WinDVD 2010 Errors

[Alan_G]

Installing WinDVD 2010 for the first time, on a Win7 x64 system (8GB, i7, ATI 5750/1GB) set up for media authoring with Adobe Creative Suite 5. The monitors are an Apple Cinema 30 inch primary display, 2650x1600, and a Dell 24 inch secondary display, 1200x1920 in portrait mode.

I had a BD disc in the first optical drive that I had just created from Premiere Pro and Encore -- a simple 5 minute high-def promo for a client. That triggered a problem created by a programming error and a very foolish default in the current release of WinDVD 2010 (10.0.5.713), which is that it is set to prefer 3D and to attempt to convert 2D Blu-ray content to 3D (the foolish default) and is unable to recognize, even on "Auto", that it is not talking to a 3D display (the untrapped error).

The result, which baffled me for quite some time, is that the program hangs on a message box warning that 3D will take up all of the available graphics resources. Nothing in that box is clickable, the program hangs forever while appearing to the OS to be responsive. It can be killed only from taskmgr. Worse, it also messes with mouse event handlers in the OS to the point that Explorer responds only intermittently. Other programs, such as Adobe Bridge, respond to mouse events with a slight but definite lag.

Nothing in the FAQs or support pages gives any warning or clue to this as a potential problem.

WinDVD gives no user feedback that it has detected a disc or is trying to read it (a poor design decision that added at least an hour to the debug process), so it was only when I manually opened the help file directly from the program directory and browsed the 3D and troubleshooting sections that I guessed what had occurred. I removed the BD from the drive and was then able to successfully start the program and turn off the "Prefer 3D" setting, after which it performed admirably.

I note a number of "This program just doesn't work!" posts on CNET, at least some of which probably stem directly from these hard-to-detect errors, which are really quite foolish.

[teknisyan]

Hello Alan_G,

First make sure you download all the updates from http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/ ... 5746622377, if the problem still persists, I suggest that you contact our Tech Support and you can find the nearest center in your area from this link: http://corel.custhelp.com/app/answers/d ... _id/759587, just make sure your WinVD is registered.

[Alan_G]

@Abel: Well, one would assume that a patch release in November would be incorporated into the downloadable version before February, and from what I can tell the current build (.713) is the one I installed. I've not tested the problem since I found the workaround, as my interest was solely in setting up playback to verify BD videos after I've rendered them. I did contact tech support and left feedback on the issue so it can be fixed in the next dot release, but we'll see what they say in response to my email. It's definitely a bug, not pilot error.