Hi mtsarpilot,

Your screenshot indicates that PD9 has prerendered a portion of your project. This is visible by the green segmented line that is above your mp4 video clip on the timeline where the scrubber bar is located.

My guess is that you didn't prerender that section on purpose. Is that right? It is possible to prerender a complcated section by dragging the orange triangles on either side of the Blue triangle to highlight a specific area to prerender. Once the orange triangles position has been set...a new button will appear Render Preview. (see my screenshot) It is intended to render a tough section to assist with smooth playback in the Preview Screen. I prerendered one section with Green segments visible and I have highlighted a new section and the Render Preview button is shown.

The CES_CacheAgent.exe is the process that comes on when PD9 is prerendering a section of your project. It should stop when the rendering is finished. So something seems amis. It should only be running when you are telling it to.

So if it were me....
1. I would call up the task manager and make sure that process was not running....that is probably why you were having trouble rendering your file because that provess was running in the background.
2. Close your project....then reopen it.....is that process running? If it is....try turning it off and then try rendering your project.
3. You may have to delete the "Preview Cache Files" that are created....But I am not certain of this.....

Let us know how you are making out.

Regards,

Kevin
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Kevin,

Great insight, I was not aware of the Render Preview. I was also wondering what the green bar across the top by the scrubber was indicating. I had not noticed the button until you pointed it. PD9 must have done that at some point on it's own. If something is pre-rendered, is that pre-rendered content saved somewhere to assist the render engine when rendering the final video in the Produce function?

When CES_CacheAgent was consuming the computer I had to kill it and PD9 to even get my computer back. To ensure no remnants would affect another try at rendering, I rebooted prior to trying again. I've been through this cycle way to many times

Ultimately I found that having Stabilization, Denoise, and Enhancement all turned on is too much for PD9 to handle. I have them all on because of the nature of the video clip being low light, not sharp, and jittery due to being taken underwater. I turned off Stabilization and PD9 gets through the rendering now. So the program appears to have a problem doing that many transformations at the same time.

The next problem however is that after running through the complete 30 minutes of video and saying the rendering was complete, the output file (MPEG4 Best Quality, I'm starting with 1920x1080 MPEG4 video clips) only had the last 12 minutes of video in it (file size 1.05 GB). The first 18 minutes were no where to be found. Have you ever heard of this one?

I'm getting quite frustrated with all the issues in PD9 and wondering if I should drop back to PD8, was it more stable with all this work? Will a .pds file created in PD9 open in PD8?

Note: I am a computer engineer and PC Power user, so I'm putting a lot of work into analyzing this thing and doing all the tricks I can find, nothing is helping.

Thanks for your advice!

Joel

Hi Joel,

During beta testing I know of at least one person who had these green bars appear all on their own. We had no idea what set it off...what combination would make it happen. I tried setting up a similar project like yours duplicating the different enhancements selections that you had, but it seemed fine.

If something is pre-rendered, is that pre-rendered content saved somewhere to assist the render engine when rendering the final video in the Produce function?

Yes...this content is saved somewhere. Open your PREFERENCES(sprocket looking icon next to the 16:9 button at the top of the screen)....On the GENERAL tab....Select the MANUALLY DELETE button. The DELETE TEMP FILES window opens....choose SELECT ALL....and then delete the files. The only little stumper is that if you have a project open that is utilizing these PREVIEW CACHE FILES....then it WON"T let you delete them. I just Love it!! hahaha You have to close the project and then open a NEW project and then go directly into the preferences and then you can delete all the files.

As far as I am aware....these files don't assist the rendering of a video, but assist in playing back during the editing process. I suppose if you had video in all 100 available tracks it would be pretty hard for most sytem to play that back smoothly. Prerendering would help tremendously.

Ultimately I found that having Stabilization, Denoise, and Enhancement all turned on is too much for PD9 to handle.

I did test that combination and I didn't have any trouble. What you will find is that these functions rely heavily on your CPU, RAM and Graphic card. If you posted your DxDiag file we might be able to see what the problem might have been.

The next problem however is that after running through the complete 30 minutes of video and saying the rendering was complete, the output file (MPEG4 Best Quality, I'm starting with 1920x1080 MPEG4 video clips) only had the last 12 minutes of video in it (file size 1.05 GB). The first 18 minutes were no where to be found. Have you ever heard of this one?

That's a new one for me! I don't think that was ever reported during beta testing as happening. I might be mistaken.

I'm getting quite frustrated with all the issues in PD9 and wondering if I should drop back to PD8, was it more stable with all this work? Will a .pds file created in PD9 open in PD8?

You can open PD8 projects with PD9, but you can't open PD9 projects with PD8. There have been some issues reported regarding PD8 projects opened with PD9 will lose any audio volume adjustments that were in the project. That must be fun to correct !

Note: I am a computer engineer and PC Power user, so I'm putting a lot of work into analyzing this thing and doing all the tricks I can find, nothing is helping.

Try deleteing all those Preview Cache files using the MANUALLY DELETE button in preferences. Then reopen your project and try rendering again. Maybe those preview cache files were causing the problem. Get rid of them and see if it makes a difference.

Regards,

KEvin
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Kevin,

OK, I have deleted all the temporary files. It will take a while for PD9 to recreate all the shadow files, then I'll let it attempt to render overnight and let you know what I find.

I started this project in PD8 and the import to PD9 was a mess as well. Transitions were all screwed up, time sync of tracks was a mess, it might have even been easier to start over than to clean it all up which took a couple hours.

Joel

Hi Joel,

Just one quick thing:

Depending on the power of your sytem...Shadow edit files may not be needed at all....I don't use them as well as many other users here.

Could you post a DXDiag file and we could offer you some feedback. If you are a Power PC user, then my guess is that you should turn them off....that can be disabled in your preference settings.

Kevin
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Kevin,

Attached is the DxDiag file.

I'll let it run without shadow files, certainly quicker to get up and going that way.

My computer is a 2 year old laptop, good specs at the time, though still 2 years old now, so it is not the fastest machine on the planet. My old tower machine can't even crunch on PD9, I tried and it's on its knees begging for mercy.

Thanks for all the suggestions and help.

Joel

Well, this time it got about 5 minutes into rendering and just stopped. No CES_CacheAgent, nothing, just sat there doing nothing. Not even any CPU usage by PDR9. Yet Task Manager showed the program to be happy (i.e. status of Running).

Off to another reboot. Checked the Preferences and found that although I was selecting Hardware Acceleration in the Produce screen, using hardware CUDA was not enable in the Preferences, so I checked it. That seemed to be my death-nell.

Now PD9 starts up then goes to "Not Responding" once started. After about 3 rounds of this I decided to leave it for an hour. 10 minutes later it showed up Running. What the heck. To confirm this was the cause I went into Preferences and uncheck "Enable NVIDIA CUDA". All was fine. Checked it again and instantly PD9 comes up Not Responding. Took about 10 minutes for it to return to responsiveness.

Maybe my hardware does not support CUDA, but hanging for 30 minutes when it is checked is a bit out of line. It's probably waiting to timeout on some hardware call, but this is absurd.

OK, so now I am about 30 seconds from uninstalling this program permanently and demanding Cyberlink credit back my credit card. I've burned something over 30 hours in the last week trying to get this stuff to work and nothing seems to. Any suggestions?

Joel

Hi Joel:

Your graphic drivers you have installed aren't that old (5/12/2010)....but....it has been an issue with Nvidea users. It would be worth downloading the latest drivers, which if I have the information of your system inputted correctly on the Nvidea site were released:

Version: 260.99 WHQL
Release Date: 2010.10.25
Operating System: Windows XP
Language: English (U.S.)
File Size: 112 MB

I would download and install the latest version:
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

OK, so now I am about 30 seconds from uninstalling this program permanently and demanding Cyberlink credit back my credit card. I've burned something over 30 hours in the last week trying to get this stuff to work and nothing seems to. Any suggestions?

It is hard to say what is happening...it has been stable on my system. In the past it istandard procedure to uninstall and reinstall the software as it can correct unexplanied problems....at least the ones we may not have a concrete answer for.
Kevin
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Hi Joel,
I've skimmed through all the thread here - excellent attachments and assistance by Kevin.

Kevin has mentioned the pre-render was a problem for one member but I recall having it start up on my previous OS and so I believed did another beta testers. The OS was XP. Exactly what you're running.

Please advise what preview options do you have for viewing the content of the track? Please can you provide a snapshot of the choices you're offered? My guess is you have only 3.

the video you're editing, .mp4, what resolution and bitrate please?

I don't think you have a powerful enough computer to edit HD footage - it might get by but will struggle a lot. You can not make the choices you're showing in the image/screenshot without overloading your PC. You don't have sufficient RAM - optimise it to 4gb may help. Your graphics card is also too light to preview comfortably.

Just my opinion, others are welcome to differ from mine.

Sorry.

Dafydd

Kevin, Dafydd,

Thanks for both your posts. I've determined the issues always occur during a Fade transition between two videos that have multiple fixes enabled. I've read posting where people are complaining that transitions freeze the last frame and just use it for the outbound transition and 1 frame for the incoming transition until the transition is complete. Fade appears to keep motion going on both clips. Doing all this processing on 2 video streams plus the fade seems to overload the system and all sorts of havoc ensues.

As a last ditch effort to at least get a video out of this project, I'm in the midst of rendering the video without any transitions or other tracks. Then I'll drop that long video stream back into the project, splitting it and inserting a transition at each location. That way PD9 does not have to render all the video with enhancements while also doing the transitions. A major hack, but it should work. Not something I'm willing to do for all my projects though. I'll let you know how this attempt goes.

If this goes well, I'm thinking I'll eventually render a DVD from the resultant MPEG-4 file instead of directly. Will this produce a good quality image on the DVD? I'm guessing so as the resolution will be lower, but there are likely other downsampling effects that could play in. Then again, it's all starting at 1920x1080 and 5MP stills, so the MPEG-4 file is no different than the source video content.

As for the questions you each pose:

Kevin's on driver level, I chose the 5/12/10 version as that is the latest one shown supported on Dell's website. I saw the 10/25/10 version on Nvidia's but wanted to try Dell's most recent tested first. I'll upgrade to Nvidia's most recent and see if there is any difference.

Dafydd's on video input: 1920x1080, 30 fps, 15 Mbit/s

Dafydd's on preview options: I'm not sure I follow what you are asking regarding what my previous options are. Help me better understand that one.

Dafydd's on memory: I noticed last night in the DxDiag that the system is only seeing 2GB of memory. A few weeks ago we changed it to a single 4GB SIMM and I did not even look to see if the system is recognizing it all. I'm thinking the computer has a max of 2GB per SIMM and thus not seeing it all, what a horrible surprise.

It may be that my computer is too light weight to work on HD video. That would be a shame as I'm not in a position to upgrade it

Thanks for all you guy's advise, this is great and far beyond what Cyberlink would ever provide.

Joel

Hi Joel,
Thank you for the additional information.

1920x1080 30fps 15bit - yep as you've found out your PC will struggle. 720p should be ok, but don't overload your editing with corrective effects or additions.

Memory, darn that's annoying for you.

Shadow Files, now I don't like them and they do cause problems. This route might be your only option, however the editing comments i made still apply. You'd also have to allow your PC time to process and create SE files - very time consuming and problematic.

I have attached a screen shot of my preview choices and I have annotated the image.

Dafydd

Dafydd,

Attached is a screen snap of my preview options.

I finally got a video to render by removing all transitions so PD9 did not have to compute enhancements on 2 videos while executing a fade transition between them. Then cutting up that resultant video back into the original and putting the fades in so that it calculated fades with no enhancements on. What a royal pain. At least the final render goes faster as it gets to use SVRT for much of the video content, only having to render the transitions and the still photos.

My computer is within the hardware specs of the product, but clearly pushing PD9 to the limits. Cyberlink has not tested their product when it is pushing a computer to it's limits, as it comes up with many many different hangs and failure modes. This is scary for anyone trying to use the product on a moderate powered machine. Most people would not put in the time I have put in to get a resultant video. Very frustrating!

I'm not sure I care to keep using this product unfortunately.

Thanks again for all the help.

Joel

mtsarpilot;

I recommend that you upgrade your video drivers. Yes, I am aware that Dell does not list this version, but SOO many issues are fixed with the 260.99 driver.
Before you give up....try installing the most recent patch (2330a) from Cyberlink. It is reported to correct SPECIFICALLY the issue with Nvidia cards not responding (albeit the info box only mentions "on startup") . I suggest you give both update (video and CL patch) a try before moving on...

CL Program - http://www.cyberlink.com/downloads/support/powerdirector/patches_en_US.html

Video - http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook-winxp-260.99-whql-driver.html

Install the video driver "on top of" the existing driver. Then you can always "rollback" the driver if it doesn't help or creates issues.

Sending this out to all companies involved with television film and video.
I do not know if you do business with Cyberlink but just in case I would like to let you know they are selling defective software and then forcing their customers to pay $30 more for tech support. I can't even get the software installed properly and they refuse to help unless I purchase their tech support. Please do not do business with them. They are running a big scam. If you know of any entity I could call to report them it would be greatly appreciated