Hi Lee,

If you mean in the timeline the most probable (but not the only) reason is that some clips have been moved/deleted/renamed.

PD hard references the asset names and locations so any changes are not automatically reflected in the .pds file.

Normally, you would be asked to browse/ignore when loading the project if this happens and you could then find the files manually.

Is this the likely reason?

If this is not the likely reason, a screenshot of the media library and the timeline would be useful to diagnose further.

Cheers
Adrian Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

Edit: Forget what I said. Adrian said it first!

Hi Lee -

No - they're not colour boards... they're spaces! PD doesn't insert things without your direction. ... and no - it's not a demo quirk!

What's probably happened is the source files have been re-named or moved, PD doesn't know where they are & has left a space for them for when they come back! The only way they can come back is if you show PD where they are!

When you opened the project, was there a dialogue box inviting you to Browse, Ignore or Ignore All?

Cheers - Tony
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Lee,

You are not alone. I too lost 1-2 "clips" withing the video in three consecutive projects after producing .m2t files. During playback the screen would go blank with the audio still playing in the background. When I opened the project, a clip in the timeline was black colourboard. Still puzzled why PD 8.0 has done that. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider.

Hi Guys,

Nothing has moved or changed apart from me closing the app and reopening the project.

I did read something about the shadow files could be to blame so I disabled them and deleted the file.

As a sidenoe, I find it completley horrible that Pd stores these files in a hidden folder deep within the appdata folder. I hope this is being addressed by CL as it could be very problematic for users who dont know what they are looking for. The files for this one project equated to 7gb!

Andy -

If you still have that project available, hover your mouse/cursor over the black spaces (the ones that look like colour boards)... check out what the pop up screen hint says.

If it really is a colour board, it'll say 0,0,0 (for black) & the duration. If it's an mts file, it'll say xxxxxx.mts & the time details.

It's possible that, at the time the preview screen turned black during playback, your PC was having trouble processing the thing. What's your graphics card? Might that be the issue?

PD8 has never inserted colour boards in my projects without my instruction.

EDIT: Lee - Did removing those files and disabling Shadow Edit resolve the issue???

Cheers - Tony
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I'm unsure at the moment really. I have closed the project down and reopend a couple of times and its been fine. I have saved things fine beforehand so i'm not fully sure the problems is resolved but i'll do some more testing and let you know.

Thanks Tony. Will check and advise.

p.s. Video Graphics - GeForce 9500 GS
Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider.

Tony,

I reopened one of the problem projects. The trouble clip
has 0,0,0 over it indeed. When I play this portion, there is no video but audio is still present. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider.

OMG! A musical colour board! (I'm assuming there are no other audio files in the timeline)

Right now, I don't have PD at my fingertips... but will investigate further later in the day.

Cheers - Tony
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Time line consists only of the master video track with transitions. No audio was used in the audio track or voice over. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider.

Hi Lee

I recently had a similar problem. Contacted Cyberlink, they suggested update DirectX to the latest version(9.0c) which I did. They also suggested updating graphics card (Radeon X1650) haven't done that yet, but so far I haven't had the problem since I updated DirectX,. You also need to make sure youhaven't moved any files since starting the project, I think I had and the system couldn't find the material, hence the black!
Keith

Hi People,
The 0,0,0, isn't a new issue and I have posted instructions on the forum quite a number of times.

In brief:
1. I assume you haven't moved a darn thing because if you have then you've basically caused the problem.
2. when a file is missing PD8 pops up a dialogue box requesting to locate the missing file - do that and the media file which should be where 0,0,0, is located.
3. OK, you've done the above or not done it because you didn't get the popup. Well people, you cant easily locate your "missing" media file.

A likely cause might be because the end user is not allowing sufficient time for shadow file generation... poor shadow generation.

I'm also wondering if a project has been poorly saved - perhaps a quick look over the Auto-save files might assist.
http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/9621.page#41704
Please note, I use Ctrl+Tab+S and ave regularly to numerical numbered project files. All editors should do something similar.

Lee: Selected Shadow Files can be deleted using Edit > Preferences.

If you can edit without shadow files do so.
http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/9621.page#41702

Dafydd
[Moderator]

Yep could be the shadow files was the issue.
This last project I didn't use shadow files, so maybe that's the answer.

Thanks Dafydd

keith

Dafydd,

Thanks for the exlanation. Where can I read more about "shadow files"?What should a user do to allow "sufficient" time for shadow file generation? Is this something one does when he first imports clips into a timeline?

By the way, did you mean Hot Key to read Ctrl+SHIFT+S?

To other fellow users, you could find some useful Hot Keys in the Appendix pages 97-103
http://download.cyberlink.com/ftpdload/user_guide/powerdirector/8/PowerDirector_UG_ENU.pdf
Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider.

Andy -

Extract from p.98 of user manual (referenced above):

Project Hotkeys

Ctrl + N Create new project
Ctrl + O Open existing project
Alt + Enter Display project properties
Ctrl + S Save project
Ctrl + Shift + S Save project as... yes - I'm sure that's what Dafydd meant
Ctrl + Shift + W New Workspace

Dafydd - thanks for that. I wasn't aware that the black space inserted for missing files displayed in the guise of a colour board... so - my apologies to Andy for any confusion.

Cheers - Tony
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Yep that was what I meant : Ctrl + Shift + S = Save project as

Not sure why I wrote Tab... comes of being a one finger in each hand user and not a trained typist ha ha. Must have been a typo error!

Dafydd
[Moderator]

Tony,

No apologies required. The clip in question wasn't missing and was still present in the library.

As Dafydd suggested, I must have done "something" that did not suffice creation of a shadow file.

The only solution here ( I suppose) is to remove the clip from the timeline and to re-insert it back from the library, then produce the video again. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider.