Editing Programmes Keep Crashing

[russellc]

Hello

I have done a fair amount of editing over the past few years, mostly with videos I have converted to mpg and then to DVD, and video captured with a standalone DVD Recorder.

I variously use Ulead DVD Workshop 2, MPEG Video Wizard and DVD Author. I have had good results with both combinations.

I have a separate partition for raw video, editing and output. Currently it has 15Gb used space and 5Gb free space.

A few months back I bought a Canon S3 which, as well as being a handy still camera, alos takes decent quality video in AVI format. I have been using that a bit, transferring to my editing partition and working with it there to create DVD's.

For some unknown reason a few days ago all 3 of the programmes listed above have been crashing during editing functions. I get the usual Microsoft Error message then - kaput. I am not sure whether all 3 programmes have suddenly become currupted [possible but unlikely I would have thought, but I am not a PC guru ] or whether there is a resource problem because I am using such large files.

Can anyone please shed some light. Is it likely to just be insufficient working space, in which case should I just burn the raw avi to disk to create more room? Alternatively, if it is likely to be a system or programme error, how can I readily check?

All replies gratefully accepted.

Thanks

[daamon]

Hmmm... Odd... And most likely difficult, if not impossible, to diagnose.

I'm no expert either, but - in my opinion - the fact that all three apps failed suggests it's unlikely to be software related.

I'd be more inclined to look into system issues: overheating or poor ventilation, excessive dust causing issues, incorrectly seated memory (and other similar items) etc.

[redwudz]

What daamon said. I would suspect RAM problems myself. Can you trade out your RAM, or if you have two modules, take one out and try it, then trade them and try again? RAM errors can cause all kinds of weird problems and testing doesn't always detect them.

And it could still be something in software. Try a system restore to a point before the problems and see if that helps. Check your Task Manager and see what is running. Disable some of the system resource hogs by using msonfig through a 'Run..' window. Shut down what you don't really need.

From there it could be a lot of things, but I'm guessing hardware for the moment. 5GB freespace is not enough, unless you have a very small hard drive. That's not likely to be causing your problems, but I would defrag if you haven't tried it and dump some unneeded stuff to get your hard drive up to at least 20 - 30 percent free space. Using partitions doesn't do much except create a software barrier between parts of the drive. That's not a alternative to having more than one hard drive, IMO.

And check your CPU temperatures. You should be able to do that in BIOS when you first boot, or better, use a monitoring program you can run from Windows. If you haven't pulled the side cover off your computer lately, this might be a good time to do it. If you see your CPU heatsink choked with dust, that could be a problem. Power supply issues are not so likely. When you have the side cover off and the computer unplugged, reset all your cards and connectors, just in case.

If none of this gets you anywhere, unplug all drives except the boot and all cards except the video card and try again. Last, try a different video card. Not many of us have a spare, but video cards can cause strange problems when they start to fail.

[harley2ride]

Hello

I have done a fair amount of editing over the past few years, mostly with videos I have converted to mpg and then to DVD, and video captured with a standalone DVD Recorder.

I variously use Ulead DVD Workshop 2, MPEG Video Wizard and DVD Author. I have had good results with both combinations.

I have a separate partition for raw video, editing and output. Currently it has 15Gb used space and 5Gb free space.


A seperate partition is not a good solution, and 5gb free space isn't nearly enough. You really need a seperate physical HD for video work, and it should be as big as you can afford. I have two 250gb hd's, and I'm constantly transferring and backing up video files because I keep running out of room.
A few months back I bought a Canon S3 which, as well as being a handy still camera, alos takes decent quality video in AVI format. I have been using that a bit, transferring to my editing partition and working with it there to create DVD's.



For some unknown reason a few days ago all 3 of the programmes listed above have been crashing during editing functions. I get the usual Microsoft Error message then - kaput. I am not sure whether all 3 programmes have suddenly become currupted [possible but unlikely I would have thought, but I am not a PC guru ] or whether there is a resource problem because I am using such large files.

Can anyone please shed some light. Is it likely to just be insufficient working space, in which case should I just burn the raw avi to disk to create more room? Alternatively, if it is likely to be a system or programme error, how can I readily check?

All replies gratefully accepted.

Thanks

[russellc]

Thanks fo rthe reply guys. I'll take it all on board. Rob - you may well be right!

[russellc]

Just some positive feedback. Sorted it out.

As well as not enough space on the editing partition, it seems my C Drive partition [fo r OS only] wasn't big enough and I suspect the swap file was geting choked.

Increased the size of both and I'm back in business.

Thanks all