I too have experienced this issue all too often I regret to say. There is nothing you can do and Cyberlink Support will tell you to "re-install the program" or "try to create your project again". I know this is not the answer you wanted to hear, but if you have little time better to know so you can begin again. My advise to you to reduce the number of crashes and broken files is to work slowing, never click on more than one thing at a time, wait for each operation to finish before doing the next one. Also, use the "Save As" feature and make multiple copies of your project along the way. Then, if you get a broken file you will have one to go back to. Good luck.

Hi there Shawn,
I got into google and searched for 'broken file' and got back PAGES of people with other software getting that error. It sounds like a corruption issue with the basic files. Somewhere along the way, an error occurred that did not write a particular file data successfully. It could have been Director, or it could have been microsoft (lets make a bet).

Unfortunately you may have to restart. I'm sorry. Hope it's not too painful.

The idea of 'typing slowly' is a crazy thought. However, it does make sense. It translates into, technically, allowing the routines of the program to complete, not overflow any typeahead buffers, not confuse windows, not start paging and/or run out of memory on your pc, allowing disk operations to complete, etc, -- in other words, it's not bad advice ! These are complicated programs with lots of files open, data being written etc.

My 2cents. Hope it works out easily.

CC

Hey, thanks.

That is a big help. I would rather have a way to fix the problem, but you're right, if I can't fix it I'd rather know right away.

I appreciate the help. I'll have to make sure I make multiple back-up copies in the future to avoid this and I'll plan on being more patient with the program (I'll try to wait till one thing's done before going on to the next).

Unfortunately, I'm short on RAM. I only have 512mb. I just recently bought more ram off of ebay, but the guy sent me faulty ram and I have to send it back and... ahhh... you know how it goes. I think more RAM would make a world of a difference for me.

Thanks for your help,

Shawn

Hey,

Thanks for your help. I started back at square one and was able to get it done. It was a Christmas video for my Church (the teens in the Church acted out the Christmas story).

Thanks for the clear and quick help. I've been saving backups of my pds files so hopefully I won't run into this problem again.

Shawn

I have the same issue. I have PowerDirector version 6 and recently started having problems with "File Broken". I tried it on an XP Pro desktop and a Vista Ultimate Laptop...good specs on both and had the same problem. Ironically enough it always seemed to happen just before I finished my project. Tech support has yet to get back to me. I'm furious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey, sorry to hear that. It's extremely frustrating!!!

Here's what I've learned since and it's made a huge difference for me.

First, make sure you have enough ram. It makes a big difference when you're editing movies.

Second, work with the task manager loaded up so you can see how hard your processor is working. I'm not sure what it's like in Vista, but in XP you can load it up (cntrl+alt+delete) and then minimize it and it'll show you whether your processor is working at it's max or not.

NOTE: One of the reasons (from what I've found) for broken files is that I would start having trouble so I'd hit "Save" and it would save it in it's "trouble" state and I'd have a broken file. Save your file only when your processor isn't struggling to keep up and when you're not in the middle of an action.

Third, never save the same movie under the same file name--ever. This will seem extreme at first, but this alone may save you the trouble of broken files. Someone suggested that I save a second copy of the file, but I find that this works better. For example: Start your file and save it as "Movie 01.pds" When you do some work on it, save it again as "Movie 02.pds" When you do some more work, save it as "Movie 03.pds". What this does is it ensures that the most you will ever lose is up until your last save--unless, of course, it's messed up from the beginning... . Since I've started doing this, I've had little to no problems. If I have trouble loading up "Movie 17.pds", I can always go back and load up "Movie 16.pds" or "15" and I've lost hardly anything. A little extra work and it's saved me a lot of anguish.

That should save you running into this problem. For your files that are lost... I'm not sure there's any hope. I don't even want to think back to the files I've lost... it brings up bad feelings. Hopefully this will save you experiencing it anymore.

Shawn