Help...On PSG. Cant render/create...RESOLVED!

[zorro18]

Happy New Year from Asia....

Am new and bought PSG recently after a trial. Registered and started my 1st project of 300+ pics on my brand new Windows 7 64-bit Core-i7 PC.
I think I'm experiencing similar to some of you guys here...PSG freezes or closed by itself after rendering between 1% & 5%.
I have also deleted ALL the pics and replaced them fresh but it continued crashing. I have tried the rendering/creating process more than 50x! It fails at different sections of the slides which makes troubleshooting tedious.

Havent tried reinstalling PSG yet but not too sure if it can really help...

btw, am quite a noob. Can anyone tell me how to create ISO file instead of burning directly to DVD?

Thanks!

[TinaJ Profile Private messageYIM]

I'm sure others will chime in with info about your crashes, however I can answer the easy question about ISO. When you click create>DVD a new window pops up with tabs across the top. Click burning and you will see DVD writer, where you can click the arrow and have the choice of your burner or ISO image file. Click create at the bottom and the computer will generate your ISO file. But if you are experiencing crashes in the rendering process, I'm assuming that you are having trouble with the creation of the video before the burn process. ISO may not help that if you have something going on that is stopping you from creating the video.
Tina

[zorro18]

Thank Tina. I tried and the rendering via ISO image and it went a little further (it hit 10%) before it gave a black screen and self-rebooted the PC. Grrrr......

[TinaJ Profile Private messageYIM]

Can you try making another show? Just to see if proshow itself isn't corrupted, throw together some pics and a soundtrack. Not anything you have in your show. Can you render and create an ISO? That might help narrow it down. I think everyone is celebrating the new year!
Tina

[zorro18]

Thanks, again. Yes, i know it's a bad time to get help during this time of year....
Just documenting my experience here so that I may get some help post-new year celebrations.

Ok, I've tried a new project with just 5 slides, a single soundtrack, with motion effects on 4:3 and 16:9 and generate ISO files with no problem.
I then created a new project to dump all the 300+ pics with NO effects ie plain-vanilla on 16:9 and 4:3 and it failed on within 5%. Message: "Proshow has stopped working. A problem caused the program to stop working correctly...."

[pilotdan63 Profile Private message]

It sounds like one or more of your pictures may be corrupt or possibly one of your songs. Another possibility could also be a bad installation of ProShow Gold on your computer.

Try creating your show as a PC executable (exe) to see if ProShow crashes. Just save your exe file to your desktop as a test to see if it works

Dan

[DickK Profile Private messageWebsite]

It's very uncommon but not unknown that an image file is the source of the ProShow crash. Try the EXE as suggested and if you've already taken all the sound files and video files out then you're you'll need to find the image that's the problem. It's tedious but usually simple. You work backward, taking images out, until it works. After you isolate the image, load it into an editor, make a trivial edit so it will create a new file when you do a save-as. Put that one in the show and see if it works okay.

Good luck,
Dick

[zorro18]

pilotdan & dick, thank you for taking time to help out.I will try out your suggestions to see if one or more of the images are the cause of it.
Happy New Year to all....

[zorro18]

Doesnt work.
I loaded a completely new set of 95 images (fresh from the cam) and it still didnt work. PSG just kept crashing.
Out of frustration, I downloaded a trial copy of another software, and guess what, all my previous projects worked without a glitch!!
I still like PSG's GUI but if I'm wasting my time using it, I may have to go for another software.
My only regret was that I did not do a complete end-2-end workflow test on PSG before I bought it.
I was impressed with the GUI and that was a big mistake on my part.
I have also sent a trouble-report to PSG on this.

It makes no sense as I have wasted 3.5days on it.

[VernonRobinson Profile Private message]

Zorro18,
Don't despair . Happy New Year. I think you will find that all software has some type of inherent bug in them. But with your new machine, I assume that you are running Windows 7 or Vista. When you did your installation, did you install as an Administrator? This has been known to cause some problems.

Also, be sure to check that you have the latest version of ProShow. There has been a lot of changes in the last 2 weeks.

Finally, even though you have a new machine, make sure you have the latest sound drivers and video drivers for your machine. If your machine is a Dell, they make it very easy.

Try those three things. If you need more details on any of these steps, post back and we can help. We would need to know more of the specifics of your machine. Sounds like an excellent set up btw.

Regards,
-Vernon

[zorro18]

Thank you, vernonrobinson. Happy New Year to you too.

I'm running on Windows 7 Home Edition 64-bit with ZoneAlarm Anti-virus sw on a Core i7-860 rig with a Radeon HD 5750 video card. My setup comes with a DVD-writer and a Bluray ROM drive. Yes, I tried installing AND running PSG with the anti-virus sw turned off. It still crashed.

I would like more clarity on how to "install PSG with Administrator". I just did a normal install and set it to "Run As Administrator" in the Properties. I have reinstalled PSG abt 4 times now.

I am also using the latest PSG sw ver 4.1.2712

As for sound & video drivers, I have done a check and confirmed they are the latest. I'm using sound onboard from the latest Asus motherboard which can support USB3.0 too.

PSG causes the following conditions on my PC whenever it renders:
1. PSG crash ie application closes abruptly
2. PC reboot..PC gives blank screen for 15 seconds and reboot
3. PSG hangs ie Application Not Responding (under Task Mgr)

As for the Anti-virus setting, I have set PSG to be allowed/permitted. I have also disabled Windows background themes refresh. It was previously set at 30secs refresh interval which I suspect the refresh may have interfered with the rendering.

I believe PSG's motion effects to be the main culprit as a "clean image" taken from cam and applied with motion-effects can cause PSG to 'reject' the image.

Email response from PSG Support:
Quote:
Thanks for contacting Photodex!

Rendering is a very complex process for your machine. This process is the point where your show is broken up into up to 60 different images for each second of your show. The number is more commonly around 30, but that would be 1800 images being created by your machine for just a one minute long show. You could try this with an image editor to see how intense just opening that many images would be for your computer (I don't recommend it, just an example . That means that your computer is working really hard at that point so you may experience some problems during the process.

It's sort of like the Heart Treadmill test that would be performed on a person. Your heart may operate normall at rest or while under minimal exertion, but get on a treadmill for half and hour and stress the heart and flaws may become apparent. Rendering works the same way for your computer. All the background software, the hardware and the gremlins that hide inside all get along when you're performing simple tasks like browsing the web, creating a word document, etc. However, when you start rendering then the problems can show up.

There may be many possible reasons for this to occur and we may need to work to identify those reasons so we can resolve them. This may require some testing of your show, computer and ProShow to see how it performs. That may mean performing some steps over again or creating some test shows. These steps are very important because they may be possible resolutions. If they don't end up solving the problem, they often provide information that will help to reveal the underlying problem.

One common area that causes a problem during rendering is actually your security software. Security software can be very aggressive in order to protect your computer from possible malicious programs. You may need to set ProShow (and Presenter) to be an exception or place them on an 'allowed' list. Keep in mind, disabling or exiting security software does not necessarily shut the software down. It is usually installed as a system service and needs to be removed by using the uninstall or system configuration utilities which is why you will want to consult your documentation (or the program's website) on proper installation methods and configuration for 3rd party software.

If the problem persists or you are unable to locate your software's instructions, please let me know so we can try some further steps. Please keep in mind that is important to be sure that we properly complete this first step in the trouble shooting process. While it may not be culprit, we want to simplify the rest of the process and ensure it's not complicated my security software that is not configured properly. If you have additional questions or if I can be of service in any way, please let me know.

Unquote.

[Bart_B Profile Private message]

I don't know if this will help you but I am fairly new to ProShow as well and the first time I tried to burn a DVD I was almost reduced to tears with what sounds like the same or similar problem. For me as I experimented with different things came across a very simple fix and maybe it will work for you. Open the Create Output window then under the "Executable" tab, uncheck "PC Autorun". For some reason on some but not all shows, whatever happens to make a show PC Executable causes crashes for me when I try to burn.

Good luck. Easy fix if it works!

Bart

[zorro18]

Thank you, bart. PC Autorun has been unchecked earlier on but doesnt resolve anything.

[VernonRobinson Profile Private message]

Zorro18,
When you did the test with the 95 pictures directly from the camera, did you set those up in a brand new show in a new directory? If not, then give that a try. Sometimes ProShow's temporary rendering files get out of sync. By having a brand new show in a brand new directory, ProShow will recreate all of those files. There are steps that could be taken manually to fix your original show, if this is the issue.

I see that your video card is a new release, approx Oct/Nov 2009. It is a long shot, but FOR TESTING PURPOSES, try disabling the Direct Draw Support and see if that helps. You can find this in EDIT/PREFERENCES/Playback.

Regards,
-Vernon

[pilotdan63 Profile Private message]

Dear Zorro 18 . . . may I offer my .02

Some time ago I experienced my ProShow Gold program crashing similar to yours. I tried everything I could think of just like you have done and found out that it was ultimately the fault of my anti virus program. I used Zone Alarm and AVG at the time and for some reason my ProShow Gold had fits with these two anti virus programs. It didn't make any difference when I disabled my anti virus either, ProShow still died before the rendering was completed.

In desperation I completely removed all my anti virus programs using their uninstall programs and the Microsoft Control Panel add and remove utility. After this was completed I was able to render a show through from start to finish. I am now using the free personal version of Avira anti virus and haven't had any more problems.

http://www.free-av.com/en/products/index.html

Good luck, I sincerely hope you are able to find out why ProShow is crashing because it is definitely among the very best of the slide show programs available today in my humble opinion

Dan