Hello boristhemoggy,

Welcome to the PhD forum.

Good to see you took advantage of the time limited offer at CNET. (the version number is the giveaway)

Strangely, I just had a little "stopped working" moment with PhD 4 doing something as simple as applying a global adjustment. When I restarted PhD, all was well and I carried on.

PhD should not crash during export (you knew that). So - you're removing part of the background. Are you then clicking "Save to" (bottom left corner)? http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/24696.page#140425

If the problem persists when you know you're taking the right steps, an uninstall/re-install may be needed.

PIX PIX YouTube channel

Thanks Pix.
I've just now downloaded another version and installed and that one crashes on import
I'm going to do a registry clean of PD remains and reinstall it again and I'll get back to you.

Nope, it crashes on import every time.
I'm importing a folder with a substructure which contains perhaps 40 folders and 5,000 images.
Does PD have an import limit?

No - there is no import limit. I've imported folders containing subfolders with thousands of images, with no issues.

I have the 3618 version running on a seriously underpowered laptop & it hasn't crashed yet.

It does appear that there's something wrong with the installation if PhD is so unstable. I'd do a complete uninstall using Revo Uninstaller (set to moderate)

http://www.revouninstaller.com/revo_uninstaller_free_download.html

Then reboot & re-install.

On my PC, I have 3 versions of PhD & they very rarely behave badly, even under heavy workload. I've sometimes found that a project (the .phd file) can be corrupted & deleting it clears such issues.

What was the other version you downloaded?

PIX PIX YouTube channel

Quote: No - there is no import limit. I've imported folders containing subfolders with thousands of images, with no issues.

I have the 3618 version running on a seriously underpowered laptop & it hasn't crashed yet.

It does appear that there's something wrong with the installation if PhD is so unstable. I'd do a complete uninstall using Revo Uninstaller (set to moderate)

http://www.revouninstaller.com/revo_uninstaller_free_download.html

Then reboot & re-install.

On my PC, I have 3 versions of PhD & they very rarely behave badly, even under heavy workload. I've sometimes found that a project (the .phd file) can be corrupted & deleting it clears such issues.

What was the other version you downloaded?

PIX

Yeah I have revo thanks, great isn't it

One version was reg no DOHDD-5UXVA-T3CFW-AMX85-8ZWWF-WC28Q if that helps? I didn't record anything else from it, but looking at the ureg.ini file from the installation directories, they both have the same SR number

The CD key doesn't really give any clues, but the installer file would (i.e. the .exe file you downloaded)

Anyway, I hope you can get PhD up & running smoothly soon. I think you'll enjoy using it when you get it behaving itself!

PIX PIX YouTube channel

Well it's just crashed again on importing. That's 10 out of 12 times now so obviously I'm losing patience.
It's not looking good.

Right, that's 6 more times it's crashed on importing. I've deleted the project file, started a new project, reinstalled the software and even downloaded the software a second time. (Same file)
There's clearly a problem here and by the way this is a clean install of Window 7 about a month ago, and there's little software installed on it yet so if you want to do some testing it should be fairly simple.
However I'm very put off by this test, as you can imagine, so it's up to you if you want to identify and rectify the issues.

Quote:
However I'm very put off by this test, as you can imagine, so it's up to you if you want to identify and rectify the issues.

Are you running with current video card drivers and do you have a decent video card? I'm running the CNET version and have not had any crashes. I've saved a dozen or so different .PNG files with the background remover tool. Win8 64-bit Pro Retail
Intel i7-4770
16GB DDR3 1600 8-8-8-24
MSI Z87-G45 Motherboard
ASUS GTX 660 Direct CU II OC 2GB GPU
1 TB RAID 1 (mirrored) Drive Array
Several scratch drives for video, TMP, pagefile.

I'm using an nVidia GeForce 9600M with 2 gig of onboard RAM, and the drivers were updated last week.

Sorry to say it's not my system, it's PD. It has failed to import now on 18 of 20 occasions when I pick large folders.
It clearly can't handle more than a few hundred at a time.
Whilst I have my complaints with Lightroom being slow, it doesn't crash. Neither does Zoner, Capture One, Paintshop Pro or Bibble.

Why it crashes when saving PD I have no idea, and clearly neither does Cyberlink or Pix would have given us an idea. No offence Pix, but the only suggestion you've really offered is a reboot and a reinstall. That to me isn't tech support, my sister could have suggested that. In my experience it crashes when trying to import anything over 1,000 images. As an aside to that, please don't tell me there is no problem in importing...there isn't for you, but there is for me.

I've uninstalled it now anyway, it's clearly an immature product not ready for professionals to use.
However I do like it's ease of use, and variety of tools so here's three suggestions.

Don't rely on importing as Lightroom does, you're asking for trouble and importing and collating a database is really unnecessary. Look at Zoner, one of many tools that doesn't import, you simply work from the existing folder structure. Much more reliable and takes a huge problem away instantly.

The second suggestion is collate some data as to why things go wrong. Again, nothing against you Pix you do your job, but clearly you've been given no info to do that job with, so the forum is less useful than it could be. We need at least some support info passed to you so problems can be looked at and resolved, instead of suggesting "when you get it behaving itself", or at best, one of the software authors to come in and offer support.

The final suggestion is get keywords showing. Every program I use sees my embedded keywords and other meta-data, except PD. Even a Wordpress plugin I use can read them, yet PD can't. I seriously am not going to re-do keywords and all other meta data on 45,000 files! It also makes me wonder, what other problems are there that I haven't discovered yet? Keywords or meta-data, should be one of the first things I see along with my image.

If it was reliable, I really like it and I would buy it instantly, so I'll keep an eye on it to see if it develops. Good luck everyone.

I'm guessing if Pix had a dollar for every person that declares it's 'not their machine' he'd probably be retired by now.

You could be right. It might not be. But a 9600M video card is not the target for high-end video or photo processing in general. Cyberlink software tends to be pretty demanding on the hardware side of the equation.

That said, have you cleaned out your temp directories? Possibly try re-creating your page file. What else is running in memory when it crashes? Have you stripped it down and tried it? Have you turned of your anti-virus and tried it and configured the anti-virus to keep off the photo working directories?

So, there are few things more you could try if you have any patience left. Win8 64-bit Pro Retail
Intel i7-4770
16GB DDR3 1600 8-8-8-24
MSI Z87-G45 Motherboard
ASUS GTX 660 Direct CU II OC 2GB GPU
1 TB RAID 1 (mirrored) Drive Array
Several scratch drives for video, TMP, pagefile.

Hi
All good suggestions.
However at boot a batch script runs which basically cleans out all temp files in all areas of the computer part from installation files and prefetch folders. When it's done that it runs cleanmgr which has been pre-set by sageset.
It's defragged weekly automatically on schedule.
Nothing runs at startup that doesn't need to run. I've found the majority of things that go into startup are just convenience or update checkers so I cleared all mine out.
I use Windows Defender, but all programs which are necessary for being online are turned off when I'm not online. Again, the principle of not running stuff that's not needed.
I accept I don't have the fastest machine in the world but I can run Lightroom and Photoshop together, sending from LR to PS to edit then back to LR to be saved as a TIFF.
THere may indeed be something about my system which is making PD crash all the time, but is't that what tech support are for in this forum? To help me identify what that might be? However I've been told they "hope it starts behaving for me" lol
I'm guessing if I had a dollar for every program author who blamed their product on my computer...
Thanks for the suggestions though ontheweb, all good ones if I may say so.
I always have patience, but only if the other side do too. None of the issues I've raised have really been seriously spoken about, in fact the one about the keywords has been completely ignored.
So yeah I got buckets of patience, if anyone wants to come into the forum and suggest resolutions.

Hello boristhemoggy,

No offence taken. It's quite OK to share your frustration about PhD crashing when importing. That's part of the purpose of the forum. Technical support is another matter. I am not Technical Support. I am just a user of the software, like you.

I don't pretend to be technical support, which is clearly what's needed in your case. In the forum, what members (including me) try to do is replicate issues to see if there's a common thread. I appreciate that you don't want to hear "Well, it's working for me", but that's just how it is. My language seems like that of a lay person because that's what I am.

On my modest PC, I've never had a crash on import & (at times) that has involved very large numbers of RAW & JPG files). Even on my very underpowered laptop, though it's much slower on import, it's never crashed during import. In monitoring this forum, I haven't seen it reported as such a recurring issue.

Just now, I imported a folder (with sub-folders) containing a total of 1671 photos (1240 JPG, 431 RAW), with a total file size of 9.56GB. Yes, it took some time to import & render the files in PhD, but at no time did it look like "falling over". My regular workflow involves much smaller imports - I was just pushing PhD trying to replicate your problem.

Here's task manager during import



If PhD wasn't "reliable", I doubt it would have managed that task. If other members could replicate what you're experiencing, we could confidently say there's an issue with PhD.

Your suggestions about collating data about issues, causes & solutions is an excellent one. You're right. That would provide members with a "go to" source, and would therefore make the forum a more useful resource. That said, up till now there has not been a string of posts reporting crashing on import. So - what's to collate? There's no common issue. Nonetheless, the suggestion is good & I'll see what can be done about that.

Clearly, I am not as technically inclined as you (or OnTheWeb), but my understanding is that PhD doesn't physically import files. The cache folder for the test project above is 960MB.

You can be assured that this thread, including your positive suggestions, will be referred to CyberLink. In the meantime, if you haven't given up on PhD completely, I'd suggest you submit a support ticket to Technical Support https://membership.cyberlink.com/prog/support/cs/service/technical-support.do

PIX
PIX YouTube channel

My apologies, I assumed tech support as you are mod.
Reliable is a weird word. It's reliable for you but not for me, so that means it's not reliable, even though it has been for you.
Lets say for example, it doesn't like nvidia cards, but only when the latest drivers are installed, and only when a generic monitor is installed, and only on my build of Windows 7. Now, that's a problem that's extremely difficult to identify, but fairly simple to solve.
However given that hypothetical problem, it means PD is reliable for you, but will never ever work for me. And that's when you get say...70% of users who think it's fantastic, and 30% who simply can't make it work.
Most large software houses have a %'age that they're willing to go to and call their software successful, that's how they operate because for whatever reason, they can't or won't fix the problems of those 30%.
So, when I hear people say "but it worked for me", that's OK, as long as they don't make out like it's my fault. It's simply that software like hardware has tolerances. Some have lower than others. Some companies spend more time trying to raise their tolerances. You get the picture anyway.
So, there's 3 major things that mean I simply am not able to use PD. If Cyberlink have enough users without problems they won't bother with me, otherwise they may try and find out why it's happening.
Thanks for the link to send in a ticket, I'll do that and see what happens.

No problem, boristhemoggy.

This thread has been referred to CyberLink. I understand you may not be feeling too warm and fuzzy about CL right now because you have a perplexing issue. I can tell you that they genuinely care when users are having problems.

CyberLink contacts have requested the following information to help resolve the problem:

1. DxDiag
2. PhD version and build info - I understand it's PhotoDirector OEM_Deluxe 3.0.3618
3. Attach a sample picture of each file type that was imported.
4. What is the total size of the imported folder?
5. Is there any message when PhotoDirector 3 crashes? Post a screenshot

Finally, it was suggested that you follow the same procedure with the PhotoDirector4 Trial to see if the issue (crashing) is replicated.

As CL has been alerted to the issue, they will monitor the thread and gather the necessary information.

It's good to know that you have a healthy maintenance regime, as suggested by OnTheWeb.

PIX PIX YouTube channel

TBH I have no malice toward CL, really, I haven't paid anything, so I've lost nothing. I've used other Cyberlink products in the past without problem.
Anyway I tried to attach my dxdiag but it seems this forum doesn't allow attachments? Or am I just being thick?
I'll try the trial of 4 and see how it goes.
My maintenance regime is born of long experience of unreliable hardware and software and the ease with which us humans can make errors.
It will never be foolproof, but it's pretty dam good

Attaching your DxDiag shouldn't be a problem.

1. Run the DxDiag tool
2. Save all information (text file), naming the file (e.g. Boris_DxDiag)
3. Attach report(s) in reply

I'm not sure why it wouldn't attach at your end.

Boris - if you could also include/attach the other information requested, that would help us get to the bottom of the problem.

This thread is titled "Can't save PNG files", which would indicate that (at some point) PhD3 has been able to import some files for editing.

PIX
PIX YouTube channel

OK my very first impressions are:
It took over 4 hours to import 14,948 files, a mixture of RAW and DNG files. (JPG are lossy files so I don't keep them, TIFF's are 4 times the size so I don't keep those either.) It did give me a standard Windows error message at 96% of the import saying there was an error and it had to close, however it didn't close and went on to complete the import. Way to go!

PD4 says it can't import DNG but it did, it allowed me to process one, and export it as a JPG. The colours were shocking but as it was not supposed to be allowed, I forgave it that. There's no PNG support which I find highly surprising.

Some keywords have been imported, however I picked one at random...Derwentwater. LR tells me there are 556 images tagged with that word, PD4 tells me there are 18 from the same catalogue. I did wait a while in case it was just taking a long time to read them but it wasn't.
On that one feature alone, PD4 is I'm afraid useless to me apart from as a one off, now-and-again editor. One of the key functions of a good library management tool is to be able to read existing meta-data.

Using a RAW file, I exported a JPG from PD4 and one from LR4 of the same file. The colour rendition from PD I'm afraid was terrible. However maybe it has to be calibrated to use a specific profile? I stuck with sRGB for the test which is about as standard as you'd find.
I did notice also on one particular file that not only colour, but the actual quality of the image itself was noticeably poorer in the PD version as compared to the LR version. I couldn't find anywhere to set resolution of exported files except the slider for JPG quality which I set to highest. To try and make the comparison fair I set LR4 to the same. That means even as a one-off editor it's no good to me.

I took another RAW file and used the background remove tool. I removed the background then saved the file as a TIFF. Of course it didn't save the layers so you must finish a job when you start. It will save as PNG, however you can't select it as a choice. You must try to exit the tool, then you get a warning box saying you will lose your work if you don't save, and if you choose to save then you get the option to save as a PNG. Deeply puzzling why there is not simply an option to export or save as a PNG.

I didn't play with it any further. No proper DNG or PNG support, poor colour rendition, poor quality of exported JPG's and very poor meta-data operation mean it's not any good to me at all.

Sorry to be so negative, it's not an attempt to brutalise your software, simply to evaluate it. It's got a nice interface and some fantastic tools, but it's simply not 'quality' or finished. PLease let me know if I've been unfair by missing something though.

Oh just a minor annoyance, but the splash screen hogs the focus whilst it loads and that's incredibly annoying when programs do that

Thank you for your review of PhotoDirector4. It seems as if you've decided what to do, so we don't need to persist with your crashing issue.

It's true that there are differences in the way different software functions. Some meet some people's needs but not others.

I'm familiar with LightRoom & am aware of differences in rendering compared with PhotoDirector. I certainly wouldn't describe the colour rendition in the way you have.

As a test, I took a RAW file from a Canon 5D Mk III and exported it (without editing) from both PhD4 & LR4, using the 3 colour space options (s-RGB, Adobe RGB & PhotoPro RGB) for side by side comparison.



Obviously the visual comparison isn't valid here. Members who are interested can download a zipped file of the original RAW (.CR2) file & the exported JPGs from LR4 & PhD4 @ http://www.mediafire.com/?qtd9t9rd9b71ey1 You'll see which is which by the file names.

I wish you all the best.

PIX PIX YouTube channel