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I have had no trouble with menus, but I don't understand what you are trying to do. First, your computer is below the minimum required specifications for working with HD video in PowerDirector 9. You appear to be using Intel onboard graphics, which is possibly the worst graphics situation you can have in a modern PC. The graphics driver is two years old, but I would guess there is no update.
I would start with a good, new graphics card and updated drivers. That would solve many of your problems.
Well, I've bought and installed an NVidia GT 520. Thanks for the tip. Here's the current situation...!
1) It marginally improved the rendering time for MP4. Perhaps 20-30%, but that wasn't a big problem for me...
2) It DID solve the "crash and burn" issues 1/2 way through rendering anything of substantial length. At least as far as 33 minutes of MP4. I conclude from this that the fallback rendering code when you don't have a graphic co-processor is faullty,
3) It DID NOT solve any of the problems I was having creating a multi-project disk as detailed in this and previous notes. In particular, I can only seem to get "DVD" subtitles (not burned into the image itself) working when I select the "No Menu" option. With menus, subtitles are hit-and-miss. For example, on my recent 3-project construction, the 3rd part subtitles don't appear properly in part 3. Instead, they appear as subtitles in Part 1. They do appear as DVD subtitles, however, the Part 1 subtitles are there too, and burned into the image, creating an unholy mess. The subtitles that find themselves correctly integrated (as DVD subtitles), but in the wrong part, show up again in part 3 but this time burned into the image. Pretty soon you get to recognise your favourites as they pop up on the screen multiple times...
I'm not expecting anyone to solve this. But I am surprised that no one has seen this but me. I conclude that as experienced users you know where the demons lurk & stay well clear. How do I avoid these demons?
I'm also surprised that nonsense like this should have been released by Cyberlink. It should have been caught at alpha testing time, let alone beta testing. My guess is that junior programmers have been set the unenviable task of layering onto and fixing an increasingly unmaintainable code base, whose original authors have long since gone on to better things. This doesn't enspire confidence.
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I have had no trouble with menus, but I don't understand what you are trying to do. First, your computer is below the minimum required specifications for working with HD video in PowerDirector 9. You appear to be using Intel onboard graphics, which is possibly the worst graphics situation you can have in a modern PC. The graphics driver is two years old, but I would guess there is no update.
I would start with a good, new graphics card and updated drivers. That would solve many of your problems.
I'll get a new graphics card. Do you have a recommendation?
Also, I've updated the existing hardware's device driver (there was a more recent version).
I should add that even though I'm using 2-year-old stuff, PD, when it works, produces absolutely wonderful high-resolution DVDs.
Thanks for your help.
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In your PDS copy for the original file, did you get a window that had a browse button, it so click it and find where your files are located.
Hi Carl,
I'd changed back to the original (now corrupt) file, so I changed it a second time just now to verify behaviour.
This time it behaved differently. It seemed to have worked, displaying my original 33 minute movie. The last time I tried this, PD wouldn't even open it -- displaying "Cannot find file" even when clicked on. Whatever was annoying it seems better. Presumably, PD was trying to open something referred to in the PDS file & somehow whatever it was is now back in place.
Is there some guide to the functions of the various XML files that PD squirrels away all over the place??
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Hi Tony,
I must first confess I'm a bit bewildered reading your posts.
I'm not sure this is the thread you've started that is the right one for my reply.
It's just that you here write PDS- files- and I (maybe wrongly) read your
post here as if you have been combining the PDS-files.
I see Barry suggested to you (in the crash-thread) to produce minor bits to videofiles,
and then combine the videofiles.. This is the procedure many use; pre-render
bits- and pieces.
Have I maybe read your posts wrong, or have you tried what Barry suggested?
Nina
Hi Nina,
I got the impression that each issue should be in a separate thread, so that people looking for solutions could queue off the subject line. Someone was admonished for asking unrelated questions in the original thread & I'm keen to follow established procedure for this forum. All 5 of my posts seem to me to be different, but who knows, perhaps they have the same solution! What do I know, I'm new here!
As it happens, I'd already split my project up into 3 sub-projects, which turned out to be *almost* what Barry recommended. The difference is that he suggested a master project wrapping them all as included projects; the solution I came up with was to split off the first part as the master project and setting parts 2 and 3 as included projects.
Had I known to do what Barry suggested,, I would have been immune to the "Set Chapters" corruption. But I'd still have got an odd and non-intuitive hierarchical menus, this time in a different form.
That's why this forum is so useful. You old-timers know where the dragons are & stay clear. New users have to work out how to avoid them themselves.
But it's not clear at all to me that any of this splitting should, in a properly designed program, be necessary at all. In spite of having been accused of having precambrian hardware (2 years old), I'm perfectly content editing a 33 minute movie. The system is responsive; editing is easy; saves go quickly. The only downside is on opening a project and updating the timeline, which is a bit tedious. Having one slide-show project is logically coherent; splitting it up arbitarily into three parts is artificial. That's why I attacked the problem as I did.
Cheers, Tony
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My hardware gives quite reasonable response. Why do you think that upgrading the video card will solve what seems to be a straighforward software bug?
Because Powerdirector 9 depends very heavily on the Video card to produce videos. The Video card is not just a display device. It is also a hardware rendering device.
That's interesting. Nice symbiosis.
But surely there is a software fallback method if my video card doesn't support rendering? I suppose there could be an error in the firmware causing the issue, but there are no other indications of trouble (like an entry in the Event Log).
Thanks so much for your feedback and help.
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I see you have an integrated video card with a 2 year old driver, and the video card is entirely too weak to do a 30 minute HD movie anyway.
If you look at my specs for the DM1, that is a bare minimum, and I generally don't edit anything over 10 minutes with it. Sorry, but you need new hardware.
With a true dedicated video card, you will get the benefits of GPU or APU processing on certain file-types and editing.
One thing you can try is to make your project into 2 or 3 separate projects, produce each one and then join them in a new project. The hard work of producing will have been done in smaller chunks, and you can then "glue" them together, it's less demanding. It might work, but...you really need to get a card (if you have a laptop, you're stuck).
I did as you suggested (see subsequent posts). Thanks, although it seemed like the only solution (which as you can see caused other issues to surface).
My hardware gives quite reasonable response. Why do you think that upgrading the video card will solve what seems to be a straighforward software bug?
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Last in a series.
So I've finally got all the bits of my movie sorted out. I've got the first 8 minutes of my slide show as the main project, two subsequent chunks as included projects (forced on me by various other bugs). Another slide show (with chapters) as another included project). And a 30 minute video as another. I'm prepared to live with the nonsensical chapter organization because the menu template suggests i'll soon be viewing a panty liner ad.
I wonder what the "Set Chapter" button does in the list of included projects?
It takes me to the last included project's edit section. Presumably, so I can make changes to the chapter organization. But I'm not in that project's PDS file. I'm in the original first 8-minute fragment's PDS file, which I failed to notice. After a precautionary "Save Project" I'm hosed -- the original project-first-bit file now contains the videos from the last part, and its original contents are nowhere to be seen. When I build the project, there is now no chapter information from the first bit at all. So no menu items on the subsequent disk, which is thankfully still buildable even though the menu items are at this point totally confusing and essentially unusable. And the photos from the first-bit file have now found themselves into the video project's media room.
This whole design looks like cluge after cluge as "included projects" were stapled on to the original design haphazardly, followed by not even the most basic testing.
But I was expecting this, kind of. So I made a copy of the PDS file of the original (33 minute) project) prior to the split of the base into three bits. I save the original file with the name "Broken". I rename the backup PDS copy as the original file. I then open it with PD. I get "Can't find file". No indication of what file, of course.
Anyone know if it is possible to recover from this? I'd hate to have to reconstruct that 8 minute video again...
Tony
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Number 4 in a series.
I've been driven to split up my 33 miniute video into three roughly equal blobs to avoid 1) Crashing at the 13 minute mark during "Produce" when at high quality and 2) Crashing in "Create Disk" when using a not-quite-as-high-quality-but-still-nice resolution of 1280x720.
So now I have these three projects. I include parts 2 and 3 using "Include project" in "Create Disk".
Now the menu arrangement looks like a dog's breakfast. Part 1, with its 3 chapters is good, but parts 2 and 3 are down a level. How is the viewer going to navigate that lot? It's beginning to look unprofessional, although the "wrapper" -- a young girl in silhouette blowing butterflies out of her mouth -- still holds the interest. Perhaps viewers will forgive the illogical chapter organization.
So how to others use this "Create Disk" tool? What I'd like to do is make my own menu hierarchy. Are there other tools out there that allow this? Is there another way to proceed that is more flexible?
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Number 3 in a series.
I would like have subtitles in my final movie. These are the kind that are encoded and can be switched on or off by the viewer of the DVD -- not embedded in the video stream. I tick the appropriate box in the "Subtitles" room. I've noticed the following.
1) If you don't create a disk using a Menu, subtitles work as expected.
2) If you create a disk using a template, you get the "Subtitles" menu item on the root menu, can turn it on or off, but in the final disk neither using the menu nor the DVD control has any effect. The subtitles are buried in the video stream, just like if you'd previously selected the corresponding box in the subtitle room.
3) If you include a project that hasn't had any subtitles added (multi-project in Create Disk), then the root menu looses its "Subtitles" menu option and you can't get it back. This is true even if you subsequently update the included project to use subtitles.
I presume that subtitle support has been around quite a while in PD. Getting subtitles to work as one would expect seems so fundamental to me. So there must be something I'm doing wrong. What is it??
Tony
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Number 2 in a series.
So my first guess at fixing the "Crash at the 13 minute mark" bug described earlier is to lower the resolution down to 1280x720, figuring that the crash is somehow linked to resolution, technical support not having anything useful to suggest. (My intuition tells me there's some memory leak here & memory consumation rate is proportional to how complicated the calculation being attempted is. When memory is all used up, you get a crash).
I get through the "Produce" step. Hurray! Now the "Create Disk" bit fails after several minutes number crunching. The error code EC0030011 burps out with the rather vague message "Transcribing engine's front end stream error" which is further pinpoints with great certainty to either a broken or missing source file or being out of system memory (can't it tell me which?)
A bit of experimentation shows that without menus, it creates just fine and I can happily play the disk. Add a menu item, you get a crash and no disk.
I speculate that this error is due to the part of the software that generates that little picture inlay, part of the menu, not being able to deal with 1280x720 source files. Am I right? Is there a fix? Why can't I do away with that inlay anyways, and just use a text menu item?
Anyway, my workaround (as someone has already suggested) is to split my 33 minute project into three. But I'd rather have one to deal with as I discovered later (see subsequent post).
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Hello everyone.
I've spend several frustrating days becoming familiar with PD9, and have run up against an unusually large number of bugs. In this, and subsquent posts, detail thse in the hope that the answers will help others. My first impression of PD is "Why on earth did they let this one leave the lab without testing it first". I was almost ready to bag the lot until I found this forum. Looks like there are several enthusiastic users here, which is not surprising seeings as the features of PD, when they work, are just grand! OK, on with the problem.
I set myself the task of producing a "Wedding video", consisting of a 33 minute slide show (still photos, "Magic Movie"'d into an interesting video), a separate 8 minute slide show (using the "Slide show" generator), and a 30 minute video. All were to have chapters and subtitles.
I failed at the first hurdle. Producing the 33 minute slide show in MPEG-4/Best quality/NTSC failed at the 13:19:15 mark with the message "Media Source Error". It took about 2 hours to reach this point. There was nothing at all atypical about the picture it was processing at the time. I repeated the operation again, from a rebooted machine with *just* PD9 running and it failed at the same point.
So I tried "High Quality". That failed at the 30:42:04 mark, which is no good if your movie is 33 minutes long. No problem at all with WMA files
Technical support, as others have found, are no use. Their response to this detailed bug report was to copy out the manual on how to produce a movie with MPEG-2. Clearly, they are not the people to make bug reports to.
I subequently learned that my recently-downloaded version was 2701, and so upgraded to 2930. This, too, failed at the 13:19:15 mark (Best quality), but with the far more informative "Error makinig movie" message instead. Trying MPEG-2/HD MPEG-2 1080i also fails at the 13 minute mark. Same place.
So, then, is there something in my configuration stopping "Produce" from working? Do others have problems with long movies? Are there work-rounds?
Thanks,
Tonu
So
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