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Neil, no I am at work, I still haven't tried PD8. Maybe tonite.
Robert, for the sake of a healthy discussion : you have some good points. However, my guess is that not that many people are really doing any serious video editing. It takes too much time for the average Joe. Most would give it up after a few crashes.
Regarding the computer science... I am a long time Windows beta tester (since Win95) and a computer professional, besides doing a lot of advertising stuff, using Adobe CS. Some of the files I work with are really huge. InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash are my daily tools and even if any Adobe product is ten times more expensive than PD9, I still have no crashes whatsoever, with any other software. PD9 stands out, very clearly.
And, I do understand that the PC environment is very much more complex than for example, the Apple products. And it's not hard to understand that video editing is more demanding than anything else. I am still maintaining my view that PD9 is just not ready. It's a beta software, in my opinion. And I wouldn't hesitate to chuck it out, if I didn't have this much time invested in my current projects.
I once started out trying to learn Adobe Premiere and switched to PD7 on a recommendation. PD suited me fine, and I didn't have to fiddle so much to get the 16:9 output right. I still have Premiere, so I am thinking I might just go back to it and start learning the finer points of Adobe settings. Editing is much the same. I can't remember Premiere crashing, BTW. I might just try it to compare stability, as the crashes should be as frequent, if it really is a hardware issue I have.
It may take a week or so, though I will try both PD8 and Premiere and get back here and share my experiences.
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Frustration is the thing we are all suffering from. Both us in need of help and the poor souls trying to provide help.
And we all need to express it in some way.
I can only say THANK YOU to FredB and others, trying to help!
I still need to bitch a little over PD9. Have to get it out of my system. And it's a lot cheaper than throwing my new PC out through the window.
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Sorry Fred, the hardware performance is not the issue, at least not THE major issue, in my honest opinion. I just spent the $2000 on a new PC, thinking that PD9 would work better. It does not. I have exactly the same problems as with my old box. Probably even worse.
And, as one other poster pointed out, software crashing is not really acceptable, whatever the reasons. It may go slow, you may get occesional error messages, though a crash every 20 minutes, average, is just not acceptable.
Apart from Power Director it is very rare that any other application ever crashes, and if it does, you would probably be presented a possible solution.
Some other poster suggested reverting to PD8 and that is actually not a bad idea. I have always used HD video, that's what I started out with and I have always added music, text effects and transitions to my videos. And even if PD7 and PD8 had a few crashes, it's nothing like PD9.
Yesterday, I had to make one of countless uninstall and reinstall of PD9 and since then, PD9 crashes on the opening screen. This is a new one. I am thinking PD8 and I think I will try it out. The problem is that I have a project in PD9 that I have spent more than 24 working hours. Right now, it looks like I would have to start all over again. From scratch. That is something I don't really appreciate.
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Okay, no problems. Here are two short clips.
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How very not cool.
Build 2330 is not even starting, after reinstalling. It crashes on the opening screen.
From bad to worse, I am afraid.
Oh well.
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Sorry, it was a no go. I installed the Nvidia driver, though I had no luck with the VIA site, it's down. However, I ran a few edits and it worked, so I risked upgrading to build 2504, which was a huge mistake.
- Started new project
- Imported one clip (MP4 - GoPro)
- Maked and split the clip att approximately 3 minutes of video
- Clicked on the first part of the video to mark it for deletion
- PD9 frooze solid.
- Task manager says not responding...
I am now uninstalling to revert to build 2330. I never did get 2504 to work with Windows 7 64-bit.
Hasse
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Well, I don't have a laptop and I do have 1 GB on the Nvidia Geforce card, even if it's not a top of tthe line card. Still have a lot of issues, much the same as described, though not very often when rendering video. It has happened, though.
Looks like at least 3 people with brand new, pretty good hardware are having similar problems. The crappy performance with my 2 year old previous PC prompted me to upgrade and it is kind of frustrating that the investment is not paying off. Well, not with PD9, anyway...
It's quite understandable, that video editing takes a lot of power and resources, though crashes and freezes are not really acceptable anyway. A decent message box telling me that I am exceeding the capabilities would be much more nice. :
Hasse
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Hmm... Do you recommend running CCleaner even on a new PC?
Unfortunately, I am kind of allergic to all kinds of generic "cleaning" programs and registry "fixes". I have found that they usually cause much more trouble than fix things.
The bottom line is that PD9 should really be possible to run reliably on an out of the box Win 7 PC, without any third party cleaning processes.
Not even PD7 and PD8 were especially stable, though in my opinion, PD9 has some serious issues, that shouldn't be blamed on the OS. PD9 was developed for Windows, wasn't it?
And there got to be some useful standards for AVC files too, I would think. I do understand it may be a difficult format to work with, though as it is supposed to be supported, why blame the video files?
Don't get me wrong, PD is an excellent application, regarding ease of use and human interfacing. Lot's of powerful tools and it handles a large variety of files and I like it a lot. When it works. It's a pity that the stability really is too poor.
I do hope Cyberlink will address the stability issue seriously and stop blaming OS and file formats...
Sorry for the frustration expressed...
Hasse
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Did you try uninstalling and then reinstalling PD9? Usually helps a little. Sometimes you can make a couple of 4 minute videos before the problem is back.
And try to get the previously released build (sorry, don't have the build number, no access to my home PC right now), which is quite a bit better.
I have an i7 CPU and 8 GB RAM, too, running Win7 Pro 64-bit.
Regards,
Hasse
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Sorry, I don't think this is necessarily a PC problem. I have followed advice to expand the swap file and set it to a large, fairly fixed size and PD still starts to chew hard disk and will not respond for minutes, even with small files. Only option appears to be a complete unisntall and reinstall of PD9.
I am also running Windows 7 64-bit, though I had the same problem in the 32 bit Win 7. No shadow files. And the remedy is the same. Uninstall - reinstall. Just reinstalling over the old install will not fix it.
And I have found that the original PD release build is more stable than 2504, the current build. Reinstalling may or may not last a couple of 4 minute videos before it's time to reinstall again.
I have also found that if a project is crashed, you better resave the project with a new name, or you will probably end up with a corrupt project and have to start over again.
The unresponsive system issue is more noticeable when mixing clips from different sources. I have a GoPro HD and a Canon HF-100 and mixing the content is essential, as I have the GoPro on a wing mount on the airplane and use the Canon for onsite filming. Still, the systems goes unresponsive even with just one type of file on the timeline.
In my case, the system crashes if I try to adjust the sound volume on more than one clip in sequence. I need to lower the volume on one clip, then do something else, go back and adjust the volume on the next clip. As soon as I try marking one clip, adjust volume, mark the next clip and then as soon as I touch the volume lever, PD will crash.
In general, you need to work slowly. Quick switches between tasks and panes may also generate a crash, though it is very hard to reproduce this issue. I just have a feeling that PD9 is generally very unstable.
Right now, I have spent more than 20 hours on a project that appears to have gone corrupt. I do save new project files along the way and I am hoping that I will not loose more than 2-3 hours work, this time.
All in all, I feel like I am spending more time beta testing than producing videos, which is kind of frustrating.
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