Prolblems with VB Version 6

[Eric Athroll]

Hi

I have been using Video Burner (Version 5) for the past two years or so without any problems.

Since upgrading to PTE/VB Version 6 my DVD Burn sometimes stalls at the very end of the procedure.

I sometimes get the message that the burn is successful and that I can press OK to eject the disk. on other occasions it stalls at 99% with no activity showing on the DVD Burner LED and I have to use Task Manager to force VB to close.

Each time I find an entry in Event Viewer that "Device\Idle\IdePort0 did not respond withing the timeout period".

My system hardware has not changed since first purchased. I use Windows XP Home Edition SP2, an Intel Pentium 4 3GHz with 2 Gb RAM, a nVidia FX5600 Graphics Card with 256 Mb of onboard Memory and have over 16 Gb free space on "C Drive".

Can anyone suggest what might be going on here as otherwise I have wasted my money on the update.

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Eric

One thing that stands out from your screen shots is the run time of 2 hours plus, which is a hell of a long time for a 15 minute show. I burned a DVD yesterday with 600 pics 65 minutes on screen time in well under 2 hours. Did you disable your anti virus before starting? BTW I used 5.6.

Regards

Another Eric

Yachtsman1

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Eric

One thing that stands out from your screen shots is the run time of 2 hours plus, which is a hell of a long time for a 15 minute show. I burned a DVD yesterday with 600 pics 65 minutes on screen time in well under 2 hours. Did you disable your anti virus before starting? BTW I used 5.6.

Regards

Another Eric

Yachtsman1

Must need my glasses changing, read the run time incorrectly, the anti virus comment still stands.

Yachtsman1

[Eric Athroll]

Hi Eric

One thing that stands out from your screen shots is the run time of 2 hours plus, which is a hell of a long time for a 15 minute show. I burned a DVD yesterday with 600 pics 65 minutes on screen time in well under 2 hours. Did you disable your anti virus before starting? BTW I used 5.6.

Regards

Another Eric

Yachtsman1

Hi

The video is only about 2 minutes long and was just a test sequence. My DVD Burner only burns DVDs at 1-4X and in the past when I have burned a short test sequence there is quite a long delay after the burn whilst writing the lead in and out data.

I used to use Nero Version 6 Vision Express but found this a very lengthy process compared to VideoBuilder and also more complicated to use which is why I upgraded when VB first came out.

I have this problem now with both VB Version 5.6 and 6.0 and wonder whether my Version 5.6 has been changed when I extended the licence.

I have never had to disable my Anti-Virus software in the past but I will carry out another test and see what happens.

My screen shots show the atapi error in Event Viewer and is the same whatever version of PTE/VB I use for this test. The other two screenshots show one success and one failure (albeit in Version 5.6). One other thing, in both cases despite clicking OK for the completion and ejection of the DVD it is never ejected.

[Eric Athroll]

Strange. Your Video Builder version title bar says 5.6 instead of 6. Did you launch from PTE 6 or did you select if from the programs menu? I almost always launch Video Builder from PTE.

Tom

Hi

I always launch VB from PTE. You are quite right, these screen shots are from a test using Version 5.6. Since I paid to extend my licence for VB the same errors and behavoir occur in both Versions 5.6 and 6 so I am wondering whether this upgrade has affected my previous version as well.

See also my reply to Yaughtsman1 above for further information.

[fh1805]

Since I paid to extend my licence for VB the same errors and behavoir occur in both Versions 5.6 and 6 so I am wondering whether this upgrade has affected my previous version as well.

Eric,

Provided you let PTE use its defaults during the installation, each version of PTE installs into its own directory under Program Files on your C: drive. So there is no possibility of a newer version corrupting your older versions.

regards,

Peter

[Eric Athroll]

Hi Eric,

Information from Microsoft about event 9 here.

Besides suspending your AV temporarily you might try checking and defragging your C: drive so you can obtain maximum transfer speed to the DVD burner. This is assuming that you're not running Solid State Drive (SSD) that do not require defragmentation. I do these two steps as preventative maintenance about once a month.

Run chkdsk and then defrag.

Try different DVD media. Some blank media is really bad.

Try creating a .iso file and temporarily use a different DVD burner program to verify the problem is with the Video Builder burner engine.

Tom

Hi

Thanks for the advice - I defrag my C Drive regularly (using PerfectDisc 10) and I have the latest firmware for my two Optical Drives.

In response to previous comments I have burned another test with my Internet Connection disabled and all Anti-Virus/Firewall software disabled. This time I had no problems so that might be the cause.

I will have to carry out more tests to confirm this.

[Eric Athroll]

Eric,

Provided you let PTE use its defaults during the installation, each version of PTE installs into its own directory under Program Files on your C: drive. So there is no possibility of a newer version corrupting your older versions.

regards,

Peter

Hi

I can confirm that my Program Files do indeed contain seperate folders for Version 5.6 and 6.0 and each contains a folder for VideoBuilder. However, within the Version 6.0 sub folder for VB, the file shows Version 5.6 and not 6. I don't know how this happened, but I did extend my subscription after installing PTE Version 6 and then later updated the key.

I shall uninstall Version 6.0 and do a fresh re-install and see what happens.

[fh1805]

However, within the Version 6.0 sub folder for VB, the file shows Version 5.6 and not 6. I don't know how this happened, but I did extend my subscription after installing PTE Version 6 and then later updated the key.

Eric,

Mine also shows Video-Builder tagged as 5.6.0.0 under both program directories - and I haven't had upgraded my licence. I don't think a fresh download and install of PTE v6 will change the situation. I suspect that either WnSoft didn't update all the tags prior to releasing PTE v6 or the Video-Builder code in PTE v6 is identical to that in PTE v5.6.

regards,

Peter

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Eric,

Mine also shows Video-Builder tagged as 5.6.0.0 under both program directories - and I haven't had upgraded my licence. I don't think a fresh download and install of PTE v6 will change the situation. I suspect that either WnSoft didn't update all the tags prior to releasing PTE v6 or the Video-Builder code in PTE v6 is identical to that in PTE v5.6.

regards,

Peter

Could this be due to the original VB licence having expired, glad things are improving with the switching off of your AV & I/Net. Have you run disc clean, which is different to de-frag & gets rid of a lot of C**P.

Yachtsman1

[Eric Athroll]

Well, I have just made a DVD with 1 Gb data and 4 sequences and it all worked fine. This time I disabled my Firewall and Anti-Virus and also disconnected from the Internet to make sure nothing was running other than PTE and VB.

Regarding the Versions - I did uninstall PTE 6 and re-installed it and this time VB shows Version 6 at the top of the window as it should. However, when I check the Version information in the folder in C:\Programmes it does show Version 5.6.

When I open VB from PTE Version 5.6.4 and then Version 6.0 the options for Create are different despite the actual VB exe files showing the same versions.

Anyway, I shall hopefully have no more burning problems now that I know I need to disable the Anti Virus etc. Fingers crossed.

[Conflow]

Hi Eric,

I seems as if you have found a solution to your problems, and in further explaination the

following will confirm why it happened in the 1st. place...

I just had a look at your Screenshots and I noticed that successive attempts to access 'IDE-0'

(The Data-Buss location of your Hard-Drive) had timed out as 'Failed'. This means that your

Burner-Program could not get total access to your AVI.Files on your Hard-Drive.

To get access to AVI Files on the HD requires a lot of Ram/User-Memory of which you only have

2.Gb and the XP-Sp3.Op/System will use 500.Mb of that leaving you with somewhat less than 1.5Gb

to write data to the DVD. Thats very tight...

Quite obviously something is burning up your available memory and the most likely causes are:-

1)Image Files are simply way too big.......(2) Your Anti-Virus Program is caught in a 'loop'.

3)Internet-Explorer is running in the background trying to download something and it wants memory.

4)Another Program is running (silently) and it also is demanding memory.

The reason you can not 'auto-eject' the DVD is because the System cant find it.There is no memory

available to write to the CD-Drive and execute the 'eject' function consequently the System "hangs"

with an unresolvable instruction and the only option left is 'Task-Manager' using End-Task.

Hope this gives you some clues to find the culprit ~ you will find that it's a simple problem, most

likely your Image Files are too large seeing as your System worked fine up to this occassion.

Brian.(Conflow)

[Eric Athroll]

Hi Eric,

I seems as if you have found a solution to your problems, and in further explanation the

following will confirm why it happened in the 1st. place...

I just had a look at your Screenshots and I noticed that successive attempts to access 'IDE-0'

(The Data-Buss location of your Hard-Drive) had timed out as 'Failed'. This means that your

Burner-Program could not get total access to your AVI.Files on your Hard-Drive.

To get access to AVI Files on the HD requires a lot of Ram/User-Memory of which you only have

2.Gb and the XP-Sp3.Op/System will use 500.Mb of that leaving you with somewhat less than 1.5Gb

to write data to the DVD. That's very tight...

Quite obviously something is burning up your available memory and the most likely causes are:-

1)Image Files are simply way too big.......(2) Your Anti-Virus Program is caught in a 'loop'.

3)Internet-Explorer is running in the background trying to download something and it wants memory.

4)Another Program is running (silently) and it also is demanding memory.

The reason you can not 'auto-eject' the DVD is because the System cant find it.There is no memory

available to write to the CD-Drive and execute the 'eject' function consequently the System "hangs"

with an unresolvable instruction and the only option left is 'Task-Manager' using End-Task.

Hope this gives you some clues to find the culprit ~ you will find that it's a simple problem, most

likely your Image Files are too large seeing as your System worked fine up to this occasion.

Brian.(Conflow)

My Hard Drives are SATA Drives. My two Optical Drives are connected to the IDE 1 Connector, DVD as Master & CDRW as Slave. I would expect the timeout for IDE-0 to be the DVD Drive.

I am not running Windows XP SP3 - I have SP2 installed for a number of reasons. Also having more than about 2Gb RAM is pointless as many parts of my system will not use much more than that anyway.

My files for PTE are no more than around 100-150 Kb (1024x576 for 16:9 format and 1024x768 for 4:3 format at 72 dpi) so that isn't the problem.

I said earlier that nothing had changed on my system since I first started using VB when it first became available - this isn't quite true as I now have Norton Internet Security 2009 which accesses the Internet frequently to update virus definitions (pulse updates). I am now reasonably sure this is the culprit and that disconnecting from the Internet and disabling the Norton Anti-Virus/Firewall will solve the problem.

Thanks anyway for your input.

[fh1805]

Eric,

...having more than about 2Gb RAM is pointless...

No it isn't. A shortage of computer memory is one of the most common causes of unnecessary slowness in any computer system. A lack of sufficient memory causes the system to "page" (write currently unused sections of memory out to the hard-drive in order to make use of that memory space). By comparison to the speed of memory, the hard-drive is a tortoise. Eliminating paging should be the first priority of every computer user who wants to make their system run faster.

...I now have Norton Internet Security 2009 which accesses the Internet frequently to update virus definitions (pulse updates). I am now reasonably sure this is the culprit...

Don't be too quick to assign blame to the Norton software. You may be right in your assessment on your system; but I've been using Norton software on my systems since 1996 with no evidence of any problems.

regards,

Peter

[Eric Athroll]

Eric,

No it isn't. A shortage of computer memory is one of the most common causes of unnecessary slowness in any computer system. A lack of sufficient memory causes the system to "page" (write currently unused sections of memory out to the hard-drive in order to make use of that memory space). By comparison to the speed of memory, the hard-drive is a tortoise. Eliminating paging should be the first priority of every computer user who wants to make their system run faster.

Don't be too quick to assign blame to the Norton software. You may be right in your assessment on your system; but I've been using Norton software on my systems since 1996 with no evidence of any problems.

regards,

Peter

Hi

I did say "for my system" having more than about 2 Gb RAM is pointless. My version of Photoshop only recognises 2 Gb and my Operating System (as far as I can recall) will only recognise about 3 Gb or so. I do check the system requirements for every piece of software I purchase to make sure that I can use it on my system. I don't recall there being a system requirement spec for PTE/VB - if there is perhaps I should read it.

You assume I want to make my system run faster - I don't. I know its limitations but, although perhaps slow, it shouldn't freeze without good cause.

Perhaps you have a multi-core processor whereby this can multi-task without running out of steam - mine isn't, unfortunately, so I have to make the best of it and Norton NIS 2009 and Ad-Aware Version 8 certainly do take a lot of resources.

PTE/VB does not figure high on my priority list, my main requirement is for digital imaging, so I wouldn't buy a new PC just to run this application.

[Eric Athroll]

As a matter of interest this is the System Requirements for my Nero 6 Software which I used to use prior to subscribing to VB and without any problems other than time taken to process.

The PC must have a 500 MHz processor or higher. 800 MHz (for capturing to hard disk), 1.6 GHz (for capturing to DVD). A faster processor is recommended for best performance.

It must have at least 128 MB RAM memory. Generally, more would be better.

Hard disk space: 100 MB for the standard installation and up to 9 GB (for DVD projects, VCD/SVCD projects require up to 800MB) of HD space for temporary files.

To burn a DVD-Video disc, you need to have a supported DVD recordable drive connected to your system. To burn VCD/SVCD/miniDVD discs, you need to have a supported CD and/or DVD recordable drive connected to your system. (Please visit www.nero.com or the list of currently supported drives). Even if you do not have a recorder capable of burning DVD and/or VCD/SVCD/miniDVD discs, you can still burn a disc image on your hard drive and save it for future use. Once you have the appropriate recordable drive connected to your system, you can open disc images using Nero and/or Nero Express at any time, and burn real video discs.

Graphics card (800x600 display, 16-bit color) with 8 MB or higher

Sound card

Firewire (IEEE 1394) and/or USB port (optional)

DirectShow compatible video capture card (optional)

Hardly a state of the art requirement!

It would be interesting to see the system requirements for VideoBuilder. I have suggested (elsewhere) that this information be published in the FAQ section.