As an update, I have been using PD6 heavily since my last post trying to get as many of my projects finished before I have to perform a radical uninstall/reinstall of PD just to get it to work without all the aggravation. Consequently, several more issues that I did not mention in the first post came to attention.

1. PD freezes often on capture from discs that it previously did not have problems. Usually when this happens, the video will preview in the capture screen, but will freeze on the start to record it to a HD folder. One out of five captures will preview the clip for a second or two then freeze up catastrophically requiring a complete termination of PD and starting over. If I wait and do nothing, the clip will "unfreeze" for a brief second or two, then lurch to a halt again. Again, I have to completely terminate and start over it clear the problem.

2. A weird quirk in the capture: sometimes PD will play the video to be captured automatically, other times it only displays a still in the monitor and will not play at all, even if I click the play button. When it does play, the only way to stop it is to click the play arrow first (even though it is playing) then click the stop button. If I click the stop button only, I have a 50/50 chance of either locking the program or having nothing happen at all. Further, if I have two programs on the disc to be copied, I can only see and access the first one if I wish to view it on the capture monitor. This is true even when I only check the second program and leave the box on the first program blank.

3. Sometimes when I am capturing video off a disc, PD will go into a glacially slow capture where it takes almost an hour to retrieve the material. This slowdown is not dependent upon the length of the video clip or the brand of the disc. It just happens. The only solution is to terminate the program completely and start over.

4. PD will randomly crash (about 1 in 8 commands) when I click OK on the first Produce menu screen after I identify where I want the produced clip to go.

5. PD will randomly crash (about one in five commands) when I try to modify a custom disc menu or when I change between custom templates. It is as if I somehow asked the PD to do more than it is capable of doing so it simply melts down.

6. The music saved with the disc menus consistently drops off when I close or start a new template, no matter how many times I save the template/menu or which command I use to perform the function.

I realize PD may be corrupted, and a reinstall is the only solution to "fix" the problem. However, I have already reinstalled PD several times in the short few months I have used it. Each time is a major undertaking as the reinstall wipes out my tags to the previously built projects. Is anyone else having these same issues or am I just the lightening rod that makes smooth running for everyone else possible?

If anyone has any viable suggestions, I would greatly appreciate it. As I said earlier, I like PD for its ease of use and the interface. However, if PD has difficulties maintaining stability or does not play well with other programs on my computer, I am forced to face the facts I will need to learn another editing program. Having to regularly reinstall the program knowing it will wipe out my previous work or the tags to my .pds files just to reset the program is a poor solution no matter how much I like PD. Shelling out more money for the upgrade to PD7 is definitely not a strong solution considering my growing lack of confidence in PD6. When PD is working right, it is a great program, but the inconvenience of having the program self-terminate frequently for a variety of reasons at all the wrong times is getting more than a bit old.

Jim

Hi Jim,

I'm hitting information overload with all the stuff you've written - I'm going to have to read through it all to pick out precise data.

I think the crux of your problem lies with your PC and the need to:
1. clean up your disc drives, defragment them
2. Sort out the amount of Ram you have
3. the location of your data storage and the capability of data transfer
4. The hardware devices themselves - there are reports on this forum of SATA and IDE's not performing well with combined data transfer.
5. Shut down background running programs - completely
6. Prevent program updating without referral

PD and all video editing software are indeed greedy on resources and you have to manage your system to suit.

To reitterate I don't think it's PD6 that's the issue here, I think it's your PC set up that's faltering under the strain or a failure of connection capability.

Editing from a dvd disc is NOT a method I would employ or recommend. Drive reading and importing is slow and totally reliant on the connection between the devices and if it's been internally incorrectly set up then you really will have a slow connection.

Always edit from a hard drive and/or a USB2 connected portable device NEVER from a dvd disc.

Please ensure you have the latest build of PD6 (2319) and apply it.

Uninstalling and re-installing will NOT effect projects stored on your hard drive. Moving a portable hard drive and placing the connection in a different slot will as you risk the possibility of your PC allocating a new alphabetical letter.

Uninstalling and re-installing corrects corrupt files in your OS and within the program itself. It is the first option you should try.

Dafydd

Dafydd


Hi, Dafydd, thank you for the help with this one. While I can genuinely appreciate the focus on my computer hardware, I still think PD has much to do with its own troubles. I admit my machine is not the latest and greatest. It is a Pentium 4 with 1 GB RAM. The RAM is relatively new as I replaced it about 6 months ago. My data storage is on its own partitions. I have three working partitions at 108 GB, 100 GB and 15 GB on my local HDDs with two external HDs of 500 GB and 350 GB connected via USB. I only work off the internal HDs (I transfer projects from the external HDs due to the slower USB connections. The external HDs are storage and archive only.). I do not edit off a dvd disc. I record raw material to disc, then capture from the disc to the HD.

All of my HDs have been defragmented (I do this regularly as I am always moving data from my internal working partitions to my archives on the external HDs.). I have both SATA and IDE hard drives and the problems experienced are not exclusive to either type. I have shut down all background processes when I am capturing and burning, but the problems persist. In accordance with your instructions, I also shut down several background processes during the editing process also, especially anti-virus and anti-spyware programs, but the crash issues are the same. I have moved some projects to other locations to free up space in the working areas to give PD more room to function. No change on the program failures. I am wearing out crash dummies on this end along with my patience.

Today, I noticed a few more intermittent quirks related to capture, but they are not consistent with every action. When I capture video from a source, the recorded box usually gives me a running total of transferred data. Lately, this counter has been staying at 0.0 bytes but the transfer occurs all the same. Further, the pie chart space available indicator on the capture screen has been highly inaccurate, especially when it involves reading space on a mounted hard drive. It is a bit more accurate with internal lettered drives with a bit more variance with external hard drives. Mounted drives forget it. The indicator is way off the mark. While I have been ignoring it, I wonder if this is representative of a bigger issue and may have something to do with the crashes when it deals with mounted drives. Regretfully, the crashes are not limited to operations involving access to these drives.

While pointing to my hardware my easily explain some of the problems. PD’s penchant to crash when trying to save disc menus, accessing the help index, trying to advance a video clip using the arrow buttons (on a first time video capture project) or completely freezing on a video capture from a known good dvd +RW disc are all matters that point to the program first. I can appreciate if PD is in conflict with some other program for resources as PD does have an obviously voracious appetite for memory, but that still does not explain why it is crashing all the time. When PD is performing an operation, whether it be capture, edit or burn, it is not uncommon for my memory to instantly skyrocket to 100% and stay there for the duration of PD's performance. That obviously brings my PC to a screeching halt. Is this normal? As of today, I am not able to save a disc menu due to the program crashing whenever I try to save the menu either as a template using the template icon or a simply save using the green check mark. The whole program just crashes. I have had to rebuild the disc menu five times without success. Needless to say, I am ready to call it quits with PD.

I installed the latest build weeks ago when I had other issues with PD. I am at my wits end with this program. I will try another reinstall. Hopefully it will not result in the mess I had the last time.

Thanks again, Dafydd. I am crossing my fingers on this one.

Jim

Hi Jim,

Thank you for all the information.
Can you please check and update your drivers - pretty standard instruction and it does help.
I still think it's your PC. Example: An overheating CPU (ready to die) can be a cause.
Partitioning a Hard Drive, I tend not to nowadays.

Here are a few links, you might have read them already.

http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/2413.page

http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/2564.page

Dafydd

Thanks, Dafydd, for the patience. I looked at the links provided. While a new machine would definitely be a welcome sight, the budget is not flexible enough at this time to consider it an option. That being said, I will crack my case and check my HDs to determine their connections. My second, bigger HD is not original with the unit, and I do not remember how it is connected. I do have two other 500 GB SATA Seagate HDs that I had purchased for a new build that had to be put on hold. If necessary, I will do a swap and migration. Major pain, but worth it if it solves my problem.

Again, thanks for the help. I am not trying to run down PD. I really like it when it is working right. It is easy to use and more user friendly than some of the other programs I have tried. Regretfully, it is also a bit more fickle.

Jim

I have not had the chance to crack my case yet, as I have been working on a video project. To my chagrin, a new problem with the disc menu designer has brought the work to a halt while I try to figure out just what is happening. Due to the crash problems associated with the template I was using for this project, I built a new one from scratch. The template was customized from the thumbnail paintbrush template. I put a black colorboard as the background, and I have four thumbnails arranged in a square pattern with an image in the middle identifying the movie. A simple title at the top and the navigation buttons underneath the image at lower center. There are three pages total with 11 buttons. I set it up in the designer window for each thumbnail to highlight with a red border when selected and the navigation buttons to highlight green. By the designer, everything is correct. When I click save as a template, no issues. The template saves. When I click the green check, no issues. The main screen returns. But when I click preview in the disc menu, all highlight features "disappear," at least, that is what seems to happen. In actuality, the thumbnail highlights are being hidden by something, as if muted behind a second colorboard. When the highlight is red, the color is a faint gray/black that is not seen at all on a final burn. When I re-opened the disc designer to the button page, all highlights were turned off. When I select the red border again, the designer highlights red border. I click save template or green check, the red border remains. When I click preview on the disc menu window, the red border disappears to the faint black. I tried green, the highlight changes to a muted brown. Yellow is undetectable. Every time I re-open the modified template with the disc designer, the button highlights default back to none. Regretfully, I did not discover this glitch until after I spent another three hours burning the project to dvd. Now I have a copy of a video project with a bum navigation menu. I still have not figured out why the button highlights show bright red or green on the disc designer window, but muted to the point of non-existent on the disc menu preview and actual burned disc. The objects list does not show any other images on the template other than the movie image. I changed the background using the change background command. This is the first time I have ever had this problem and I have numerous disc title templates with colorboard backgrounds that have not effected the highlights. What is equally annoying is how the disc designer always defaults to its base rather than the customized template's base. For instance, I have to check the apply to all pages button every time I open the disc designer on any given template. One would think the template should have some characteristic memory, but it does not. Whenever I open a template--even the same template within the same project, I have to physically check apply to all pages. To add further frustration into the mix, every time I open a custom template, the disc designer literally changes the alignment or moves the text on the page. I have to re-align or adjust my text every time. And if I forget to check the apply to every page box, the text on subsequent pages will be shifted and out of alignment while the first page is ok. If I re-open to fix the text on the other pages, the text on the first page is moved again. When something like the button highlighting does not work and requires multiple openings of the template to sort, having to fix the text every time really grates on your nerves.

Another frustrating chapter in using PD. I am danger close to just throwing in the towel. I spend more time these days troubleshooting PD than working on my projects. What started out as a cost effective, fun program to use is turning into an irksome waste of time. It is always something new to contend with when I open PD and try again. Now it looks like the only way to make PD work is to buy a new machine. Not quite what I had in mind. And to think I used to laugh at videogamers who build $1,500 dollar plus machines so they can play a $50 dollar game, only to have their hot new machine be obsolete when the next generation of games comes out the next year. Now I get to chase a low dollar program with a high dollar machine too.

I don't know, Dafydd; there are just too many issues that seem program-related rather than my machine related. Maybe I am just too dense to understand or make the correlation. I will check the HD connections as soon as I sort out this disc menu problem.

Jim

I have to bring up my machine in Safe Mode in order to Produce or Create Disc, otherwise PD6 crashes and closes down the computer.

I can only surmise that one of my full system drivers or services is memory clashing with PD6.

I am surprised that such an elaborate program does not produce a log to send back to the program's creators or have they stopped correcting bugs in PD6.

I have a very similar problem with playback video being jumpy and jerky and very poor. Only when it's in the timeline. When played seperately it plays flawlessly, but once dragged to the timeline the playback quality is so poor I can hardly edit at all. I went into msconfig and stopped all startup items from loading, I updated my bios and my video drivers, nothing has worked. I guess I can try safe mode.

And also, when I uninstalled and reinstalled at Cyberlink's direction, my previous project files (pds) were still there, but they loaded up with blank images! If I want to produce them again, I have to start from scratch. Luckily there were only two.

I sure seems that Cyberlink released PowerDirector before working out some major problems. Look at this forum! You can scroll through list after list of people having problem with PD6 and now 7. And the programs aren't cheap either!

Don Take away our handguns
Then only the criminals will have them!