Hi there April =
The only reason the clips or images will show up black is that you (or someone else who uses your PC) have either moved them or renamed them. When PD opens up it looks for all the bits you've put in your media library.

Next time you try it, don't click "Ignore" - browse your PC and show PD7 where the things are. Then you have a happy little PowerDirector.

It's a good idea to keep all the bits you're working on in a single folder.

Hope that helps -

Cheers -

Tony Tread gently and you'll hear the daisies grow...

I second Tony's response. I happened to me yesterday and I've been using this software for awhile now. When you finish a project make sure you pack it. It will save all the necessary files in a common folder for archiving purposes. Q9300 2.5 GHz
4 GB Ram
Nvidia 9800 GT

Thanks for the replies - What do you mean by "pack" it?

Im relatively new to this program - It never asked me to browse for the files, it opened the project fine and all the media files were there in the library, just I could only see them as black in the workspace!

I ended up starting again (3 times) and everytime the program crashed and shut down, and even tho I had saved it as I went it now says File Broken - which means Im probably going to have to start again!

April -
I am not sure what is causing your problem, but you'd do well to read the words of a wise man (Adrian aka vn800rider)... the most quoted post so far today...

"Before you do anything else, just check if you have the 'yourfile'.pds.bak in the folder you saved the .pds project file.

If you have, and if PD hasn't done an auto backup of the 'trimmed' file your original backup file might be intact and you may not have lost everything.

Best thing to do is copy the .pds.bak file (so you have a backup) then rename the original .pds.bak to .pds and see if PD will open it.

One of the key principles in anything other than quick and dirty editing is to do frequent and sequential backups - 'yourfile1'.pds, 'yourfile2'.pds etc etc. It seems tedious but it really is worthwhile as it allows you 'roll back' your project to a previous position if/when a problem arises.

Once you've finished, use the pack function to 'pack' the project to a backup locaton for archive. "

If you want to get thoroughly confused, you can read his detailed analysis at http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/6496.page



To pack materials, go to the director's chair>File>export>Pack Project Materials

Cheers -

Tony Tread gently and you'll hear the daisies grow...

Thanks for the replies, I solved that problem but now have the problem of constant crashing - and even tho I have saved it before it crashes it then says "file broken" when i try open it again.

Its driving me crazy, it just says "powerdirector has stopped working" - any ideas why this is constantly happening?

Thanks again

There might be some hardware issues at work here. If you can see the files in the media library but on the "timeline" (?workspace?) all you see is black, and in the edit preview window all you see is black, this may mean not enough graphics memory.

That was the culprit when I had that problem. But I didn't experience any crashes, I just couldn't do anything.

It would help if you would list your editing computer specifications, processor type and speed, memory, graphics adapter or card specs, etc.

And also the video file type and format you are trying to edit. MiniDV, HDV, AVCHD etc.

All this info may give a clue as to what the problem area might be.