Did you see where I posted the same exact problem about 12 hours ago?

For both of you....

Media properties from MediaInfo and render settings.

Have you reported the problem to Customer Supprort via Ask A Question? You may have to.

Yes I filed a ticket and will be calling them tomorrow.

I am extremely concerned as research shows that Sony video editing programs are loaded w crash problems. Loads of other people reporting the same.

There are a load of fixes on Youtube, mostly for Vegas Pro but I assume they can als work for Movie Studio too.

None of the fixes are the same, everyone seems to have different supposed fixes. I tried some they did not work I will try more tomorrow.

Just now, it took about 5 minutes for Movie Studio to even open up. I have a great computer so I don't think my computer is the problem.

I could not find Media properties/mediainfo. Can you explain a little more please?

Thanks for your help!

My problem is not in rendering but occurs while working and editing on the timeline.

Just an update here.

I removed Movie Studio 13, DVD Architect, and all associated Sony software. I followed the directions for removing the registry keys. I did a clean install of Movie Studio 13.

I loaded up the project that was giving me problems. I rendered it, and everything worked perfectly. Then I went into Preferences and changed the GPU acceleration to use my graphics card. I closed and reopened Movie Studio 13. I loaded my project and started to render. The render froze at 5%.

I went back into Preferences and reverted the GPU acceleration to OFF.

Again, I closed and restarted the program, loaded my project, and rendered. It rendered perfectly with no issues. There seems to be a problem using GPU acceleration with my graphics card. I'll leave GPU acceleration off for a while and see how things go.

BTW, I also did a clean install of Nvidia's latest drivers before all of these tests.

My graphics card is an EVGA GeForce GTX 760.

Regards,
me

Wow. OK thanks.

That is scary to think of having to remove MS. IT won't be too bad for me now as I only started editing my project but the reason I switched to MS from SERIF MOVIEPLUS is that I worked for 3 years on a project, had it all edited (mostly) only to find out SERIF kept crashing when I tried to render the project.

Now I only worked on it part time for 3 years so it was not a full time project but still it was many many man hours of work that might have been for naught. So to think about uninstalling it and reinstalling would have cost me the entire project having to start over from scratch.

So what I am doing is I bought the SONY MS and was able to export small segments of my SERIF project to files and then I uploaded the files into SONY MS.

So I can uninstall it and reinstall SONY MS if need be as it won;'t take much work to re-add my SERIF files.

I was also told a problem cold be that I have some of my video clips stored on my internal C drive and that might create a conflict w the OS and I was told to get all of the video clips on a separate external drive so I will try that too. But currently I assume SONY MS is pulling off of the files I created when I exported the SERIF project to files on my internal C drive. So I guess I will also transfer those files too - to the external drive.

I also saw where I was told to set the PREFERENCES to off but mine was already set to off. So I changed it to my graphics card which was in the drop down. Maybe I should change it back to off but it wasn't working that way so I figured I would set it to my graphics card that was listed.

Man I really hope I can get this to work..

Thanks for the update!

Now I only worked on it part time for 3 years so it was not a full time project but still it was many many man hours of work that might have been for naught. So to think about uninstalling it and reinstalling would have cost me the entire project having to start over from scratch.

That is simply not true. You can uninstall and reinstall alomst any software without affecting saved projects.

Fwiw, I've used Serif MoviePlus for years without experiencing the stability problems you refer to.

Correct, project files will not be lost. You are doing a Save As periodically I hope. If not, it's highly suggested should it become corrupt.

MediaInfo is a third party app downloaded from the 'net.

OK thanks for that information. Very good to know. I am a novice but I now see what you are saying. Once the project is saved, it is still there even if I reinstall. Ok great to know.

I don't know what percentage of people using SERIF MP have this problem but if you have been to the MP forum, there are loads of posts from people having the same problem as I am.

Also, when I contacted Serif about the problem, they knew all about at and before I had a chance to even really say what was happening the asked if I was doing HD (yes) then they asked how long my project was (2 hours but then I cut it in half an then in half again so in the end I was trying to export only 30 minutes) and soon as the tech rep heard that he said, "you're going to have a lot of problems exporting that" so it's well known by Serif this problem exists and can';t handle large files well as you know hd takes up a lot of space.

SERIF further said that the problem is that it is only a 32 gb software so effectively it can only use 2.5 gb of ram and that is just not enough.

How long are your projects that you export? Are you doing HD?

So after 2 months of trying to get SERIF to work, everyone was telling me about how great SONY is as it's 64 bit so I bought it.

Now that I am at this forum there are loads of posts about SONY also being prone to crash and there are many posters on youtube who have posted, "fixes" all of which are different from the other.

I sent SONY TECH my footage and I will see what happens and hope I can get SONY MS to work but so far it has not.

I just added another 8 gb of ram for a total of 16 now although 8 was more than enough but MS still froze upon attempting to edit.

Thanks for the info!

OK thanks for that info.

MS 13 crashes withing the first 2-3 minutes of when I start editing. It freezes and I can't click on anything so I haven't lost a lot of work and as far as I got was just loading the footage in which doesn't get lost upon the crash/freeze.

However, I understand what you mean about frequent saves.

SERIF MOVIE PLUS has a feature where it automatically saves your changes every 15 minutes w out me/you having to save it ourselves. It's auto.

Does MS 13 have that feature?

OK thanks for the heads-up on Mediainfo, I will check it out.

So I guess you think that will fix it. Uh yes I guess that's why you mentioned it.

Someone else also suggested Cineform.

Have you heard of cineform?

Thanks for all of the help I really appreciate it!

Probably not right to have an extended exchange about other software here. Suffice to say, I have run large, HD projects using MoviePlus without any hanging problems.

I'm not sure why we can't mention it if it's pertinent to the conversation. I don't think there's any need to censor valid conversation and reject that premise.

SERIF always blames the customer, like I said SERIF KNOWS about this glitch and that a certain percentage of customer's have it happen to them. I am glad you were fortunate enough to not be one of them but for us who are, it's extremely infuriating as is the fact that the problems w rendering and SONY crashing is far more extensive. Just look around this board and you will see. One of the people who has posted a possible fix says it's a common problem. SONY is prob used more extensively by more people so maybe that is why there is even more posts about it crashing vs. SERIF. Of course SONY will not give you your money back even though i have a software that currently is useless to me. If they can't get it fixed I will contact my credit card company and get my money back that way.

With SERIF the error message is C++ MOVIEPLUS. I contacted the people who write that software VIRTUAL something I think it's called and they told me emphatically, "LOOK - IF IT SAYS C++ MOVIEPLUS THAT MEANS THE SOFTWARE IS TELLING YOU THERE IS A FAILING IN MOVIEPLUS - END OF DEBATE - DON'T BOTHER US AGAIN YOU NEED TO TALK TO SERIF"

Sorry for the caps not yelling just repeating what Virtual C++ programmers told me..

Why only some people have that issue, I don't know and neither does SERIF I just know a lot of people can't render SERIF and now SONY too.

Thanks for your help!

It also might have helped us a little if you had done what MSmart asked...

Media properties from MediaInfo

Are you having the same problem? You should go ahead and try out MEDIAINFO yourself then and let me know what luck you have.

I am sorry if you don't like the way I am going about solving this problem.

I find the way you made your comment and phrased it a little arrogant and uncalled for.

Let me explain so you understand, if you read the entire post you would see where I said I was going to try MEDIAINFO as well as hopefully helping others by mentioning that someone on another board told me another possible fix was using CINEFORM.

If you had read the entire post you would have also seen where I stated that I had filed a ticket with SONY and was in touch w the SONY TECH and thought it would be prudent to FIRST see what SONY TECH said and then if he had no solution I would try the MEDIAINFO AND CINEFORM.


AS it is the SONY tech just gave me a fix not requiring MEDIAINFO AND it looks like the snafu has been resolved I was just going to make sure it was fixed and then post the fix here.

Is that satisfactory w your high level of demands?

The way you stated that was rather arrogant and out of line.

PROBLEM SOLVED!

Here is the fix provided by SONY tech rep.

I did as described and had no problem editing tonight!

Sooo relieved to get it to work!

Thanks for all the help!

SONY TECH REP SAID:

Thank you for writing back. I was able to reproduce the issue and fixed it pretty quickly. First, can you please delete any and all .SFK files from the directory that you store your media. Delete only the files that have the extension .SFK. Once those are all deleted, please open your project.

When your project opens, do not click or press anything. You will see on the top left corner of the program that there is a process occurring, which has a % (# out of #). Wait until that process completely finishes. Now try playing back and editing your project. Do you find that it does not hang any longer?

.SFK files are metadata files that hold the waveform information for your audio. So basically, when you see a waveform in the timeline, that information is being stored and retrieved from the .SFK files being created. Whenever you import any type of media with audio in it, a .SFK file will be created.

The reason I want you to delete your currently existing .SFK files is because it seems that you have multiples/duplicates, which could be causing issues. Once you delete them all, and then reopen your project, the .SFK files for your media will be created again, so you do not have to worry.

I haven't used any Serif software in about 20 years, but if they still work the way they did back then i can see some of Onion's hesitation. Serif used to save project files in a large encrypted archive in the install directory, and this archive was deleted if the software was uninstalled or reinstalled. If you saved a copy of it first then the reinstall generated new keys and the archive copy was unreadable.

About 1.7 seconds after discovering this i wiped all Serif software from our PCs and never looked at it again. Hopefully they're a little smarter now though.

If you saved a copy of it first then the reinstall generated new keys and the archive copy was unreadable.

That hasn't been true for many years. I was a very early adopter and don't remember it ever being true, so must have been a very short-lived arrangement.

Thank goodness for that. It was definitely one of the most ridiculous project storage solutions i had ever seen.