WARNING on UPGRADE MF4 to MF5

[nyco_ork]

Last night I tried using MF5 to cure a capture problem I'm having with MF 4 (covered in a separate thread, "Shaky blurry video". First of all, MF5 did not solve the problem. It also hung after each capture and had to be shut down through the task manager (I have seen other reports of this problem).

But the main purpose of this post is to warn anyone thinking of upgrading to do so very carefully. Both versions of Movie Factory are "dirty," that is, they leave a lot of entries in the registry after they've been uninstalled. The dirt that MF4 left in the registry may be responsible for MF5's misbehavior, but I'm in no mood to experiment again, because between the two of them they both nearly became inoperable.

I always set a restore point (in Win XP) when I boot up for the day, and also before installing or uninstalling new software. I set a restore point, uninstalled MF4, rebooted, set a new restore point, and installed the MF5 trial. Since it was no improvement, I restored the system to the pre-MF4 uninstallation. But after that MF4 wouldn't load. I got the windows "shutting down application" error message. I tried to uninstall MF4 so I could reinstall it, and even the uninstaller wouldn't load. I tried restoring to an even earlier point, the daily bootup, but no help there either. Finally I restored to the point between uninstalling MF4 and installing MF5.

I physically removed my 2nd HDD (where projects are stored), deleted all folders on the primary HDD, including download folders, that had any Ulead material on them, then went into my registry editor and deleted every single entry for Ulead (there were dozens left behind). Then I set a new restore point, rebooted, and reinstalled MF4. That finally worked, once the registry was cleaned out.

This is obviously the result of very sloppy programing. Each program leaves dirt behind in the registry, and the WinXP restore function doesn't catch all the dirt (it always has when I've had similar problems with other software).

I strongly recommend that anyone trying this upgrade not only set a WinXP restore point, but also save the registry, and copy the saved registry file to an outboard disc in case it is needed to restore the computer to an uncontaminated state. If you're not using XP, then I STRONGLY recommend that you backup the registry at several points along the way, using whatever utility you have for that purpose. (I use Resplendant Registrar, which is excellent.)

I have never come across a program that had such a sloppy uninstallation procedure.

Richard

[sjj1805]

Or.....
5th post down here:
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?t=11923

Steve J

[tyamada]

It seems that MF5 is a mixed bag, some folks are having problems and some are not.

I installed the trial version and then bought the full version and am not having any problems capturing, in fact my captures have improved as opposed to using VS9 and MSP8 capture. MF5 is smoother when capturing and playing back.

MF5 got rid of the jerkey frames when using HD files.
There are other problems with MF5 but not anything to make me quit using it.

[heinz-oz]

Anyone upgrading any software to "cure" a problem with the previous version has, IMHO, only got him/herself to blame. You would be better off working on a solution to your problem which must be system specific.

I started with MF 2 SE, came with some hardware, and had no problems with it. Upgraded to MF3 without a problem and just recently upgraded to MF4, again with no problem.

If you have a serious problem with any software and others are not, it must be system specific. Could still be a bug but affecting your particular system. An upgrade has only a minute chance of fixing such a problem.

What needs to be done is to work out exactly what it is that causes you grief. Chances are, once this is sorted, both programs will work well for you.

It is a known fact that there are remnants of, not only Ulead programs, left in the registry after you uninstall. That's why each and every subject concerning re-installation of Ulead programs on this board has the suggestion to clean out the memory after uninstalling.

I challenge you to name one program, just one, that completely removes all traces of itself from the registry. Don't think you will find one. MS even makes sure that there is a history of everything ever installed on your system, hardware and software, within the registry.

[nyco_ork]

Anyone upgrading any software to "cure" a problem with the previous version has, IMHO, only got him/herself to blame. You would be better off working on a solution to your problem which must be system specific.

Heinz,

I tried the upgrade at the suggestion of some members of this forum. See the thread "Shaky, blurry video," and you'll see what I mean. I've wasted a stack of media doing multiple tests with both MF4 and MF5, and nothing works. You're probably right that the problem is system-specific. I think Ulead's capture software is incompatible with my capture card, and since the card is built into the laptop, I can't change it.

Regarding programs leaving dirt in the registry, it may be true that they all leave some, but not to the extent that if you do a system restore to a previous version of a program, that program won't function anymore. I have never, since I started using XP and the System Restore feature, come across that one. I use to come across it in Windows 2000 occasionally, because it didn't have System Restore.

I stick by what I said. If uninstalling MF4, then installing MF5, then reverting to MF4, makes MF4 inoperable, then there is something wrong with the design of the software.

R

[heinz-oz]

nyco_ork,

I'm not denying that, I don't have MF 5 yet either, but, because of shared dll's etc., if you install an upgrade to any software, unistall that and revert back to a restore point prior to the installation of the upgrade, chances are that something is either left behind or has replaced some vital files which are not removed/restored with system restore.

After all, system restore only reverts the registry back to the state it was in before, data, dll's etc. are not touched.

The point I'm trying to make is this, if your system can work with a particular software, you should not have to uninstall and revert back to a previous restore point.

Did you try a repair installation of MF4 after you reverted back to a previous restore point?

[nyco_ork]

Or.....
5th post down here:
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?t=11923

Steve J

Steve,

I followed your link, thanks. I've done all those things listed in the FAQs, I have my system settings pretty much as listed, and my system is well over the requirements listed for the program. I capture to a separate HDD with 100 GB, 7200 rpm. All screen savers, etc. turned off. No other programs running. I keep my hands off the computer while it's capturing.

There's one thing that MyDVD has that I don't find in Ulead, and that's the option to turn off the display of the capture itself while it's taking place. In MyDVD, the capture display is jerky during capture. The program doesn't even attempt to keep up with displaying the capture process in real time. In Ulead, the display during capture is not jerky at all, and that's probably using system resources that would be better applied to the capture itself. I have tweaked all the field orders, everything; see the thread I posted in the message to Heinz, it's all there.

Thanks for the input. Right now I'm testing yet again, doing a MyDVD capture, editing in VideoReDo, authoring in Ulead. That seems to have worked before on a couple of short tests, and I want to make sure it's reliable.

RIchard

[nyco_ork]

nyco_ork,


Did you try a repair installation of MF4 after you reverted back to a previous restore point?

Heinz,
Since I couldn't get any part of the program to run -- not the program itself, and not the uninstaller-- I admit that I didn't try to run the installation over again from the CD, which I suppose would have given me the repair option you mention.

I also ran out of restore points. I wanted to return to a point a couple of days earlier, but it had disappeared, because I've reduced the disc space taken up by system restore to 6% (so there'll be more room for DVD burning temporary files, ironically). So many restore points were set during this installation process that I lost the earlier restore points, and only had the ones from the actual day of the installation. That was enough, in the end, to save me, but not without some grief.

Richard

[nyco_ork]

It seems that MF5 is a mixed bag, some folks are having problems and some are not.

I installed the trial version and then bought the full version and am not having any problems capturing, in fact my captures have improved as opposed to using VS9 and MSP8 capture. MF5 is smoother when capturing and playing back.

MF5 got rid of the jerkey frames when using HD files.
There are other problems with MF5 but not anything to make me quit using it.

How you tempt me ...

When I can find some time, I'll plug in my spare system drive, which has not had any Ulead products on it, and see how the MF5 trial works with that.

Richard

[JoReneA]

I am trying out the trial version of MF5 (I own MF 4 Disk Creator, which I generally like a lot.) I did not have a problem capturing (using firewire connected to my camcorder), but I did notice a definite decrease in the final qualilty of the DVD I created compared to MF4. I used the same settings, but the output is much "shakier" in the version 5 final DVD than it was in 4. Does anyone know if they changed the renderer (the software than renders the mpg files from the avi files I captured) in version 5? I always capture in avi and then use a high quality setting for the final. I used the very same avi files when I created from both versions, so the problem is not with the capturing. Until version 5, I always found that ULead's final output was superior to any program I used or tried out. Unless I got the field order incorrect, the results were almost as good as playing directly from the recorded dvd tape. But this version has a real problem. The mpg files created say there are the correct field order, so that doesn't seem to be the problem.

One more thing: VERY few templates were included with the trial version, unlike previous trial versions. And they aren't the most attractive templates. ULead isn't showing off their new software to good advantage when they give only one or two templates to try out. Just a suggestion to ULead, should they ever read these forums.

[tyamada]

I used MF5 to capture video from my Digital 8 Player/Recorder direct to MPG and didn't notice and quality loss. MF5 has a lot of options not available in the other Ulead programs, it takes some experimenting with the settings to get everything right.

MF5 capture module is much improved over their other capture processes, much smoother and I don't get buffer message any more.

I'm not sure if the trial version of MF5 has any problems rendering video but my retail version works fine.

[sjj1805]

I am trying out the trial version of MF5 (I own MF 4 Disk Creator, which I generally like a lot.) .....

One more thing: VERY few templates were included with the trial version, unlike previous trial versions. And they aren't the most attractive templates. ULead isn't showing off their new software to good advantage when they give only one or two templates to try out. Just a suggestion to ULead, should they ever read these forums.

Please see the 2nd item of this post
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?t=12358

Steve J

[JoReneA]

I saw that post, but was mainly commenting on Ulead's decision not to include many templates in their trial version...a new user wouldn't have all the older templates to transfer to the new version, nor should users have to go through that much to have decent content available.

Do you know if the boxed version of 5 has a good supply of templates? A few posts seemed to indicate that even the full version has very few templates...but I'm not sure they had downloaded everything. In version 4, a separate download was necessary to get all the content.

[maddrummer3301]

I downloaded the ESD full version with content and MF4 did have more content. Maybe they are going to release a migration tool.
If you decide to copy MF4 templates make sure to copy only .ufo files and
not any other files that may reside in the templates directory. This is very important to remember if copying templates.

Did you have the "Quality' setting under Preferences set to "Best" when you encoded the DV material?

MD

[JoReneA]

Yes, I had the quality set to best. EVERYTHING was set the same and I used the same avi files for both projects. There was a clear difference in the quality of the two videos produced, with the MF5 being jerky (similar to a wrong field order problem) as well as grainier, while the MF4 was almost perfect. A good camcorder tape looks almost live when played direct from the camcorder to a TV. The MF4 produced a DVD that was almost as good, but the MF5 looked almost like an old movie, not exactly blurry but definitely not as sharp, with the annoying jerkiness. I think ULead must have gone for a different encoder. It is still far superior to Roxio's newest entry, however. But for anyone who has or can get 4, I would definitely not recommend ver. 5.