Messages posted by GollyRojer

Quote Try this: In windows explorer right mouse click on the zipped file and select extract all and follow instructions to put it whatever folder.

I wasn't clear enough. I'm sorry. I've been unzipping zip files since you had to do it with the PKZip utility. My question was supposed to be, "What do I do with the mp3 files so that PowerDirector knows where they are?" I was asking under the assumption that they were going to be accessed from inside the program, like SmartSound. Apparently not.

Quote For me there was a download link to the free music tracks of Muzerk in the email as shown in the attached pic.
Jeff

What did you do with them after downloading? I got them in a zip file with zip for instructions.

Of course I did. Thanks for pointing it out. Correction made.

Dafydd B, thanks for your response and help. For the benefit of others who may run into this, here is what I have found.

I have had two problems using PD14: this speed issue, and the seemingly random loss of the sound track, as described in a previous post here:

http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/48662.page#254882

Now I am blaming my camera rather than PD14. I use the camera built into my Samsung Galaxy S6 phone. By all reviews I've read it is a surprisingly good quality camera. However, I first encountered the sound issue right after an update to the phone's Android software. I posted about it on an Android forum but got no responses.

PD has regularly warned me, "Timeline Frame Rate Conflict: The frame rate of the clip you just added to the workspace (29.86 FPS) does not match the project's timeline frame rate set in General preferences (29.97 FPS)." The FPS of the videos coming from my camera are all over the place in those fractions after 29. When I check PD's Preferences Timeline frame rate, it says, "30 FPS (NTSC)". At first I ignored this, because it didn't seem to have any bad effect on the finished product. But when I researched why the setting would say 30 FPS when the program is expecting 29.97, I found a lot of detail that a noob couldn't know without being told. It's more than I can recount here, but if you don't know about it, it's worth researching. A search string like "30 FPS vs 29.97" should get you going.

So my S6 camera is producing videos with a frame rate that varies all over the milliseconds between 29 and 30, and PD14 objects to them. I wondered if this could be the source of my issues. After learning that 29.97 is a standard industry value, I found a program called Handbrake (free open source) which is a video converter. I set it up so that it converts the mp4 videos from my camera to the same thing, mp4's, but sets the FPS to 29.97. Given the choice of Constant Framerate or Peak Framerate, I have always chosen Constant.

I don't know how Handbrake works. I assume it is by duplicating frames to fill the missing slots. Whatever, when I process the mp4's this way and then load the result into PD14 I don't have either of the problems that were plaguing me before.

Is it possible that I'm the only person using an S6 with PD14? That seems so unlikely, but as Dafydd B pointed out, the problems seem to be unique to me. I don't know what to think. I'm just happy that the videos are working in PD14 now.

Okay, I have tested it now, and to my surprise the program worked as it should. That's a wmv; I work with mp4s and haven't used any other video filetype in PD. I'm about to begin experimenting, but if you have any more thoughts I'd sure like to hear (read) them. Thanks!

Regarding the patches, I assumed only the latest is necessary, but at this stage, having uninstalled and reinstalled more times than I can remember, I'm trying anything I can think of.

Here's the problem: I select Power Tools; the settings window appears. I check "Video Speed" in the left pane, and the Speed Adjustment button appears in the right pane. I click it. There is a momentary pause, and then "Video Speed" unchecks. The Speed Adjustment window does not appear.

This computer an Asus G20AJ, about six months old. It is dedicated to video creation; PowerDirector is its reason for existing. It has a pristine new installation of Windows 10 Home. I installed only necessary applications and utilities; no superflous junk. PowerDirector 14 is on my D: drive with 754 gigabytes of free space to play with. I installed PowerDirector and two patches in this order:

PowerDirector_2019_GM2_Deluxe_VDE150717-01.exe
PowerDirector_2302a_GM3_Patch_Patch_VDE151023-03.exe
PowerDirector_2820_GM5_Patch_Patch_VDE160411-01.exe

I then loaded an in-progress video project, selected a segment of video, and attempted to speed it up. What happened is described above.

This problem has happened before this; in fact, it was one of a few reasons I decided to do a fresh OS install and PD install.

The only thing I can think is that maybe that second patch causes it. As you can imagine, I'm extremely frustrated with this. I've already lost two days to this computer remake, only to find this problem still here after a fresh install.

Any help is appreciated.

Dafydd B, I must have missed the notice of your reply. Just now found it. Thanks! I will follow up and see what happens.

Where I'm at right now is, on my slow computer I open PD, load in all the vids, and add them to the timeline. All the files get saved on an external drive accessible by anything on my network. Then I can go to the fast computer to do all the editing. As long as they're already on the timeline there's no problem.

Annoying and slow, but at least I'm able to work. I appreciate your help.

Thanks, Carl. Heh... both of them on front are red. On back I have blue, green and pink, and yes, pink is the one where the mic works.

Well, I removed PD14 using Revo Uninstaller to go after and clean out all the registry and file dregs left behind. Got a clean reinstall, but not everything had been wiped because the new install knew what/where my previous projects were (sigh). And, the problem is still present.

However, I have an installation of PD on an older, less powerful machine, so I loaded my files into it and the problem was not present. Yay!

The issue isn't resolved because of this; I bought this machine with badass video capability specifically to make videos on it. But at least I'm able to work on my projects while I try to get this one to behave.

Thanks for responding, guys.

Thanks, Steve. Speech Recognition isn't turned on, or at least shouldn't be. In the control panel app I am offered the option, "Start Speech Recognition", which I take to mean it isn't running. I would guess that the trouble the dxdiag reports is from when I was experimenting with the audio jacks on my computer, trying to find one that works with a mic only. Two of the jacks (on front and on back) are for headphones with a mic, and one is for mic only (I learned this by trial and error). So the errors shown are probably from when I was using the "Set up microphone" feature of the control panel app, and it wasn't finding a mic to set up because I was in the wrong jack.

Thank you for looking at it, Dafydd B. I will try a suggestion from one of your posts, to uninstall and reinstall PD. I don't have much hope for this, but at present it's all I know to do. I hope Cyberlink or another member will be able to find something. Your involvement is certainly appreciated.

I've attached a zip file containing three files:

a screenshot of PowerDirector which shows the problem

a 4-second MP4 with audio; in the PD screenshot it has no audio

a dxdiag log file

The problem is that when I add an MP4 file to the timeline, sometimes it has no audio--nothing appears in the audio track, and no sound plays in preview. When the file is not on the timeline, but in the media room, it can be previewed and the audio will play.

This doesn't happen with every file. As the screenshot shows, some files have audio. These files were all shot at the same time with the same camera--a Samsung Galaxy S6 smartphone. No settings were changed on the camera between recordings.

Here is my system and app information:

OS - Windows 10

PD - Deluxe 14.0.2820.0

SR - VDE160411-01

AntiVirus - McAfee LiveSafe

Thanks ahead of time for your help.

Six years later, PowerDirector 14, and this still happens. I came here seeking a solution for the same problem of always asking on startup. Pastelskies has the file path that worked for me, with the usual personal name edit. That path is found by going to the edit menu, Preferences, Project, and under the checkbox "Auto save project every".