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I have the issue, which is why I was posting in the original thread. I believe I have already posted most of what you are asking for in the now-locked thread, but I will repeat the parts that i can remember here:
- At least one of the failure modes is consistent and repeatable.
- There are some factors that contribute to a less consistent, but similar results, as discussed at length in the original thread.
and then:
1. Windows 7 Pro (64 bit)
2. 8 GB RAM
3. support already has my DXDiag file
4. detailed at length in the original thread, but basically, audio files with idential names and date/time stamps have consistently resulted in failure to render the waveform in PD16.
5. CS001854335, which was prematurely closed and CS001858275, which remains open and unanswered.
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Still sufferring like many others - but I stumbled on a neat way to restore that does not take too long nor is too complex.
Rightclick over the offending clip and submit to Edit Audio/AudioDirector (this is fairly quick) - let AudioDirector load the clip then just exist AudioDirector - you will be asked "Do you want to send it back to PD...?" just click Yes, and when its all done you should be looking at a fully displayed audio track.
In my current project this has worked repeatedly. I am importing .wav files and do not have shadow files in operation.
Alan.
I noticed that too...anything that alters the filename has a chance of working. If only it ALWAYS worked.
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Mark, I can sympathize with you. Have been around since PD8 and at least for my purposes PD has filled the bill so to speak.
For the most part my favorite key stroke is Ctl+S in PD anyone between ver. 8-16. Used to be a regular event after more than 2-4 edits. If not do crash and loose your work was just around the corner.
But got to say PD16 is going pretty well for me, other than this audio waveline glich
I've used PowerDirector off and on since version 7...which makes me a relative newcomer compared to you, but I can't remember ever losing any work. Many hours spent fighting with glitches, but never an outright loss of work. Gee, I should probably go celebrate, right?
There are lots of things wrong with PD16, most of which have remained unresolved for years. The one thing it does right, at least on my machine, is rendering. It leverages my GPU, and that makes it orders of magnitude faster than anything else that I have tried. That's a pretty big deal, but then again, if I can't sync the audio, it doesn't really matter how fast it renders, because it's impossible to get to that point.
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Had this same problem after a new install of Win 10 with the audio wave form line not appearing. PD 16 was looking like a new install. I had made some changes in preferences and had unticked Enable Shadow Files in General.
After a few efforts to find reason why no audio line I ticked the Enable Shadow files on and all good.
So go figure that one?
PD16 does seem to be stuck on those shadow files...it creates the directory whether the box is checked or not. There are probably hundreds of those hidden folders scattered across my drives. It seems both old and weird to me. If a program actually needed such files, it seems like it would make a lot more sense if one could control where they go. For example, "back in the day", we would create a RAM disk and then direct swap files to that virtual disc, because that would make paging a lot faster than writing them to a mechanical hard drive. In the present day, one might want to send them to an SSD, but (probably) never to, say, an external USB hard drive or a network resource.
Of course the very concept of paging was necessitated by the fact that earlier operating systems couldn't handle RAM very well. But Windows 7 Pro can address 192GB of RAM and Windows 10 Pro can handle 2TB, so there isn't much reason for paging anymore. Assuming that's what PD16 is even doing...it's not clear to me. As far as I can tell, all it does is to slow everything to a crawl. But now you're saying that it actually helped you in some way - I think that's the first time I've seen anyone saying that, but hey, whatever works!
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No, my files are all uniquely named (sequentially, by my cameras). The only time duplication occurs - on the timeline, at least - is when I split clips. But they are still from the same source file and the symptom is present even before splitting or modifying in any way.
Though I was using the program an hour ago and the waveforms were working fine. So it's an intermittent issue, evidently.
Well, that certainly sounds frustrating, but mine was never intermittent, although it did seem that way until I understood the relationship to duplicate filenames. FWIW, my Sony camera creates unique filenames too…until it doesn't. I'm not sure if it has to do with swapping out the media, or just deleting all of the content on the media, but at certain times, it does reuse filenames.
But what you're describing sounds more like what I observed before I realized that the upgrade to PD16 had re-enabled shadow files. That was causing all sorts of weird and unpredictable stuff to happen. That feature must be left over from a time when RAM was a lot harder to come by than it is today, because it just doesn’t seem to do anything good on my PC. It seems like it’s about time for it to be disabled by default. It would also be an awful lot better if an ”upgrade” didn’t wipe out all of the choices made up until that point in time.
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For clarity, the waveforms of purely audio clips DO display properly. It's only those associated with video clips. In my case, I use mostly .MOV video files. But I see others seem to be having the issues with other formats as well. Detaching audio/video does not solve the issue. Only leaving the program then coming back and reloading the project does. And that only makes already-added clips display properly.
I saw the failure with A/V clips as well as pure audio clips, but in both cases, it was always when I was working with duplicate file names. Any chance you could be working with duplicate filenames? But this almost sounds like a different issue than I was having, because no amount of leaving the program and then coming back helped in my case.
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Lacking any official reply from CyberLink, I believe I have come up with my own work-arounds. First, deleting the temp files from within PowerDirector is, at best, an akward solution, because while a project is open, PD has those files locked, and the manual delete routine is not sophisticated enough to unlock them on-the-fly. Practically speaking, this means that when audio waveforms fail to render, one must first exit PowerDirector, so that the locks with be released. And then, one must start PD again, and before loading any project, perform a manual deletion. So far, that has always resulted in PD16 then rendering video thumbnails and audio waveforms as expected.
Without any official information to the contrary, I believe that PD16 assumes that files with the same name are, in fact, the same file, but in real life, that's not necessarily true. For example, I have a digital piano that always creates files starting with TAKE00.wav, and then continuing with TAKE01, 02, 03, and so on until the USB drive is full. At which point I would, without much thought, just go ahead and delete the files. And then it starts over again at TAKE00. I think it’s worth mentioning too that the piano gives all of the files exactly the same date and time too. Something very similar happens if one uses the voice-over feature in PowerDirector, since PD16 always uses the same filename sequence.
So if one is working with auto-generated files like that, it is very likely that one will eventually be working with some identically-named files. And at that point, I suppose it would depend upon whether PowerDirector had automatically deleted the cached files. Mine is set for 30 days, so I assume that to be the default. One solution might be to just change that setting to a much lower number.
I guess it depends upon one’s hardware, but on my PC, it only takes a few seconds to re-create the thumbnails and waveforms. For example, with a 30 minute/15GB video file, my machine generates the thumbnails in under 30 seconds, and the audio waveforms in less time than that. Considering how much time I’ve spent trying get PD16 to render audio waveforms, that seems like a pretty reasonable trade-off to me. Of course the most obvious solution would be for CyberLink to finally go ahead and just fix the problem. I mean, how hard could it be to check for file size and date in addition to name?
Failing that, the work-around that I have found is to simply avoid identical filenames to the extent that I can. For example, when working with the files from the piano, I consciously avoid deleting the last file in the numbered sequence from the USB flash drive. That way, the piano will always continue with its numbers sequence, always creating a unique filename. I’m not sure what will happen when I get to TAKE99, but I’ll face that when I get there. I don’t foresee it happening within the 30-day timeframe of PowerDirector’s auto-delete cycle. If one has a lot of such files to deal with, then I suppose that one could name them by date and time.
‘Not sure what to do about PowerDirector’s own tendency to create duplicate filenames, other than to proactively change the name of every capture to something other than “Capture”. But then if one does that, then one will be faced with manually naming every file in the series, because PD16 only increments the numbered filenames when using the default “Capture” prefix. Only then does PD automatically increment to Capture(0).wav, Capture(1).wav, etc. to the filename. And in case anyone with influence is reading this, those are some very ugly and hard-to-read filenames. I say lose the parenthesis and use a hyphen instead.
In any case, prevention is currently my best work-around because constantly having to bail out of PowerDirector, only to then restart and manually delete the temp files is very much a work-around. It seems pretty good the first time, after fighting to see a waveform for a while, but it gets old pretty fast. At the end of the day, the real solution would be for CyberLink to actually address the problem by comparing file date and size as well as name.
Meanwhile, if anyone finds a better work-around, please let me know!
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Thanks Alan, that's a nice description of how to change the audio level from the timeline, but the main point of this thread is that the
I totally agree - I had a video where the sound/vision dropped to zero for a few seconds - impossible to edit out the silence while retaining lipsync without that audio graphic. Got it back and the resultant edit was quick and resulted in a seamless repair in both sound and vision.
I thiink the clearing out of the temp files described above is probably one of the bext temporary solutions, given by tech support, so hopefully its on their todo list for a future release.
Alan.
As for tech support, I basically can't get any. I still have tickets from last month with no response.
It remains to be seen if that work-around actually works. I have had this happen with brand new never-before-used audio files, so in a case like that, there would have been nothing to delete. I will say that some of the audio files that I had trouble with had the same name as some previous files, so if PowerDirector is using filename alone as a criteria for refreshing the cache, that certainly wouldn't work very well with auto-generated filenames like that. One could rename them before importing, but it shouldn't be necessary...it's just another potential work-around.
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Without reading back too far - I assume we are editing the audio?
Select the audio clip you want to edit. Then hover the mouse pointer (the hand) accurately over the volume line (it changes to up/down arrow), then without moving anything press and hold Ctrl key - see the pointer change to a black dot while you hold ctrl down? While still holding Ctrl - click and hold left mouse button and see the black dot change to a red dot on a four arrow pointer. While red - you can drag it around left right up down then release leftbutton when in a place you like. There - you altered the audio amplitude line.
While dragging it around (red) you can also drag it off the selected clip and and the 4arrows will change to a trash can, let go of the left mouse button - and lo the trash is where your red dot ends up! Simples.
Have fun.
Alan
Thanks Alan, that's a nice description of how to change the audio level from the timeline, but the main point of this thread is that the audio waveform often fails to render in the timeline, which makes it pretty hard to do any kind of editing.
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"...press the control key while adding a dot"? What does that mean?
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To delete temporary files, you can also use PREFERENCE> GENERALI:See the extension. You can choose what you want
I had never actually clicked on the manual delete button, but having just done so, I see that the dialog contains a list of temp files - including the waveform files. Thanks - that's really good to know.
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To delete temporary files, you can also use PREFERENCE> GENERALI:
Does that delete the audio waveform cache, or just the shadow files?
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go to the C: \ Users \
[user_name] \ AppData \ Roaming \ CyberLink \ PowerDirector \ 13.0 \
Cache \ WaveForms folder and then delete all the temporary files.
Well, that seems to confirm my instinct that it is a caching issue...and now we know where the files are, so I'll certainly try that next time I run into trouble. FYI, that same folder location exists for PD16 as well.
EDIT:
---------------
I just deleted all of the files and then opened PD16, at which point i was greeted with a message to the effect that I was missing out on the smoothest experience. I followed that link which let to a patch. I installed the patch and now PD16 shows 16.0.2524.0. There were no specific notes with the patch, so no way to know what it was supposed to fix.
I then imported a video file and zilch. Nothing. No audio waveform AND no thumbnails. I then existed PD16 and started over, re-imported the video, and at that point it rendered the thumbnails within seconds and the audio waveform about five seconds after that. So I just don't know. It just seems very fragile.
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I suffer with this lack of audio graphic intermittantly when I use .mts input clips and usually doing something will get it back most of the time.
However I have just been playing with an mp4 clip and cannot seem to do anything to recover the audio graphic.
It is the graphic waveform thats missing. Audio plays correctly and can be modified using the dot method (rubber banding).
Interestingly this mp4 clip displays the yellow (making shadow) icon, and the tool tip that pops up when cursor over the thumbnail also says Shadow File: Generating ... - but its not. I just left a single 5 minute clip in mp4 format - system is virtually idle and no file in the expected shadowfiles folder is present.
Interesting fact - shadow files are also mp4. Does PD think as its mp4 already theres no point in making shadow file? Despite saying it is in progress?
There is definitely something faulty going on. 1) I occassionally get this issue with mts clips altho I can usually get out of it (most times) sometimes reloading project is necessary. 2) mp4 clip does not seem to cause shadow file creation despite PD giving every indication that is is in progress.
Alan.
Unless you are really low on RAM, I think you would be doing youreself a favor by turning off that shadow file business. Not that it will solve the missing waveform. :-/ I agree that it seems like a caching issue, though., becasue again, I have solved it a few times just by renaming the source file and then re-importing it.
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Also in PD 13 it never worked properly
Hmmm...the plot thickens...and this is not giving me a lot of hope that it will get fixed in PD16, if the problem goes back three versions!
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Interesting observations PureChaosX. I had never seen this behavior in previous versions, but now that you mention it, I just recently started working with longer WAV files. Although I have often done short voice-overs within PowerDirector, and those came out as WAVs, so what does that mean? That PD can't handle WAV files over a few seconds in length?
I have to admit too that it makes no sense to me that the program can generate video thumbnails in seconds, but a relatively tiny audio file is too much for it. The whole caching/shadow file thing seem to cause more trouble than it's worth...I feel like it's connected somehow. I discovered that the "upgrade" to PowerDirector 16 had overwritten my preferences from PD15. "Enable shadow files" was on by default in PD16, so I had to discover/disable that before the software started acting more normal. With that option checked, it was soaking the CPU at about 35 percent, which made the cooling fans rev up, and it was also using a fair bit of network bandwidth, apparently (continuously) writing to a USB drive connected to my server.
And as you may know, Windows does a pretty bad job of congruent read/writes to USB drives, so it was super inefficient. It would make a lot more sense for that kind of file to be on a local SSD drive, but PD doesn't provide any way to specify different locations for temp files. I guess it would be okay if I had a multi-terabyte SSD, but I do not, so I just can't afford the space. It seems like a carry-over from a time when RAM was more expensive and Windows wasn't any good at managing RAM even if it was present. But in the era of Windows 7 and beyond, I just don't see much value in caching to disk. Especially a mechanical drive connected via USB to computer that is accessed over a network. It's pretty fast for sequential writes of single files, but it's just no good for what PD seems to be doing.
When idle, PD16 doesn’t seem to be putting any load on the CPU or network since I disabled shadow files, but it still insists on creating folders, so there must be some underlying dependence upon those locations. It might be interesting to do a test with PD16 configured to use my local SSD. But even if it worked, it would be frustrating to have to add another layer of time and complexity to my workflow.
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I am not the OP, but I do appreciate your considerate reply. I have not seen that very often in this forum, so thank you for that.
I don’t necessarily agree on every point though. For example, it wouldn't really take very much programming genius to make it so that the default save name was the same as the first video file opened in PD. And for a lot of people, like the OP, that might be all it would take to bring some order. As opposed to a whole pile of rendered files named "produce.mp4" though "produce9999.mp4".
I could argue on the point of whether the files need to be locked just because they are resources, but putting that aside, editing in the timeline should not require any of those resources to be overwritten. The best way to do most edits would be right within PD - non-destructive edits. And the only reason that doesn't work for 90 percent of what I personally need to do is because of the silly 12dB audio boost limitation. If that was fixed, I'd have a lot less to complain about. That and the maddening disappearing waveform bug.
But with that said, I don't see the necessity of either overwriting or creating a new resource file just because the editing feature is not built into PowerDirector itself. It is possible to do all sorts of audio and video editing on both video and audio timelines, and none of those edits ever changes the original resources. It could just be written right back to the timeline, just like any other timeline edit without changing or adding anything else, and that would be no worse than any other timeline edit. Mostly, I just want it to function like a single integrated piece of software instead of behaving like a bunch of separate programs. And I dare say, it would be far more elegant to work with a single install file instead of a dozen.
I suppose that it is, as you say, a matter of philosophy or personal preference, but I find it very hard to believe that anyone who had ever worked with elegant software would prefer it just the way it is. It is, as you say, relatively inexpensive, but some of these wishes would not be hard to grant, so why not make it the best relatively inexpensive software? Happy customers can be almost as powerful as unhappy customers…if only because they are not UNhappy.
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That's been my beef with Cyberlink for a long time and is why I won't upgrade when all I will get is a lot of bells & whistles that I'll never use whilst the basic issues remain unfixed. I suspect I'm not alone.
Well said Mike. I did submit a trouble ticket yesterday, but still no response.
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Thanks for the reply. I had actually seen that video, but assumed/hoped that the PowerDirector workflow would be better six years later. I just watched it again, and it's pretty similar to the workflow that I came up with myself.
One of the problems, then as now, is that we have little choice but to depend upon that packed project function. And it doesn't really pack everything that relates to the project. If one tries to compensate by leaving the original project working folders intact, that doesn't really work either because there is no way to rename or move assets from within PD, and renaming/moving outside of PD causes the PD to lose track of the assets. For example, PD16 creates a new audio file every time one edits audio with AudioDirector or WaveEditor, so it can get to be quite a lot of similarly-named files. And PD16 adds every edit as a new file and a new resource, so it can get hard to tell which ones are even relevant to the project. There is no way to delete the files from within PD16, making it necessary to delete them from outside of PD. And then it is all too easy to delete the wrong ones.
A while back, I made my living as a network administrator, so I probably have a better grip on file management, backup and archival strategies than the average guy, but I have to admit that I haven't been able to come up with any strategy that I really like with PowerDirector. I've had five(?) versions, and they all seem to have had the same frustrating workflow conflicts and limitations.
The creation of a new audio file with every edit certainly does exasperate the problem. Audio edits should be non-destructive, just like they are with video edits from the timeline. Speaking for myself, if PD offered an easy way to change the audio level of a given track without shelling out to an external program, I would certainly prefer that, but as far as I can tell, there is no way to boost audio levels from within PD16 by more than 12 db. I have an audio source that is always about 16 Db low. There is no way to correct it at the source, so I have to do it within PD every time.
AudioDirector has the same frustrating 12dB limitation, but it is possible to boost more than once, which PD16 itself (apparently) cannot do, so it works, even if it is more of a work-around than an actual solution. If nothing else, it just takes so much longer than if I could just right-click on the timeline and access global audio levels for the track as easily as, say, "mute clip". Audio mixing room won't work because the boost is limited - It doesn't call out dB, which is another issue, but regardless of the units, it's not enough. So that forces the use of AudioDirector, and that contributes to the project management issues.
What can I say? CyberLink seems to get so close to greatness, only to fall short by things as simple as the arbitrary decision to limit audio boost to 12dB. Why can’t I, at least, just type it in? How hard could it be? But listen, I really appreciate your reply, so I don’t want to go off on every single one of my PowerDirector frustrations. Thanks again.
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At some point one of us has to sit down and systematically try to reproduce this problem. Its odd that only a small number of us experience this. Its getting on my nerves though
Is it a small number? If that's true, then maybe most PowerDirector users aren’t working with multiple audio tracks. One might not even miss the waveform if one was working with only a single A/V track. But if one is, then it is ridiculously difficult to sync tracks without the being able to see the waveforms.
Last night I installed the 2503 patch, hoping it would fix the problem, but it did not. But then after that, I had the idea that PD16 might be caching the waveforms, so it occurred to me to rename the audio track (outside of PD) and then re-import. At which point the waveform was displayed just fine. This doesn't make complete sense to me, since PD16 (to my great displeasure) always creates a new audio track any time WaveEditor or AudioDirector is used, and editing in both of those did not fix the waveform. I went looking for cache files, but wasn't able to find any. And yet, they must exist, because reimporting the same audio file did not solve the problem. Even moving it to a different location and then importing didn't help. But renaming it did, so you tell me.
I hope you're wrong about this affecting only a small number of users. I fear that would put the issue so low on CyberLink's list that it would never get fixed. I'm going to open a new ticket today. For all the good it will do...I'm still waiting on a response to a ticket from January 31st. To be honest, the lack of response to that ticket forced me to upgrade to PD16, hoping to gain access to the same add-ins that came with PD15 (that I could no longer access). As it turns out, I would have been a LOT better off sticking with PD15. And I have since found the DVDs to which I had originally burned all of the PD15 files, so that makes the upgrade seem all the more unrewarding.
I find it very frustrating that PowerDirector has some core features that make it far superior to everything else that I have tried in this class. Like the ability to use my GPU to speed up rendering. It makes it at least four times faster. When working with longer videos, its a big deal. It can reduce an hour of rendering to 15 minutes. But then very basic stuff that any NLE software should be able to do, like the audio waveform - unresolved stuff like that makes it all but useless. And other than making noise in this forum, I have no idea how to get the attention of the right people at CyberPower. And those "right" people probably don't look at their own forums, so it seems rather hopeless.
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