8 replies to this topic

[jb2ski]

VideoWave8 hangs when I try to save a production after editing a large (105 min) Tivo video file.  The VCGProxyFileManager process is using over 90% of my CPU time during the hang.  Does anyone know what this process does?

[bcpalmer]

I'm curious about this as well.  I have been trying to work with some larger Tivo files myself (about 3GB in size).  MyDVD and Videowave get hung up often on these files and Vcgproxyfilemanager.exe is just chugging away.  It would be nice to know what's going on or have some indicator that something is going on rather than just the HD light constantly going.

Brian Palmer

[duanewhite122830x]

I am having the same problem. In fact, I lost a 52 minute edited project when Videowave locked up on a Save command. It corrupted the file and I have not been able to recover it. Help!!!!

[grandpabruce]

duanewhite122830x, on Jan 24 2006, 10:51 AM, said:

I am having the same problem. In fact, I lost a 52 minute edited project when Videowave locked up on a Save command. It corrupted the file and I have not been able to recover it. Help!!!!

The only thing that it corrupted was your production.  The original movie file, or whatever should not have been edited at all.

[bcpalmer]

Well, I think I found out what VCGPROXYFILEMANAGER.EXE does.  Looks like this file writes out the audio portion of the video(s) used in the current project, including the menu audio.  I found that when VCGPROXYFILEMANAGER.EXE would start to peg the processor that an audio file was being written, in this case, [tv show name.tivo.wav].  I'm not at my home computer but here is the location as best I can remember:
C:\documents and settings\[user name]\application data\roxio\videoui\proxy

I will correct the path later when I get a chance or if somebody includes it in their post


Brian Palmer

[Larry]

bcpalmer, on Jan 25 2006, 07:34 AM, said:

Well, I think I found out what VCGPROXYFILEMANAGER.EXE does. Looks like this file writes out the audio portion of the video(s) used in the current project, including the menu audio. I found that when VCGPROXYFILEMANAGER.EXE would start to peg the processor that an audio file was being written, in this case, [tv show name.tivo.wav]. I'm not at my home computer but here is the location as best I can remember:
C:\documents and settings\[user name]\application data\roxio\videoui\proxy

I will correct the path later when I get a chance or if somebody includes it in their post


Brian Palmer

Good info Brian.
Basically, when working on a file in Videowave, it extracts the audio portion of the original file to these 'temp' 'proxy' files. Then as you make edits in your production, that is the audio that gets modified and is used for previewing. It's done this way because you're original (source) file is never actually modified, it uses the 'proxy' files to simulate the end result. Thus a very long file will take longer for it to 'extract' that audio when it loads the file.

Edited by lbissonette, 25 January 2006 - 07:48 AM.

[saculver7]

lbissonette, on Jan 25 2006, 08:47 AM, said:

Good info Brian.
Basically, when working on a file in Videowave, it extracts the audio portion of the original file to these 'temp' 'proxy' files. Then as you make edits in your production, that is the audio that gets modified and is used for previewing. It's done this way because you're original (source) file is never actually modified, it uses the 'proxy' files to simulate the end result. Thus a very long file will take longer for it to 'extract' that audio when it loads the file.

Hi,

Can anyone expand on this info?  I believe that the way this proxy file task is implemented (poorly) is perhaps the biggest single reason that people give up on Easy Media Creator and purchase a competitor's product.  It causes MyDVD and Videowave to hang, causes many crashes and sometimes needs to be killed in order to shutdown or reboot the computer (because it's still running long after the program has been closed).

For those not familiar with it, I suggest opening the folder that is used to store the proxy files (you can find this in MyDVD under Tools->Options) and watching what happens while you work with video files (hit F5 to update the directory listing).  Each time you add video, slideshows, etc. it starts creating proxy files, these can take several minutes to create for large files.  If you are working with large video files and/or high resolution images you will quickly have several hundred meg of these files built up.

The old Videowave used to show you when it was working on these files but it no longer does.  It seems that the only way you can tell that they are being created is by looking at the directory or watching CPU usage go way up.  During this time, the system will be sluggish.  

Now, here's the really problematic part of this whole scheme...  at some point (and this is possibly due to complaints about previous versions in which I think they never got deleted) the program will automatically start deleting these files.  I have been attempting to discover the algorithm used for this but can find no pattern based on total space usage or time since the files were created and so on.  So, if you are working on creating a full DVD you can easily have 30 minutes worth of proxy file generation that has now been deleted... as you go back into various parts of your DVD/video the system will start regenerating these files all over again!

I've tried to see if I can outsmart this mess by making some of the files "read only" after they are created but the program will just create new ones with a different name (aproxy0.... for instance) since they are apparently no longer listed in ProxyLog.dat.

Can anyone provide any insight into how this thing works behind the scenes?  Can I kill this task?  What will that affect?  Under what circumstances do I *really* need these proxy files to be created?  If the deletion scheme is based on date perhaps one could use a utility to future-date all of the files in that directory so they won't get deleted before you are done using them?

Any comments or thoughts?

Thanks!

[sarsmcduff]

I hate to bump an old thread, but this really is a major issue that needs to be dealth with.  It's extremely frustrating to work with a large project and have Videowave constantly grinding away to produce the proxy files.  What's even stranger is the fact that it will spend 15 minutes churning out a proxy file, only to delete it as soon as it's done - then promptly start recreating the same file again (sometimes right away, sometimes not until you actually start making edits).  It's so unpredictable.  And then there is the fact that the proxy file location option doesn't seem to save or have any effect, so I can't even move these stupid files off of my system drive to mitigate the impact that they have on total system performance....

[john_binhammer]

I've gotten in the habit of ending the process.  All I'm doing is converting DV Tapes to DVD.  I was constantly getting jumpy video and computer hangs.  All that goes away if I Start Video wave and then end the VCGProxyFileManager.  Probably not the smartest thing, but it works for what I'm doing.