Also, Screenblast features an excellent "repair" feature.

Just put the installation disc back in the CD-ROM drive and press the install button. It will recognize that you already have the software and will repair what has become corrupted.

Doesn't solve every problem but it does fix the occasional hiccup.

It's worth a try!

I tried removing and reinstalling the software, but same problem persists. I tried to do a repair using the install CD, but same problem persists.

Thanks Chienworks for the tip using the explorer to access files, which does work. Why don't you like the Media Pool? Seems like a nice graphical interface if it would work for me?

Anyway, I will try emailing Sonic Foundry to see if they can help.

Meantime, DVWarrior, would you mind posting here what brand of computer you're using, what time processor, operating system, etc., just for our future reference?

It may or may not ultimately mean something.

Thanks.

Here are my computer specs. I bought it assembled from a local mom/pop shop a year ago when it was state of the art. It still cooks.

Motherboard: Intel D850EMV2 P4, 533MHz FSB, RDRAM, USB 2.0, 1AGP
CPU: Intel Pentium® 4 2.53GHz 533MHz FSB w/ heat sink & cooling fan
Memory: 1024MB Samsung PC800-40 RAMBUS RDRAM (4 X 256MB RIMMs)
Hard Drive 1: Western Digital Caviar WD1200JB 120GB 7,200 RPM EIDE, 8MB
Hard Drive 2: Western Digital Caviar WD1200JB 120GB 7,200 RPM EIDE, 8MB
Floppy Drive: Mitsumi 3.5” 1.44mb floppy drive, black
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon 9700 PRO 128MB DDR SDRAM TV-Out, AGP 8X
CD-RW Drive: TDK VeloCD 48/16/48 EIDE ATAPI, Internal
DVD+RW Drive: HP Q-2103A DVD-Writer dvd200xi DVD+RW/CD-RW Drive
Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 5.1 Gamer
Network Card: Intel PRO/1000MT 10/100/1000MBps copper gigabit
Case: Cooler Master ATC 710-GX2, dark gray aluminum face
Case Fans: Antec SmartFan 80mm
Power Supply: Antec 430W True430 ATX power supply
Operating System:Microsoft Windows XP Pro V2002 SP1

That's an enviable machine!

I'm sure there's just a little tweak to tune some place and everything will work fine.

You've plenty of power, and it doesn't look like you're using any equipment that are known to cause problems.

Maybe a good registry cleaning with shareware RegCleaner, just in case there are any problems at that level.

Good luck!

DVWarrior, there are a few reasons, but the main one is that it is slow. It takes a while to display all those thumbnail images. Also, SonicFoundry's software has an annoying tendancy to redraw all the thumbnails if you move focus to some other program and then back, not just the ones that are visible. If you have hundreds of items in the media pool this can take a long time. What's most annoying is that this happens even if the media pool isn't visible!

Generally i grab the clips i need from my hard drive and place them on the timeline. I've never really found any advantage to placing them in the media pool first and then placing them on the timeline. So, since it's not really useful for me i'm not particularly happy about the delay that it introduces every time i switch to another program and back.

Just wanted to share the response I got from a Software Support Technician with Sony Pictures Digital to my problem:

Hello,
Thank you for writing. In Vegas in the icons right above the media pool
window, you will find an icon labeled Views. Please click on this icon
and change the view from thumbnail to "List" or "Detailed".

For one thing, I clearly stated in my email that I am having problems with Screenblast Movie Studio 3.0. Whatever. The moment my cursor moves into the area where all the icons are located in the Media pool tab, the programs instantly shuts down back to Windows. This includes the Views icon. I cannot get to this icon. Looks like I will have to use Explorer to use this software as suggested by Chienworks.

One question I have for both Chienworks and grisetti. I am new to this forum and was wondering if you two are moderators, or just very enthusiastic users of Videofactory or Screetblast. What kinds of videos do you create and do you burn them to DVD's? How do you like this software compared to other competitors? Should I hang in there and try to use this software with this one bug or do you have any other recommendations? I would hate to spend a lot of time learning a new software package that has a lot of problems.

I'm sure chienworks will agree, Screenblast is the best value out there, and well worth your working through this little problem.

Like you, I'm just a hobbyist -- though a somewhat high level one -- and a sometime wedding and industrial videographer, but I've tried several editing programs and, for features, stability and ability to customize special effects and transitions, you just can't beat it. Certainly not for under $100. I even prefer it, in many ways, to Premiere!

I'm also a big fan of Pinnacle Studio, which is a bit more intuitive. But, as you'll see the mere mention of it can get a lot of people's dander up. (Right, JohnnyRoy?) It either works flawlessly (as it does on my machine) or it drives you bananas.

Screenblast, on the other hand (and despite your unfortunate experience), works very efficiently and with nary a bug in the entire app.

Definitely worth working through.

> (Right, JohnnyRoy?)

Don’t even get me started on Studio… Let’s just say it’s a love / hate relationship. ;-)

This is a very strange problem. Did you check the log files in the Windows XP Event Viewer? Is there any error message there? It’s odd that just this one window gives you problems. The only thing different about this window is that it accesses the file system but other than that, I can’t imagine why it would cause the program to terminate.

I don’t use the media pool. Never have. I use the Explorer view or I actually use Windows Explorer to drag and drop files. I guess its because I keep my projects in a hierarchy of folders on the file system with video separate from stills, etc. so I just find using a file system view more productive.

~jr

Just wanted to share the second response I got from a Software Support Technician with Sony Pictures Digital to my problem:

Hello,
Please try using the Add/Remove Programs utility in the control panel to
uninstall Screenblast Movie Studio. After doing so, go into the hard
drive that this application was installed on and go into the Program
Files folder there. Then go into the Screenblast folder here and delete
the folder labeled Movie Studio 3.0 if this is still there. Then go into
your Start menu and select Run. Type regedit in the field provided and
scroll to the top of the window. Go into the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE folder
and then into the Software folder. Go into the Sonic Foundry folder and
delete the Screenblast Movie Studio folder. Then re-install the software
and try once again to access the media pool.

I did exactly what they said and the original problem still persists. I will just use the explorer tab to access media.

I had a problem once where VideoFactory would not accept AVI files. The problem was caused by bad drivers in the Shared Plugin’s folder. I had to uninstall ALL of my Sonic Foundry products. Delete everything in my registry that had Sonic Foundry as a parent key (this included LOCAL_MACHINE and LOCAL_USER), manually delete all Sonic Foundry folders on both my hard drives (C: and D: ), reboot the machine (just for good luck) and then reinstall all my Sonic Foundry programs again.

The problem was that each install program checks for the plugins and if they are present, they don’t bother to reinstall them. Once a plugin got corrupt, no amount of uninstalling and re-installing would clear it up. I had to physically remove both the registry and hard drive contents for Sonic Foundry to clear it up. I would venture to guess that whatever plugin is responsible for painting the thumbnails in the media pool got corrupt somehow and is causing your problem.

~jr

I followed your suggestion to the letter and I am still having the media pool problem. Thanks for the advice anyway.

Have you tried updating your video driver?

Sometimes mysterious problems such as this are caused by video driver issues. A year or more ago, there were some users experiencing problems with the ATI Catalyst drivers that caused Vegas to crash, though typically at program startup.

Before you update your video driver, try lowering the hardware acceleration and see if that fixes the problem. Control Panel | Display | Settings tab | Advanced | Troubleshoot tab

I had the latest ATI Catalyst driver prior to installing Screenblast. I tried lowering hardware acceleration to none and still have the Media Pool problem.

SonicTSW, I assume you are a sonicfoundry rep. One suggestion I have for Screenblast 4.0 (or the next build) would be to be able to move the order of the tabs, so that the Explorer tab can be moved to the front, similar to Excel tabs. It seems that a lot of users prefer to use the Explorer tab for importing media and it would be nice to have that at the front. Another nice feature would be to turn the Media Pool tab completely off ;)

This may not be the same problem, but with VideoFactory, I would have problems with the Media Pool. Under Preferences I turned on the IGNORE THIRD PARTY CODECS (or something like that) and that fixed my crashing. Might be worth a try if Screenblast has that entry.

Dave T2

DVWarrior,

In Vegas you can change the order of the tabs. Hold the mouse down on the tab you want to move, drag it to the new tab position and release.

Hmmm, I'm not so sure about Screenblast Movie Studio 3.0. I just tried this in Video Factory 2.0 and it didn't work (I don't have MS 3 on my home machine). So thanks for the suggestion for Movie Studio, I'll make sure it gets added to the list.

Can you obtain the crash dump output and post it here? This thread tells you how to enable it in WinXP:

<

> I don't have MS 3 on my home machine

Tracy,

Assuming that you don’t keep your home machine at work, I would have to say that your dedication for supporting your customers on your own time at home is commendable. I hope Sony realizes the quality of the people they inherited from Sonic Foundry. I want you to know that, being in the software business myself, I have a lot of respect for your dedication.

~jr

DVWarrior,

Do you by any chance have Photoshop on your machine? I recently became aware of a known issue with a file named PSICON.DLL that Photoshop installs, which can cause problems with thumbnails in Windows. The media pool is probably set to the thumbnail view by default so it may be affecting the media pool in Movie Studio 3.0.

Here is a summary of some suggestions in the links below for working around this if you do have Photoshop:

1. Tell Windows to turn off caching of thumbnails, and delete the thumbs.db file (you will need to set the Windows Explorer to show hidden files to see this file)

2. Rename psicon.dll to something else. This file is somewhere in the Photoshop install folder. In a standard installation, psicon.dll is in
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Shell

3. Load one file of the graphics type (.jpg, .tif, etc.) you want to associate with PS into a new folder. This keeps the machine from grinding to a halt trying to thumbnail scores of images. Then right-click on that file, Properties -> Photoshop Image and uncheck "Generate Thumbnails". Do this for each filetype (Note: set the Windows Explorer to show file extensions before doing this).

Links:

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/saw27/notes/xp-woes.html

Google Groups: PhotoShop CS broke thumbnails and film strip...

OMG!!!
SonyTSW thank you very much for your tips. I only tried your option 2 renaming the Photoshop 7.0 file and it solved the problem of Media Pool crashing!!!
I owe you a virtual six pack of your favorite brew (or some blank mini dv tapes if you don't drink)
Thank you very much for remembering and responding to this very very old post.

DVWarrior

I am very happy to hear that your problem is now fixed. I will make sure that Customer Support knows about this workaround and have them add something about this to the Knowledge Base.

DW Warrior, what is the exact name you rename this photoshop file? I am having a problem with my video capure. This might solve my problem too. Thanks, Martha