere besides the current folder. Give it a clearly different name as well so you won't mistakenly open the tangled mess again.

From this point on, everything should work normally and you should never see any timeline tabs unless you intentionally use File > Insert Project. Use the Save command to make regular saves, and use Save As if you want to make a new project with specific edits that you may want to come back to later, but for now, save to a different folder.

If you can tell us how you'd been saving the project up to now, that may help us figure out what went wrong so we can either report the issue as a bug, or make sure other users know to avoid doing that to keep their projects from getting corrupted.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Here's the other thread that has the same issue.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Thank you @optodata!

The project rendered successfully! Yes, the issue was that I had multiple "nested" projects. (Wow -- my first day on PowerDirector and I was already nesting projects. Inadvertently.)

When I was rendering my project, I was actually rendering the "main" project -- which was the leftmost tab and was 3:34 long. The many, many tabs to the right of that were nested projects and I was always working in the rightmost tab, thinking it was the most recent. Every attempt I made to "Produce", though, was just a rendering of the "main" tab on the left.


In the end, 2 solutions worked:

1. Pasted my complete edit (which was in the rightmost tab) into the "main project" (leftmost) tab. The next time the project rendered, it was the full length of the project.


2. Your solution, @optodata. Copied my nested tab containing the complete edit and pasted it into a new project, then saved the project in a different folder. No more tabs. Thank you.

2 questions remain:

1. The original poster (@zombibex) also hit a render error at exactly 3:34. Is there something special about that duration? Something specific to multiple tabs and nesting? Maybe just a coincidence.


2. Why does the edit interface in PowerDirector so prominently display the option to "Click here or drag the selected project to a track" as though that's the usual way to open a project? Dragging my project to a track seems to be what created all the nesting. What's a poor newbie to do? By the way, what IS the correct way to work on an existing project? Maybe just File -- Open Project. No dragging.

Thanks also for the recommendation to update my drivers. This was well overdue and certainly didn't hurt.


With appreciation,


ArV

Quote Here's the other thread that has the same issue.

Quote Thank you @optodata!
....

2 questions remain:

The original poster (@zombibex) also had failed render at exactly 3:34. Is there something special about that duration? Something specific to multiple tabs and nesting?

I don't know of any, but there's a long history of problems caused/experienced only at specific timeline locations, like this stubborn issue from 6 years ago that occurred exactly at the 4:38:15 mark in a 60fps project.

Quote Why does the edit interface in PowerDirector so prominently display the option to "Click here or drag the selected project to a track" as though that's the usual way to open a project? Dragging my project to a track seems to be what created all the nesting. What's a poor newbie to do? By the way, what is the correct way to open a project? Maybe just File -- Open Project. No dragging.

I'm not aware of that prominant display - is it on the Welcome-type screen where you're asked something about choosing to enter the "full feature editor"?

Using File Open or launching PD with it set to open the last project are far and away the most common ways I'm aware of to open projects, so anything that says to drag a whole project onto the timeline will cause this exact issue if there's already an open project. Can you take a screenshot of that message and attach it?

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

4:38:15, huh? Maybe those Martians really are trying to communicate with us!

I've attached a copy of the screen prompt in PD that I think caused the problem for me. Or may it was because -- as suggested in one of the threads you referenced -- I did "Save As.." and re-wrote over an existing project file.

Whatever the reason, I'm so glad this is now working. I never thought that my non-fancy Dell laptop would be able to edit video with such precision. ProDirector has impressed me! And what amazing support from the Community.

Thanks!

Quote

I don't know of any, but there's a long history of problems caused/experienced only at specific timeline locations, like this stubborn issue from 6 years ago that occurred exactly at the 4:38:15 mark in a 60fps project.



I'm not aware of that prominant display - is it on the Welcome-type screen where you're asked something about choosing to enter the "full feature editor"?

Using File Open or launching PD with it set to open the last project are far and away the most common ways I'm aware of to open projects, so anything that says to drag a whole project onto the timeline will cause this exact issue if there's already an open project. Can you take a screenshot of that message and attach it?

I can see why you followed the directions of that prompt, although as with all similar prompts, it's implied that that's how to add new content or effects to the timeline

I still can't see where that prompt even shows up. On my system, I can get it to appear when I'm browsing specific content, like the FX room:



But I don't see where I would ever be prompted to drag an entire project to the timeline. Can you send a screenshot of the bigger context that the prompt appears in?

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°