I received a prompt reponse to my query to technical support and was advised, among other things I had to do, to uninstall other burning softwares since they have been know to cause conflicts: "Uninstall other CD/DVD burning and media application softwares like Nero, EasuCD Creator, Sony Vegas Movei Stuio and DirectCD etc." The directions all said to change my resolution to 1024 x 768 and 16 bit color. I use 1680 x 1050. Sorry, folks, the program goes back. I wish they would tell us about conflicts before we buy a program.

Isabel,

Online support were trying to get you to localise the cause of your problem and to do that they were attempting to get you to look at possible software clashes. FYI software clashes occurr where software occupy and use the same limited number of drivers on your system - it isn't new.

You haven't posted the rest of the response which is a semi-auto answer to cover issues.

Dafydd

Quote: You haven't posted the rest of the response which is a semi-auto answer to cover issues.
Dafydd

This is all very well Dafydd, but when you get semi-auto response which is often insulting to one's intelligence (I have had such experience from Cyberlink support) it is going to turn people away.

There is a problem with semi-auto answering BUT I don't control it and it is often in response to the way a problem has been presented. I should also have written that I'd want to see both parts - the question and the full answer. I do agree that it is irritating when the answer given is too general and doesn't cover the immediate situation.

Here on the forum (and for online support) I have tried to ensure that video editors present information in a logical manner so others can quickly comprehend.
http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/2405.page
Subject: PowerDirector - information we request and tasks to carry out.
PART D
Training to explain a problem in PD

Dafydd

Don't get me wrong, the forum is great as is your, and many others, great advice.
On line support however.......

Isabel,

I had the exact problem you describe. I have a Dell XPS 420 with Intel Core 2 Quad core Q6600 processor running at 2.4Ghz, 4 GB RAM, and an ATI Radeon HD 4200 XT graphics card.

I could hear the audio but the video window was blank when trying to play from the timeline. Sometimes when viewing media clips individually from the collection above the timeline, video would play but not from the timeline.

The culprit was the ATI graphics card. The 256MB memory on the graphics card was not enough.

I replaced the ATI card with an Nvidia GeForce 8800GT that had 512MB of memory and that solved the problem.

I was attempting to edit AVCHD from the Canon HF100.

If you would post the specs on your XPS 420 here, others may have suggestions to offer.

Bif, I know my ATI graphics card has 32 mb of cache...not sure exactly which one I got because it isn't specified on my Dell specifications sheet.

Interesting that you had the same problem.

I sure don't want to have to buy a new graphics card to run a program - the card is working fine with my other graphics intensive programs like Sony Vegas Movie Studio and Photoshop.

Isabel

Just checked the specs and my machine has an ATI Radeon HDa3970 512MB GDDR4.

Quote: Isabel,

I had the exact problem you describe. I have a Dell XPS 420 with Intel Core 2 Quad core Q6600 processor running at 2.4Ghz, 4 GB RAM, and an ATI Radeon HD 4200 XT graphics card.
Isabel

I could hear the audio but the video window was blank when trying to play from the timeline. Sometimes when viewing media clips individually from the collection above the timeline, video would play but not from the timeline.

The culprit was the ATI graphics card. The 256MB memory on the graphics card was not enough.

I replaced the ATI card with an Nvidia GeForce 8800GT that had 512MB of memory and that solved the problem.

I was attempting to edit AVCHD from the Canon HF100.

If you would post the specs on your XPS 420 here, others may have suggestions to offer.