VideoStudio X2 closes without error message when starting up

[ianmoz]

Hi, Some assistance if you can, please.

There were a couple of almost identical posts last year (22Oct08 by chuckpie and 01Dec08 by rweingart) but I don't see any resolution for either of these. As was said in those posts, although one can understand that Corel want to avoid the cost of supporting Trial versions, this seems very shortsighted as it could put off potential purchasers who could not resolve an issue on their own.

Background: Recently bought a JVC HD camcorder and decided I needed something better than the basic app supplied by JVC. Tried a few demos to seek out an app which would let me read the .mts files created by this camcorder. Eventually discovered VS X2 Trial and downloaded and installed version 12.0.98.0 on my laptop machine, running Vista. Very impressed with ease of use and created a couple of DVD-Video and AVCHD discs with no problems. Liked VS X2 so much I decided to install it on my main desktop machine. Then the problem occurred.

Problem: I launch the app and hit the 'Try' button. The selection (VS/Movie Wizard/DV Wizard) screen pops up and I select VideoStudio Editor (actually the problem occurs whichever option I choose). The splash screen is displayed with its scrolling blue bar below, shortly followed by the Editor main window. After a few seconds the blue bar stops scrolling. A few more seconds and the app disappears altogether. No error message is displayed.

What I've discovered so far: There are no items in the Windows Event Log. The crash is recorded in the Dr Watson log, from which I can't deduce the problem, but somebody here may be able to. I think the problem may be codec-related. I did have ffshow installed at one point but this was fully removed as far as I can see. Once VS has crashed, Window Media Player can no longer display his list of codec info (from the Help->About->Technical Support Information link) - the program simply closes down as per VS. Also, DXDiag stops on a message that the 'last access of DirectShow info encountered a problem, do you want to bypass this check'. If I reboot the system, both WMPlayer and DXDiag return to working normally. I'm running DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904) patched with the latest download from the MS site. I've re-installed VS a couple of times but no luck.

Additional info: In Device Manager, the properties for Audio and Video Codecs all look ok except for LEAD MCMP/MJPEG Codec (VFW) which throws up an error - 'Cannot load the driver. The driver file may be missing....' I've run Sherlock and GSpot against the codec list and this codec looks ok and is pointing to an existing file within some HP printer software which appears to be working ok. I could uninstall all this HP stuff, and Quicktime 7 which is another possible culprit, but would like to seek some further ideas here first if possible.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to track VS as it launches and loads the dlls/codecs, to see if he stops on a particular file, but I don't believe there's a logging/debug option in VS to do this?

Sorry if this was a long first post! Wanted to get as much info down from the start. I really would like to get VS working, so any ideas would be most welcome.

Thanks,

Ian.

[Clevo]

Trust me...we appreciate the long detailed post. You've done pretty much all the suggestable things.

One thing you can try though is to right click the shortcut Icon and "start as administrator" I would have also installed in the same manner. This suggestion is more out of curiosity than anything else. If it works then goodo... if not...

I'll try and think of other suggestions in the meantime.

[ianmoz]

Thanks for the idea. I'm already running with an account which has admin privileges, but I did try a run as the administrator - same result.

I've since installed and run VS12 successfully under Xp Pro on a very old laptop with limited resources, and it launches fine on there albeit rather slowly, so there shouldn't be any issue with the specs of my desktop system. I've also installed latest Quicktime in case that was causing the problem.

I'll further investigate the codecs I've got installed and dig into the Dr Watson and user.dmp files to see if they hold any clues.

[ianmoz]

Well, I have a fix of sorts.

Analysis of the user.dmp file showed thread 0 was loading DivX_UL.dll at the time of the crash. Unsure why this did not cause any issues on the other two systems. I renamed this file in the C:\Program Files\Corel\Corel VideoStudio 12 folder and installed the latest codec from Divx.com instead.

The application now launched ok. Working with the HD .mts files is still a little jerky even on this P4 3Ghz system, but at least I can now evaluate the product features before deciding to purchase.