psg crashes

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psg crashes

Postby pokey23 » Wed Feb 20, 2013 4:11 pm

Hi I have an old version of psg 2.6 that worked very well making slideshows over the years. I am in the middle of doing a new project with old-old home 8mm movies.I have entered the movie clips onto the timeline with no issues. It can take up to 1 1/2 hours to render 9 clips. When it is finely done I try to play the show or do anything with psg it crashes. My question is am I in need of more ram or is something else going on. My system is an hp compac, amd64Athlonx2 with 2gb of ram. and 50% of hard disk free please help as I have over 7,500 feet of movies to turn into DVD's Thank You for your help Larry

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Re: psg crashes

Postby BarbaraC » Wed Feb 20, 2013 4:27 pm

If you've never before stressed PSG as is likely with video, then perhaps that's what's causing the crash, but just in case, have you tried deleting the two files that are likely to get corrupted? You'll find them in the ProShow folder, and for your version, the files should be named def.phd and cpic.opt. You can delete them without harm, though if you've set your own preferences for how the screen will look, you'll find that the next time you open Gold, everything will be back to factory settings. Just make sure that, when you do this, PSG is closed. Both files will be automatically regenerated the next time you open the program.

Keep your fingers crossed. If one of those files has gotten corrupted, maybe it'll solve all your problems.

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Re: psg crashes

Postby DickK » Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:33 pm

It probably does but I don't remember if version two has those files with those names but in addition to those Barbara mentioned you can delete the show cache file (PXC) as well as another step.

Are you just using PSG as a means to turn the video into a DVD or are you adding stills along the way as well? If you're just using video then, if it were me, I would never use PSG for the task at all -- crash or not, especially for a project as large as you're describing. What you want for that task is video editing and authoring software, it will have a lot more flexibility and give you a lot of capability that PSG can't.

Don't get me wrong, PSG (even that version which is what I started with) is good stuff but it's not really intended to do what it sounds like you're doing. The other part is simply that there's not going to be much specific that we can say, or probably PhotoDex either, to help because that version is not what we're using anymore. If you're serious about using ProShow then I think you should consider updating to the current version--it may fix the issues and you'll be a lot more likely to be able to get some real help if there's a problem.

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Re: psg crashes

Postby BarbaraC » Thu Feb 21, 2013 5:25 am

I know someone who's used ProShow for years as a container for whopping huge videos. Granted, they are single videos, not a a collection of them, but placing a large AVI inside a frame in ProShow, he'd then render to an EXE of up to 500mb.

The one thing you didn't mention was what format you're rendering to.

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Re: psg crashes

Postby heckydog » Thu Feb 21, 2013 6:19 am

I don't know a lot about your PC but it appears to be under powered for what you're trying to do. Adding RAM to an older system is generally not a good investment. I looked at a few HP Compaq's on Amazon and it appears they came with hard drives of about 80GB in size. If yours is about that size then 50% free space still won't cut it for what you want to do. If you have a second larger hard drive then you might be okay but the 2GB of RAM will still be a problem.

I agree with Dick that if your show is primarily video you should be using a video editor, not PSG. But if you can't do that right now then . . .

As near as I can guess, 1 hour of 8mm film is around 800 feet long. So you have 9 or 10 hours of video to work with. To get the best quality on a single layer dvd you don't want much more than an hour of video on the final dvd. If the film has been converted to an avi format, that's about 13GB of hard drive space. If it's mpeg-2 format that's around 4GB. Working with just one hours worth at a time may minimize the PSG crashes.

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Re: psg crashes

Postby pokey23 » Thu Feb 21, 2013 6:38 am

Barbra I have no idea what the rendering does let alone what format it is in. the movie clips are in mpg format. I know just enough about computers too get me in trouble. What I do is upload the movie clips from my digital camcorder to the pc, then I drag and drop the files to the story board. Then I let the program do what it does to make a dvd. My materials are only video, no stills. I guess I'm learning as I go. I have deleted the two files you suggested, and am now waiting for the rendering process to finish so I can see if anything changed. Thank You for the fast responce to my problem. Larry

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Re: psg crashes

Postby BarbaraC » Thu Feb 21, 2013 6:52 am

Larry, let's hope the Simple Cure works, but if it doesn't, it would help if, when you go to render, you write down what settings you see on the screen so you can tell the folks here (those who know more about this than I) what those settings are. They might be able to spot something and give you ideas for changes you can make and how you can make them.

Worst case is, as suggested, your computer may not be up to it, not in terms of RAM, hard drive space, or maybe even graphics card. :(

Barbara
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Re: psg crashes

Postby gpsmikey » Thu Feb 21, 2013 8:56 am

I think 2.6 was what I started with years ago (and I managed to crash it all the time with any bigger show). Definitely much improved since then, however, your system does sound quite limited for what you are trying to do. From your description, I would give serious consideration (in addition to upgrading your PC) to looking at one of the cheaper video editors such as Sony Vegas Movie Studio or Premiere Elements. Proshow was designed to be able to use video in the shows, but it was NOT designed as any sort of video editor. Many of us that do work with video have video editors as well as Proshow (just like we use something like Photoshop to prepare our images before using them in the show). I will second (third?) the comment about removing the cache file ( the showname.pxc) as, especially in the older versions, that file would get corrupted and all sorts of strange things start happening when it does get corrupted.

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Re: psg crashes

Postby BarbaraC » Thu Feb 21, 2013 9:26 am

Upgrading your computer is on the horizon for you, but I'm well aware of the pain involved in both the wallet and in sanity. Even when I've collected the money for an upgrade, I've hesitated because of the full week of installing, tweaking, and trying not to go ballistic.

If, with the ideas you've received in this thread, you can manage to do what you currently want to do, you'll be at peace until the next great idea. :D

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Re: psg crashes

Postby pokey23 » Thu Feb 21, 2013 9:35 am

The rendering has just finished nearly 3 1/2 hours to do 6 clips with the same results a crash. I have a newer laptop that I have installed video software from my camcorder. I have my movie files on a flash drive and will try to create dvds with that. Thank you all of you folks for the suggestions and help. Larry While during rendering there are no settings on the screen to write down.

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Re: psg crashes

Postby BarbaraC » Thu Feb 21, 2013 9:44 am

pokey23 wrote:While during rendering there are no settings on the screen to write down.

It's not while rendering that I meant. Instead, it was before you set anything in motion, though maybe your version doesn't give any choices. If so, it's not only time to use a newer computer, but also a newer version of PSG. However, if you don't often use the program, it's understandable that you'd be reluctant to spend on an upgrade.

Barbara
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