jwstanek

Well, you can say "I told you so" if you want. I went back and forth with Roxio via their email support for two months up to their 3rd level of support, and spent probably 50 hours doing all kinds of stuff they requested, many of it twice as requested by different levels of support. It seemed to me that they were just trying to keep me busy rather than to solve THEIR problem. They finally closed the problem because I responded on the 5th day (they gave me 5 days to respond). I'm to the point, I don't really care as I've purchased PowerDirector Ultra 10. For video editing, it really has a lot of options - I like it much better- plus it seems like a solid product. I was able to create my DVD of 18 slideshows with no black screens, no hangups, no errors. Until now, I was a very loyal Roxio customer - since version 6. But I've run into enough problems over the years - this was the last straw.

I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to look at my problem. I'm glad to know that you could recreate the problem. Guess I'll try to get Roxio to do something about it - probably won't happen, but I have to at least try. Thanks.

How do you know that it hasn't caused any problems? How many people may have just gotten frustrated and given up trying to use the software because they didn't want to mess with it. I've seen other comments from people getting blank screens. I've tested the same slideshow on EMC10 and it didn't have the problem. Just because the bug has been around for a while doesn't mean it shouldn't be fixed. It takes a lot more time when you have to render 18 slideshows separately. I'd like to just be able to include the dmsm files in MyDVD. That's what I did initially and had lots of problems. I bought the software because it was advertised as being a great improvement to the old version I had. Leaving a bug like that in their software gives it a bad reputation.

How do we get Roxio to fix the bug in both Videowave 2012 and Videowave 2011?

I did not have to reboot. I used Videowave to create the slideshow, then I Exported (rendered) each slideshow to a video file. After doing this a few times, I had to reload Videowave to prevent the black screens. After all slideshows were created, I opened MyDVD. Here I included the video files that were rendered in Videowave.

-For each test, Videowave (VW) was restarted. -Computer has total of 8G of RAM. -For each test, Export was run on the same slideshow multiple times. -Numbers following "Export" indicate the gigabytes of storage in use when Export finished. -In each test, black screens only showed up after storage in use was about 1G higher than when Videowave was started. Test 1: 7 photos (.12M, 7.69M, 5.81M, 6.91M, 4.81M, .1M, 3.88M) No transitions or music. Started VW, 2.12G in use Gig in use after each successive Export 2.20 2.25 2.31 2.37 2.44 Test 2: 6 photos in order from small to large (.1M, 3.84M, 4.25M, 5.47M, 6.47M, 7.69M) No transitions or music. Started VW, 2.13G in use Gig in use after each successive Export 2.23 2.33 2.42 2.52 2.62 2.72 2.82 2.92 3.01 3.10 3.21 black screens 3.21 Test 3: 6 photos in order from large to small (7.69M, 6.03M, 5.47M, 4.78M, 3.81M, .12M) No transitions or music. Started VW, 2.13G in use Gig in use after each successive Export 2.21 2.25 2.31 2.37 2.42 2.49 2.53 2.58 2.64 Test 4: 8 photos all the same - large (7.69M) No transitions or music. Started VW, 2.13G in use Gig in use after each successive Export 2.19 2.24 2.35 2.45 2.55 2.66 2.75 2.85 2.95 3.05 3.16 (black screens here) 3.16 Test 5: 7 large photos (7.69M), 1 small (.1M) No transitions or music. Started VW, 2.15G in use Gig in use after each successive Export 2.20 2.26 2.31 2.37 2.44 2.49 At this point, loaded another slideshow containing 70 photos of varying sizes. Slideshow includes transitions and music. Last photo of this show is 4.38M. 2.52 2.73 2.93 3.08 (black screens here)

My computer is running 64-bit Vista and contains 8G of RAM. The reason my photo files are so large is that my camera takes good photos. I could set it to take smaller photos, but the photos are not being taken just to use in a slideshow. When we go on a trip and take photos, I want to have the best quality I can get as it would be impossible to go back and retake them. And sometimes I'll want to crop out a small part of a photo. It already takes a long time to create a slideshow. If I had to resize all of the photos used in the slideshows, it would take a long time just to do that. I've tried different combinations of photos. I tried to attach a Word file but I couldn't do that so I will include my observations in another reply. It appears to me that the number of photos included and special features such as music and transitions used in a slideshow have some bearing on the memory problem, but is not the only factor. It also appears to me that the amount of memory that is retained is larger if the last photo in the slideshow is larger and smaller if the last photo is smaller. The black screens always seem to show up when the memory in use increases to about 1G more than what it was when Videowave was loaded. After running the Export a few more times, at this point, it hangs, although I didn't do that in all of my testing.

Yes, I created 18 separate slideshows in Videowave and saved each as a dmsm project file. BUT, then, still in Videowave, for each slideshow, I did OUTPUT, EXPORT AS, and exported each of the slideshows with "Purpose: All" and "Video File Quality: MPEG-2 for DVD, Best Quality" file. Doing this, Videowave will render each slideshow separately and outside of MyDVD. But I had to reload Videowave after every 4 or 5 renderings because of the memory problem. After all 18 slideshows were converted to MPEG-2 files, I started MyDVD and created a DVD. To do this, I did "Add New Movie" and added the MPG files instead of the dmsm files. As far as the observation of Videowave using memory, I was able to observe this by watching the "Physical memory usage history" graph in Windows task manager while either of the following was being done: 1) Running MyDVD with dmsm files included, or 2) Running Videowave standalone on each of the slideshows without reloading it for each slideshow. My computer has 8G of RAM. To move the slideshows from C2011 backwards to EMC 10 I basically had to recreate them on EMC 10. I opened them on EMC 10 and the only thing retained was the links to the photos. But since I had a lot of photos, that saved me a lot of time. Then I just had to include new transitions and music and resave them. The number of slides in the slideshows vary from 6 up to more than 50-60. Most of my slides are fairly large files as my camera takes very good quality photos. The jpeg files that were used varied from .5 up to nearly 7M. The final .iso file was 2.6G in size and around 45 minutes. As far as recreating the problem, it didn't seem to matter how many slides were in a show. I was able to observe the problem by creating a slideshow with just a few photos (6-8) of varying sizes and repeating it under different names within the MyDVD project. I reported the problem to Roxio and they have been asking me to try lots of things. I'm at the point that I think they are just asking me to try different things (many unrelated to solving the problem) to put me off and make me so frustrated that I will discontinue pushing them to solve the problem. The last thing that they asked me to do was to deinstall IE9 which seems unrelated and to generate the Video files from Videowave in various formats to determine if the format matters. I did try running the project on a computer with IE8 and it didn't make any difference. I've spent many, many hours on this problem and I'd like to see them spend some time on it debugging their own problems. Let me know if you have further questions. If you want, I would be glad to post two pictures that are screen prints of running MyDVD to generate the DVD under EMC10 and under C2011.

I have had the same problem as you. I had 18 slideshows created with Videowave. When I tried to put them together on a DVD with MyDVD, it would hang. If I pulled out some of the slide shows, it might finish but some of the slide shows had blank screens. I did everything that was suggested on the web site but nothing helped. I finally discovered that each time Videowave rendered one of the slide shows, it would allocate memory and never give it back. You can see this by starting the Windows Task Manager and watching the "Performance" tab. By the time it got to about my 5th slide show, if I watched the preview screen, I could see that it was producing black screens in place of some of the photos. After a few more slide shows with black screens it would hang up. I tried various combinations of slide shows and it always produced black screens and hung each time it got to about the same amount of memory being tied up. To work around this problem, I rendered and saved each individual slide show as a video file (I saved them as MPEG-2 for DVD, best quality). After 4 or so videos were created with Videowave, I had to shut it down and restart it to release the memory used. Then I did the next group, shut it down, restarted, and continued until all 18 slide shows were rendered into videos. At this point, I used MyDVD to burn a DVD (either a file or actual DVD) with the videos already created added as items on the menus. I discoved also that an older version (Version 10) of the software does not have this problem. I transferred my slideshows into another directory and created a DVD with Easy Media Creator 10 and the same exact slideshow worked just fine without having to go through the above procedure. I watched the memory usage as shown in the "Performance" tab of task manager and the memory used by Videowave always seemed to be released after each slide show was created - no black screens and no hangs.

One more thing - after verifying that everything was installed, there was still no selection in the PAPER TYPE for the Epson R1800 so I used the R800 and it worked. (I used to have an R800 and it was basically the same printer - just different width.)

I tried it again and discovered that I neglected to set the SOURCE to CD in the printer properties. It finally worked!! Thanks so much for your help!!

This is a correction to my question: I am trying to print labels directly on a CD. I can do it with the software that came with my printer (Epson R1800). When I try to do it with the Roxio Label Creator and I select FILE, PRINT, it won't print on the CD. Under MEDIA, when I select PRINT TO DISC, the paper type includes several printers but not mine (the Epson R1800). I tried selecting one of the paper types shown just to see if it would print. When I try to feed the CD in on the CD holder (that is used with the R1800) into the CD feeder, the printer won't accept it and I have to remove the CD and the printer feeds paper instead. When it does print on the paper rather than the CD, the label doesn't print in the correct location. In addition, it doesn't print the background picture. Yes, I could use the software that came with my printer, but the Roxio software can take all of the information from the CD that I am creating and put that on the CD. If I used the Epson software, I'd have to type all of the track titles and times. Is there a fix for this problem?

I am trying to print labels directly on a CD. I can do it with the software that came with my printer (Epson R1800). When I try to do it with the Roxio Label Creator and I select FILE, PRINT, then the printer (EPSON Stylus Photo R1800) as the PAPER TYPE, it won't print on the CD. Under MEDIA, when I select PRINT TO DISC, the paper type includes several printers but not the R1800. I tried selecting one of the paper types shown just to see if it would print. When I try to feed the CD in on the holder into the CD feeder, the printer won't accept it and I have to remove the CD and the printer feeds paper instead. When it does print on the paper rather than the CD, the label doesn't print in the correct location. In addition, it doesn't print the background picture. Yes, I could use the software that came with my printer, but the Roxio software can take all of the information from the CD that I am creating and put that on the CD. If I used the Epson software, I'd have to type all of the track titles and times. Is there a fix for this problem?

Thanks.

I'm in the process of upgrading to EMC 8 and was wondering if my video card will work okay. It is an ATI Radeon All-in-wonder 8500DV.