I also work with .mts files and I've see the exact same problem you've described many times. I hadn't gone as far as you have in trying to track down the activity in the waveform cache, but that is a very helpful suggestion.

Typically, the waveform will suddenly appear after I've done a random edit, usually something that changes the length of a clip, but I haven't found a single, reliable way of forcing PD to draw a waveform. Changing the height of the audio track, turning the display waveform setting off, then on again, moving the clip to a different track - none of them trigger the waveform to be displayed. I imagine you've tried those, and many more!

This problem does NOT occur for me in every single project, and I seem to remember that all clips are affected the same way - either they all have waveforms showing or none of them do. I also seem to remember that once the waveform shows up, it remains that way through all remaining editing sessions.

Here's something you can try. When you're going to start a new project, try opening an existing one first where you did have the waveforms showing. Remove everything from the timeline, clear the library and import the clips for your new project. I believe you'll see waveforms when you place your new clips on the timeline, then you can save the project as the new name.

If you still don't see waveforms with that procedure, change the steps order and import the new clips first, then place at least one on the timeline before clearing everything else. Without realizing it, those are the steps I've been using for the past several projects and all of them have waveforms displayed, so chances are at least one of these will get you some visible waveforms!

Let us know if either of those suggestions work for you.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

PureChaosX, yes, it has been a long outstanding issue that CL appears to replicate facets of but has never really "fixed" as you desire. Since you participated in the previous thread you are well aware. I'd provide the info PDM has suggested here in hopes of getting it resolved https://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/65465.page#post_box_298377

From what I've seen, no user workarounds have ever proved reliable for this issue so the more replicate info users can provide to CL the better. However, it appears the posted thread was left dangling after it was already reported the patch was not the solution.

Jeff

Optodata: It's not a bad idea to keep tabs on the waveform folder, It let's me know if there's any activity and therefore any chance of a waveform ever appearing.

Same, not all projects are effected. It seems to be random which ones have a waveform and which ones don't. And yep, tried all those ideas to force the waveform to generate. Indeed, nothing works.

I'll give the first method a go once I begin another project, opening a previous project that had a waveform, importing the clips and then see what happens. The other method you mentioned is something that USED to work. Importing the clips into a new project first would often result in a waveform, however that seems to be the case less and less now.

I'll keep you posted on the results.


JL_JL: I forgot about that thread. Seems a while ago. I find it strange that a fix has not been implemented. As several people on here have said, it's odd that PowerDirector can generate a mass of thumbnails for a video however long, but struggles with a waveform even on short videos.

I'll pop the info PDM suggests into here later tomorrow.


Thanks for the help/ideas/suggestions though. Windows 10 Pro x64
MSi P45T-C51 Motherboard
Intel Core2Quad Q6600 OC'd @ 3.0GHz
6Gb RAM
nVidia EVGA GTX 750 Ti SC 2Gb
500Gb SanDisk Ultra II SSD
Western Digital Blue 500Gb HDD x2

Quote
The videos I use are usually M2TS files, and the audio files are all MP3. PD17 does not have any issues with these files yet fails to display the waveform. And yes, I have Enable Waveforms ticked in Settings.

M2TS with MP3 audio? May I know where does it come from?
I have some AVCHD camcorders record .MTS with AC3 audio, it generates waveform correctly in PowerDirector. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PowerDirector 365

I got that a bit wrong, it's TS files I use, not M2TS (M2TS is what I render to).

The TS and MP3 files both come from my AverMedia capture device that I use for YouTube. I will probably try to switch the output to MP4 instead of TS and see if that makes any difference.

I also have a new problem concerning the Fast Video Rendering Technology... emphasis on the word "fast" because as of the most recent nVidia update, the feature was disabled. I got it back but now FVRT is a ton SLOWER than if I was to render without it.

For example: a 20 minute video WITHOUT FVRT rendering about 15-20 minutes.
The same video WITH FVRT rendering about 40-50 minutes. Makes sense? Not a bit.

Also!! Anyone else notice the Time Remaining actually keeps going UP rather than down for like 5 minutes? I get that a lot, especially with long videos.

Just throwing these problems in here, I seem to have no end of them with PowerDirector. I swear that the best version of PD I used was way back when I started YouTube was PowerDirector 9. Windows 10 Pro x64
MSi P45T-C51 Motherboard
Intel Core2Quad Q6600 OC'd @ 3.0GHz
6Gb RAM
nVidia EVGA GTX 750 Ti SC 2Gb
500Gb SanDisk Ultra II SSD
Western Digital Blue 500Gb HDD x2

Quote I also have a new problem concerning the Fast Video Rendering Technology... emphasis on the word "fast" because as of the most recent nVidia update, the feature was disabled. I got it back but now FVRT is a ton SLOWER than if I was to render without it.

For example: a 20 minute video WITHOUT FVRT rendering about 15-20 minutes.
The same video WITH FVRT rendering about 40-50 minutes. Makes sense? Not a bit.

nVidia changed the interface with the 416.xx drivers (which they announced they would be doing back in May) but Cyberlink was still using the older SDK. We're all waiting for the PD update that will integrate the new interface and restore/improve GPU access.

Meanwhile, if you rolled back to, or did a clean reinstall of the 411.70 driver, you should see the same performance as before. I did on my machine.

Quote
Also!! Anyone else notice the Time Remaining actually keeps going UP rather than down for like 5 minutes? I get that a lot, especially with long videos.

That actually isn't a bug. In my experience, I see PD constantly checking how many frames remain to be produced and using the current processing speed to estimate when it will be finished. It's very accurate if you have consistant media content, but any time you have a section with lots of transitions, FX, Color corrections, extra video tracks, etc, producing slows way down and the estimated time will start increasing. If the denser section isn't at the end, the estimated time will rapidly decrease once the quicker rendering begins.

ADDED: You can easily see this if you turn on previewing while producing. That way you can connect the slowest parts of production with specific edits in the timeline.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Optodata: Yeah, I read that nVidia had changed something with their latest drivers starting from 416.xx. Hopefully CyberLink will release this wonderful update at some point. Touch wood.

I was wondering whether to roll back or not. I'm a bir OCD when it comes to keeping drivers up-to-date (especially my GPU in case of any perfomrance gains) but if the older drivers help speed up rendering, I'll happily take that over a few fps more. I'll give the driver roll back a go.

Makes sense, I sometimes have videos with several transitions and FX. Not so much colour correction but there's always something like that. To be honest I never would have even noticed this until you mentioned it. And I'll have to give the preview screen while rendering a go.

I did try the method of importing clips into a project that had a previously working waveform but it was no go. Left for a while and still no waveform generated, and no activity in the Waveform cache folder either. Sometimes that only thing that "fixes" this is restarting my PC, then opening PD17 right away and giving it time to generate.

Thanks for all the information! Windows 10 Pro x64
MSi P45T-C51 Motherboard
Intel Core2Quad Q6600 OC'd @ 3.0GHz
6Gb RAM
nVidia EVGA GTX 750 Ti SC 2Gb
500Gb SanDisk Ultra II SSD
Western Digital Blue 500Gb HDD x2

OK, so still having this annoying and ridiculous problem. When this problem is happening, I noiticed there is absolutely NO activity from the PDHanumanSvr service.

I believe this is responsible for the waveforms (as well as the shadow files) and when it IS working,PDHanumanSvr is using upto 30% of the CPU. When it isn't working it uses none, which is when I can tell it's again broken.

I've restarted my PC, restarted PowerDirector, reinstalled PowerDirector, opened and closed many projects to force it to work... and nothing. I simply cannot get PDHanumanSvr to become active after placing files in the timeline.

Even after importing a new set of files into the same (working waveform) project within minutes of each other, it STOPS working and a waveform for the new files never generates.

If so many have been having this problem, I'm truly perplexed as to why CyberLink has just sat on it for so long, you'd think they'd want to fix the bugs in their software ASAP. Windows 10 Pro x64
MSi P45T-C51 Motherboard
Intel Core2Quad Q6600 OC'd @ 3.0GHz
6Gb RAM
nVidia EVGA GTX 750 Ti SC 2Gb
500Gb SanDisk Ultra II SSD
Western Digital Blue 500Gb HDD x2

I did a bunch of testing over the weekend and I learned a lot by watching the waverform cache folder. Lots of detailed info in this post, too...

Whenever I load a PD project, a 0-byte file named ~PD_0000.txt is created. If/when a waveform is generated, the file size become tens or hundreds of kB. Once the file contains the waveform data, generally it will remain in the folder after I close PD. If a waveform wasn't generated during that session, PD removes the empty file when closing.

The ASCII/ANSI data in the txt file has the waveform info encoded in it, and it also must contain some identifying data from the project which PD uses to determine if a matching waveform file already exists in the cache folder.

I tried placing a ~PD_0000.txt in the folder from an unrelated project (one that had generated waveforms), but PD simply ignored it and added a new blank ~PD_0001.txt file. That certainly makes sense from a caching standpoint, and I'd seen around a dozen .txt files from various other projects I'd worked on when I first looked at this folder, so that doesn't seem to be the problem.

For my test project, whenever I managed to get a waveform generated during the course of editing, the .txt file was always 487kB.

I tried many dozens of editing and settings combinations to try and trigger the waveform to be created. Some seemed promising because I would suddenly get a waveform, but none of them worked more than a couple of times in a row. So far I haven't found a reliable way to trigger this - but I'll keep looking.

One strange thing I found was that I could always cause the .txt file to fill up to 487kB by using the Normalize button for any track in the Audio Mixing Room - but the waveform wouldn't consistently display It might be worth trying on your end. You don't even need to keep the changes - undoing or closing the project without saving has no impact once the .txt file is filled.

I did a byte-for-byte comparison between an older .txt file (from this same project where the waveform did appear in the timeline) and the one generated by using the Normalize button, and they were 100% identical - yet the waveform in the second case didn't always get displayed. Whenever it was displayed, however, it stayed that way after repeated open/close cycles.

This points to three connected issues.

The first is the most obvious: that whatever method PD uses to generate the audio waveforms isn't reliable, but it can sometimes be triggered over time and/or by random edits.

The second finding is that even when the waveform file is present/has just been generated, PD may not actually display it. When I reopen a "working" version of the project, PD finds the existing .txt file and displays the waveform as expected. However, if I got the waveform by using Mixing Room Normalize feature and PD didn't display the waveform at the time, then it won't do it after closing/reopening/restarting even though a valid .txt file was present.

The third finding is that if PD is displaying the audio waveform, if I close it then delete the relevent .txt file, when I re-open PD it creates a new 0-byte .txt file. While this seems to reset whatever state PD uses to tell it that a waveform file is present, it's not sufficient to trigger a new waveform to be generated.

If I close PD after that, restore the missing .txt file and launch PD again, it ignores the file and again creates a new 0-byte .txt file, and we're back to no waveform even with a valid .txt file.

Lots going on here!

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Sweet moses that is a lot of testing.

Well that's usually further than what I get... I don't even get a 0Kb ~PD_0000.txt file appear in the waveform folder. And that is correct, WHEN it works the txt file, for me at least, often goes to about 4-5Mb in size, at least for the video. The MP3 file would be about 1Mb smaller.

Ah, I actually tried that as well, placing the ~PD_0000.txt file from another project into the waveform folder. I even tried placing the ~PD_0000.txt generated by PD14 into the waveform folder for PD17 (I had PD14 and PD17 installed along side each other). The reason for this is because PD14 would often successfully generate a waveform where PD17 would not, but PD17 ignored the ~PD_0000.txt file created by PD14 and would end up creating it's own.

Yeah, that's pretty much my finding as well. It just seems to be random when it works and it doen't work very often. It'll work once, then if I import another video into the same project (without closing) the waveforms never generate.

In the case of using the Normalize function, I assume you had to place another audio file on to the track, as you canot use Normalize when there is a single audio track. I just tried this myself, with the track I use for the commentary (MP3) and unfortunately it did not do anything. No waveform generated. And when I tried using Normalize for the video track... well, PD17 just went to "Not Responding" for 5 minutes before I had to force quit.

Hm, definitely not reliable. And for some reason, unlike yourself, I cannot for the life of me trigger the waveform. I really just have to wait for it to work. It took me several hours today of constantly closing PowerDirector, restarting PowerDirector, restarting the PC... I even did a clean install of PD17 and it didn't help!!

In other words... PowerDirector is just... a very frustrating mess at the moment.

But all the same, kudos to your testing and findings! I'm impressed. Windows 10 Pro x64
MSi P45T-C51 Motherboard
Intel Core2Quad Q6600 OC'd @ 3.0GHz
6Gb RAM
nVidia EVGA GTX 750 Ti SC 2Gb
500Gb SanDisk Ultra II SSD
Western Digital Blue 500Gb HDD x2

Hi, I have the same problem and i have one example where you can see the error (that is you do not see any waveform on a mp3 file added on the timeline) and one example where you cannot see the error (that is you see the mp3 waveform) The one and only difference I have seen between theese examples is the size or maybe the number of files in the project library. So I created a huge? project library by adding all the files from my latest vacation (the 64 Gb memorycard contained about 40 Gb of raw videofiles.)
Then I added just a few of these files to the timline and saved the project and finished PD17. After restart PD17 and starting the saved proj I added a MP3 file to the timeline... No waveform visible! Making this again(Fresh restarted PD17) with a project library containing only the files on the timeline. You can see the waveforms. So a possible workaround is this: From the file menu choose

Pack Project Materials. Save this in a suitable directory. If you close down PD17 and restart it by doubleclicking the .pds file in the packed filedirectory you will get a project with a libary that only contains the files you had on the timeline. You should now be able to see the waveform on the MP3 file ! Now try to open the original project and hopefully you will be able to see the waveform there as well.

The support at Cyberlink works on this problem and hopefully they will find the error (bug) and fix it

Best regards

Sven Erik Elfgren


To PD support 2

I do not know if the link above works but if it does you may see a screenvideo of how the see the error with huge libray and not with a small library.

Quote I do not know if the link above works but if it does you may see a screenvideo of how the see the error with huge libray and not with a small library.

That's a very interesting discovery! Could you please reply and paste the video link using this button?


YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Quote

That's a very interesting discovery! Could you please reply and paste the video link using this button?

<a>https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AUrv4I9rhgfAznwLB-OMMc4hAi5kdJ3M</a>


This one would work I hope.
If you take away the <a> at start and end
Best regards
Sven Erik Elfgren

Sven - you've done it! You've cracked the mystery here! You found consistancy, which had eluded the rest of us, and you found that the library was involved. Those two clues are critical to the workaround I've just found. Thank you so much for sharing your findings!

It turns out that it's not the size of the library or how many clips are inside - but something in the library code is absolutely key to triggering the waveform to be generated (or is preventing the waveforms from being generated).

I first tried doing your test (EDIT: using my own clips, NOT the ones in your Google Drive folder). I imported 224 media files (well over 100GB in total) and dragged four of the video clips to the timeline. In your video, the waveforms appeared and you only had trouble when you dragged an MP3 clip to the timeline from File Explorer.

On my system, none of the 4 clips had a waveform, and neither did an MP3 clip that I dragged onto the timeline. If I copied those four video clips to a new project and pasted them on the timeline, there still weren't any waveforms, even though the library was empty. Opening and closing PD had no effect for me, so there had to be something more than just library content or size.

As I was working on the library's possible role, I found that right-clicking in a blank section of the Media Library and choosing either of these commands would be the solution!



There are only 3 steps in my proposed workaround, but all are mandatory:

1. Open a project that doesn't display audio waveforms, then right-click on an empty part of the Media Library and chose either Empty the Library or Remove All Unused Content from Library. It doesn't matter how many clips are there to start with or how many you end up with. Even if the library is already empty, or if its only contents are the clips on the timeline, chosing one of those commands is needed to trigger the waveforms.
   (EDIT #2: It seems like the Empty command works on more projects than Remove does, so try Remove first)
   (EDIT #3: If you do have to empty the library but don't want to lose the contents, right click in the library and choose Export Library. You will be prompted to save the library in a .pdl file, and then you can empty the library)


2. Save the project (or Save As), and then close PD. This is required!


3. Reopen the project in PD, then watch and wait while the waveforms are generated!
   (EDIT 3A: Remember to use Import Library to restore the original project contents (if needed)

The best news is that once these steps have been performed, my testing shows that the project will always generate waveforms EVEN if you manually delete any of the ~PD_xxxx.txt files from the waveform cache folder. In other words, PD should finally work as expected

I have tried this over a dozen times on several different projects, and it works every single time. If other people can confirm that this approach forces wavforms on their machine then we'll finally have a reliable workaround for this issue, and hopefully Cyberlink will be able to work out what's been going on all this time.

Please post back with your results. Again, a huge shout-out to Sven (Elfgren) for his detailed effort!

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Quote
<a>https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AUrv4I9rhgfAznwLB-OMMc4hAi5kdJ3M</a>

Interesting...the clips you shared can be generated correctly on my platform. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PowerDirector 365

Quote Sven - you've done it! You've cracked the mystery here! You found consistancy, which had eluded the rest of us, and you found that the library was involved. Those two clues are critical to the workaround I've just found. Thank you so much for sharing your findings!

It turns out that it's not the size of the library or how many clips are inside - but something in the library code is absolutely key to triggering the waveform to be generated (or is preventing the waveforms from being generated).

I first tried doing your test (EDIT: using my own clips, NOT the ones in your Google Drive folder). I imported 224 media files (well over 100GB in total) and dragged four of the video clips to the timeline. In your video, the waveforms appeared and you only had trouble when you dragged an MP3 clip to the timeline from File Explorer.

On my system, none of the 4 clips had a waveform, and neither did an MP3 clip that I dragged onto the timeline. If I copied those four video clips to a new project and pasted them on the timeline, there still weren't any waveforms, even though the library was empty. Opening and closing PD had no effect for me, so there had to be something more than just library content or size.

As I was working on the library;'s possible role, I found that right-clicking in a blank section of the Media Library and choosing either of these commands would be the solution!



There are only 3 steps in my proposed workaround, but all are mandatory:

1. Open a project that doesn't display audio waveforms, then right-click on an empty part of the Media Library and chose either Empty the Library or Remove All Unused Content from Library. It doesn't matter how many clips are there to start with or how many you end up with. Even if the library is already empty, or if its only contents are the clips on the timeline, chosing one of those commands is needed to trigger the waveforms.


2. Save the project (or Save As), and then close PD. This is required!


3. Reopen PD (and the project too, if needed), then watch and wait while the waveforms are generated!

The best news is that once these steps have been performed, my testing shows that the project will always generate waveforms EVEN if you manually delete any of the ~PD_xxxx.txt files from the waveform cache folder. In other words, PD should finally work as expected

I have tried this over a dozen times on several different projects, and it works every single time. If other people can confirm that this approach forces wavforms on their machine then we'll finally have a reliable workaround for this issue, and hopefully Cyberlink will be able to work out what's been going on all this time.

Please post back with your results. Again, a huge shout-out to Sven (Elfgren) for his detailed effort!

Thank you for appreciating my work. I understand you also have digged in to this problem. And yes I tested your workaround and it works for some of my testprojects but not for all. The one it does not work for is the the one with all files from my vacation in the library and almost everyone of theese files on the timeline that is I have about 3 hours on the timeline. However if I use the Empty The Library menu pick it did work! so thank you very much. This will help me until Cybelink hopefully fixes this bug

Best regards
Sven Erik Elfgren

That's valuable feedback.

Just to clarify: Are you saying that you see Remove All Unused Content from Library work everywhere except your big project, but Empty the Library does work there?

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Sven and Opto, many thanks for your research an work-around!

I had the same issues, but the "Remove all unused content" trick worked for me. That is to say: partly. The waveforms do load now, but soooooo slow.... . The project I tested it on is 38 min long, has some 150 clips and 5 mp3's as background music so no real big deal I guess.
I have just opted for a one year subscription, but if these quirky bugs are still there when my subscription ends, it will be byebye CL and maybe sooner because of all the lost time due to the buggy software.

In the meantime I'm learning (the free version of) Davinci Resolve 15 and if the workflow is much smoother than PD and it brings back the joy of editing, maybe that $300 one time fee for the Studio version will be totally worth it ;
Even for a hobbyist like me!

Nevertheless I will be following these forums for updates and I hope CL gets the job done and will deliver a stable buggy free package. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dell XPS desktop - Win10Home 64bit - 24GB RAM- Intel i7 6700 3.4GHz - Seagate 2TB HD

Quote That's valuable feedback.

Just to clarify: Are you saying that you see Remove All Unused Content from Library work everywhere except your big project, but Empty the Library does work there?

Hi optodata, everywhere except is strong since I just tested a few projects. I found one that did not work with Remove All Unused Content from Library but this one worked with Empty the Library so I will use this until Cyberlink fixes this once and for all.

It is a very simple and fast workaround.

Once again Thank You very much.

Sven Erik Elfgren