It would help if you could upload one of the m4a clips that's causing you trouble to a cloud folder on Google Drive or OneDrive and paste the link to it here so other people can test it on their systems. See the Share a file publicly section in this Google FAQ or this OneDrive support page if you need help doing so.

It might also help if you could follow the steps shown in the ReadMe Before Posting guide so we can see how your PC is configured. Finally, please tell us the exact name and version number of PD14 (eg Ulimate 14.0.4207.0).

Quote It would help if you could upload one of the m4a clips that's causing you trouble to a cloud folder on Google Drive or OneDrive and paste the link to it here so other people can test it on their systems. See the Share a file publicly section in this Google FAQ or this OneDrive support page if you need help doing so.

It might also help if you could follow the steps shown in the ReadMe Before Posting guide so we can see how your PC is configured. Finally, please tell us the exact name and version number of PD14 (eg Ulimate 14.0.4207.0).

Apologies for not providing the correct info here. Hopefully all of this helps...

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/0q1vtfhnlp00pcp/AAAIV9rGrvVp2Xy6XBuMdNZTa?dl=0

There are eight files in this link:

1. (as requested)
   2. Bangkok - March 2016 - trailer.pds - note I cannot open this project


2. 3. 01 Baba Yetu [feat. Soweto Gospel Ch.m4a - this is one of the .m4a tracks referenced in the above pds project
   4. 13 Four Seasons in One Day.m4a - another m4a file

5. crash report.xml - the report file generated by PDS when it crashes
6. crash screenshot.png
7. dxdiag.txt
8. minidump.zip - a zipped version of the .dmp file created by PDR when it crashes

If I've missed off any information that would help please let me know and I'll include it in this folder/forum.

Thanks

Hi,

The version of PDR14 currently installed on my system is 32 bit Ultra 1810, so earlier than yours.

However, your project opens OK, but with blank timeline clips (as expected) and both .m4a tracks import and play from both the media library and the timeline.

I will try and update to the latest patch to get a better comparison, but I would suspect that it may be more of a windows update issue perhaps, or other updated software, rather than your PDR14 which has remained unchanged??

Perhaps look at an uninstall/re-install of PDR and see if that corrects anything??

Cheers
PowerDirector Moderator

Quote Hi,

The version of PDR14 currently installed on my system is 32 bit Ultra 1810, so earlier than yours.

However, your project opens OK, but with blank timeline clips (as expected) and both .m4a tracks import and play from both the media library and the timeline.

I will try and update to the latest patch to get a better comparison, but I would suspect that it may be more of a windows update issue perhaps, or other updated software, rather than your PDR14 which has remained unchanged??

Perhaps look at an uninstall/re-install of PDR and see if that corrects anything??

Cheers
PowerDirector Moderator

Thank you for your quick reply. I have already tried an uninstall/reinstall but sadly to no avail. I agree that it is likely to be a change on my windows environment rather than PDR itself as that has only had one patch applied to it - quite a while ago - which didn't affect anything. Having said that - I'm not aware of any crazy updates I've done, or pieces of software I've installed which would affect the PDR link to m4a files.

I also have a support ticket open with Cyberlink themselves as hopefully they'll be able to suggest potential things to try to resolve the problem - I'm not averse to upgrading what is an old version of PDR also - but given that may not fix the issue would be a potential waste of money! Given it's throwing an error our of their codebase - I'm hoping they can suggest what may be causing it and a potential remedy.

One other option would be a mass update of my PDR files to look for all that referenced an m4a file, find those m4a files and conver them to mp3, and then update the PDR filepaths - although I'm not sure if PDR will be happy if I start just editing the pdr file directly in notepad++ like that. Plus it may take a while!

Thank you for the information. The project opened properly in my 64 bit PD14 and the two .m4a audio files also played properly. See the screenshot. Of the two .m4a files one is constant and the other variable bit rate as Apple audio with iTunes info.

I opened WaveEditor2 supplied with PD14 and converted one to .wma and the other to .mp3. M4a is also available. Both play properly in all players, including the default groove player in win 10. Converting can be one of the answers unless CS support can find a solution for this issue. There is none on my pc.

Quote Thank you for the information. The project opened properly in my 64 bit PD14 and the two .m4a audio files also played properly. See the screenshot. Of the two .m4a files one is constant and the other variable bit rate as Apple audio with iTunes info.

I opened WaveEditor2 supplied with PD14 and converted one to .wma and the other to .mp3. M4a is also available. Both play properly in all players, including the default groove player in win 10. Converting can be one of the answers unless CS support can find a solution for this issue. There is none on my pc.

Thanks for trying!

Out of interest, is it possible to manually edit a .pds file and not corrupt it? So if I convert one of the problem m4a files to mp3 and then just open the pds file in notepad++ and change the filepath to mp3, should that be possible?

Yes. There are at least 8 .m4a files used in this project. I would convert those audio files used first and then change that in an xml editor to the mp3 or whatever you choose. You can then place the converted files in the same folder and open the .pds file or in a different folder where you have to navigate to find them.

Quote Yes. There are at least 8 .m4a files used in this project. I would convert those audio files used first and then change that in an xml editor to the mp3 or whatever you choose. You can then place the converted files in the same folder and open the .pds file or in a different folder where you have to navigate to find them.

Thanks tomasc. I'll wait to hear what Cyberlink support say, or the off chance someone else has had the same issue. But at least this is a fallback.

I can do some scripting to do this en mass as I've got over 200 pds files, and I suspect most of them have m4a files in!

Getting m4a files to work would be preferable! Do you think an upgrade of PD would resolve the issue? Would this even be worth exploring as I know 14 is quite old now...

M4a audio files are listed in the specs of both PD14 and the latest PD19 as a supported format. You can download the free trial to see if it solves the issue.

You never said if the same m4a files play properly in your other win 10 apps outside of iTunes like the WMP, Groove, VLC, QuickTime, etc. That would point to a win 10 issue.

I beleive that this pc originally came with windows 8 and you got the upgrade to windows 10 done later and at some point the m4a files did not work properly for whatever reason.

Quote M4a audio files are listed in the specs of both PD14 and the latest PD19 as a supported format. You can download the free trial to see if it solves the issue.

You never said if the same m4a files play properly in your other win 10 apps outside of iTunes like the WMP, Groove, VLC, QuickTime, etc. That would point to a win 10 issue.

They play fine in both iTunes, and WMP. I haven't tried any other audio players...

Quote Out of interest, is it possible to manually edit a .pds file and not corrupt it? So if I convert one of the problem m4a files to mp3 and then just open the pds file in notepad++ and change the filepath to mp3, should that be possible?

It's possible to do that, but it's probably easier to simply rename the existing m4a clips (like by adding a space or character) and then open the PDS file in PDR14.

When it can't find the renamed files, it will prompt you to browse to each mp3 version and PD will automatically substitute it. Make sure you save the project (or save it as a different project) even though you won't be prompted to if you want to use the mp3 files next time.

Also an FYI that the PDS file only contains the list of source clip names/locations and all the edits you've made. It doesn't include any actual source clips, and while we don't need all of those video clips to help here, if you ever do need to share an entire project through DropBox you'll actually need to use Pack Project Materials under PDR's File menu to both include all the actual clips and to "flatten" the project so that it will look for them in the same folder that the project is in, rather than, say E:\Pictures\2016...

Like PDM and tomasc, I have no trouble importing and playing those m4a files in PDR14, and after reviewing the DxDiag results I'm wondering if you could do a couple things on your PC.

At the end of the report, the last 10 serious app crashes are listed (WER0, etc) and often when I see a wide variety of crashes there it turns out that some of Windows core files are damaged. Not every time, but enough that I'd recommend that you run the commands shown here and see if they can find and/or repair any issues.

The other thing I noticed is that you're running a fairly new nVidia driver for your GTX 960, and normally I'd say you should update it to the latest version. Unfortunately, nVidia removed the interface that older versions of PDR used to access the NVENC hardware 2 years ago, so PDR14 isn't able to use drivers newer than 411.70 if you want to use hardware encoding when producing.

If you want to restore that ability, download the driver here and do a clean install from the custom menu so that the current driver is fully removed before the older one is installed. You'll have to reboot afterwards but you'll have hardware encoding back.

Quote Like PDM and tomasc, I have no trouble importing and playing those m4a files in PDR14, and after reviewing the DxDiag results I'm wondering if you could do a couple things on your PC.

At the end of the report, the last 10 serious app crashes are listed (WER0, etc) and often when I see a wide variety of crashes there it turns out that some of Windows core files are damaged. Not every time, but enough that I'd recommend that you run the commands shown here and see if they can find and/or repair any issues.

The other thing I noticed is that you're running a fairly new nVidia driver for your GTX 960, and normally I'd say you should update it to the latest version. Unfortunately, nVidia removed the interface that older versions of PDR used to access the NVENC hardware 2 years ago, so PDR14 isn't able to use drivers newer than 411.70 if you want to use hardware encoding when producing.

If you want to restore that ability, download the driver here and do a clean install from the custom menu so that the current driver is fully removed before the older one is installed. You'll have to reboot afterwards but you'll have hardware encoding back.

Thank you optodata for taking the time for your detailed replies. I will have a go and the above points and Windows repairs and I'll let you know how it goes.

Quote


Thank you optodata for taking the time for your detailed replies. I will have a go and the above points and Windows repairs and I'll let you know how it goes.

Sadly neither of the two options for windows fixes suggested above have worked. Will continue to look into it.

I'm not sure if you might have already tried this or not, but uninstalling PDR (you can keep personalized settings, if prompted), then installing again using the original installer and then applying the final patch may resolve this issue.

If you no longer have the original installer, you'll need to contact CL customer service as described in this FAQ.