VS X4; Instant Project Templates

[ichadwick]

Are the 15 templates from the Corel Guide, that you download inside of VS? If so then look in your C:\Users\Your User Name\Documents\Corel VideoStudio Pro folder. That's where they are placed when you install them. There's another place where the actual download files, that has the installer are located. They should be in one of the folders found under C:\ProgramData\Corel\Downloads. There should be an *.exe and an *.xml file.

The files are there in downloads and they installed into the documents folder correctly, but the problem occured when I tried to import them into the instant projects folder. They should show up as thumbnails in the "custom" section - the 15 that I imported intially showed but the thumbnails vanished when VS4 crashed. Those that I imported later all show properly and can be accessed properly. There is no text-only listing option, just thumbnail, so there's no other way to see them, either.

The problem now is that I can't see the 15, so I can't use them. VS4 won't reinstall them because it tells me the templates already exist - which means they're in a list somewhere (XML file? I can't find it anywhere) but just not being shown.

I want to uninstall (or delete from that list) the unseen ones, and re-install them. I can't find any way to remove an instant project template from the list within the program. It's a very, very clumsy and inefficient interface.

Short of wiping VS4 off my hard drive and starting all over again, I can't find any solution. Any suggestions as to how to avoid this and fix the problem would be appreciated.

[Ron P.]

EDITED 8/16/2011
I've prepared a short article/tutorial on where the Installer files (*.exe and *.xml) are stored on your system, and where the
template folders and files are located. Click on the link below to go there
VS X4 Instant Project Template files

Ok after much manual searching I think I found what might help you. I'm not sure, but it's about the only place that I've found that shows what Instant Project Templates, I've installed. Try looking here:
C:\Users\Your User Name\AppData\Roaming\Ulead Systems\Corel VideoStudio Pro\14.0\en-US\UserTemplateStyle

Here's a couple of screenshots showing what I mean..

Click on images to enlarge

You should see the 15 Missing templates in this location.

[ichadwick]

Bingo. Thanks for identifying that location. Would likely never have looked there. Sure exposes the soft underbelly of VS4.

There are two ways to fix it and restore the missing projects:
1. Edit the INI file by manually adding the identifiers and updating the count. Simple cut-and-paste of the directory name seems to work. No errors, crashes or other unwanted effects have happened to me from doing it this way. Yet...
2. Deleting the unseen items and re-installing the projects. This is the longer of the two, but might be safter since I can't tell if VS4 is doing something extra in the background while installing. But might not be necessary.

Interesting issues raised by this...
Why are the project files first installed in the user/documents directory then duplicated in the AppData directory? That's very inefficient - I suspect deleting them from the documents directory after installation will be safe (will try and report back). While they're not large files, these extra files add to times in indexing, searches, etc. Note that the directory names in the documents area are project names, but in the AppData area they are numeric strings and you have to open those directories to determine what the project name is.

Why the need for the lengthy numeric identifier for the AppData location? Why not simply use the project name or the style name? Neither the project name nor the identifier are visible in VS4 - although the INI files in each identify a tooltip text (TooltipText=grunge), nothing of this sort shows in VS4 as far as I've been able to determine. Bug? Or dropped feature? Having the project name visible somewhere would be a great benefit.

Each project also has a style name (StyleName=grunge) in the INI file but it doesn't seem to be used or displayed anywhere. Seems a waste of resources to name it and then have the program ignore that name.

Why doesn't the instant project manager have ANY user tools to delete, reassign or reinstall projects? Why no simple, user-friendly text-based list of projects like a normal directory?
There doesn't seem any mechanism to edit or alter an instant project once it's installed. If I download one I like, but want to make a minor, permanent change, it seems I have to resave it as a separate (new) project, and cannot overwrite an existing one. To remove the older one, I have to close VS4, open the AppData directory in Explorer, determine which of the cryptic number strings is the project directory I want to delete, remove the directory, edit the INI file to make sure it's gone and update the project count, then re-open VS4. That's a very awkward and unfriendly system. If there's a better, more efficient way, please let me know.

If you've used the instant projects, you will realize another issue: VS4 always goes back to the AppData directory when you try to replace a placeholder image or video, rather than retaining the last-used directory. So if you have six or seven images (or more) to replace, you have to direct the program to the correct directory each time you replace one. That's quite tedious, especially if the files you want are buried deep in another drive location. Simply remembering the last directory would save users a lot of time and aggravation. VS4 really needs some better user tools for this component.

Anyway, thanks for the help in identifying that problem.

[Ron P.]

Glad it fixed it for you..

I will agree they need to do some of the things you suggest, to make it more user-friendly. There is a way to delete a template in the Instant Project wizard. Simply right-click on one of the thumbnails, and a single option menu will appear... Delete. Then you can save your modified template, and install it in the Instant Projects. So if you found one you liked, that only had place-holders for say 4 objects/photos, and you modify it so there are 30. Saving this as a Template, and installing it will provide you with it in the Instant Project wizard.

Further if you find one of the other templates that are located in the Beginning, Middle, Complete categories, you like and want to customize, you can. Just save your customized one as a Template and import it into the Instant Project Wizard.

[wlopatin]

I am at a loss...
I had VSproX3 for several years and use it a lot. I just purchased VSproX4, the full boxed version. I first uninstalled the X3 and then installed the new full X4. Everything seemed to go without problems and the program looks familiar and I'm anxious to try out some new features. Now the problem: I see the welcome screen has a "do more" tab that shows stuff you can download for free. I tried the very first, upper left corner, which said it would download new menu packs. Now that screen shows the menu pack as installed. BUT where are the new menu's? Are these DVD menus? instant project templates? or what? I don't notice anything different and it gives me NO indication of what these are, how many new things I should have, or where I can see them. Can you shed some light on this before I download more?
Thanks

[Ron P.]

Welcome to the forums Wlopatin,

Those are Instant Project templates. Once they're installed, open the Instant Project wizard, then click on the Import Project button, it's to the left of the round orange one. In the next window that opens, navigate to where the Instant Project template was installed. VS should install them to C:\Users\Your User Name\Documents\Corel VideoStudio Pro. There should be folders with the same name as the template, open one and you should see a file called User Template Style.vpt. You'll notice that all have the same name. Select that file to install it to the Instant Project wizard. The templates will be found under the Custom heading in the drop-down menu.

On the Learn tab, there are several tutorial videos. The one titled Export Template will also describe how to import them.

[wlopatin]

Thanks for the quick reply but the problem is they are downloaded into the folder you suggest. Perhaps my installation was "messy" because I originally started with ulead VS 7or8, then updated through Corel VSproX3. Now I bought the full boxed version of X4 but uninstalled the previous versions before installing the new one.
When I look at documents/Corel VideoStudio Pro/ I see the following subfolders:
14.0
Corel DVD Factory
Corel VideoStudio Pro
DFSmartProxy
My Projects

I assumed that the 14.0 must be for the one so I checked there; the subfolders under 14.0 are
DMF_TEMP
SmartProxy

I do not see any *.VPT folders or files anywhere.

Any ideas?
Thanks again

[Ron P.]

No there not in the 14.0 folder.. here's screenshot showing those folders for the template files..

[wlopatin]

Thanks again,

It looks like you have all the templates as subfolders and I don't.

You can see from my previous response what subfolders I have under \documents\VideoStudio Pro; again all I see as subfolders are:
14.0
Corel DVD Factory
Corel VideoStudio Pro
DFSmartProxy
MyProjects

It looks the templates did not download correctly or to the right place. Since the "Do More" tab already shows the one as installed, is some other way for me to get them. I don't want to try any of the others until I get this mystery solved.

[Ron P.]

I wonder where on your system it would have installed to? Try doing a search for User Template Style.vpt, just for *.vpt files. That should tell you where it was installed to. When you get some results in the Search window, right-click on one of them and select Open File Location.

[wlopatin]

Great suggestion.
However the search turned up nothing. So it looks like the download failed and I don't have any VPT files.

[Ron P.]

Try downloading another one, this time make sure that the box at the bottom of the Install Now window beside, Open Containing Folder or something like that is checked. After it finishes installing it will open the folder where the files are installed. I just grabbed another one, and it installed in the location I specified above.

[wlopatin]

Well, that worked just as you said.

I wonder what happened to the first one I tried? Can I reset the system to try that one again? Can I get it some other way? or am I just out of luck.

Thanks again for the help.

[wlopatin]

Does anyone have any ideas about my previous post? I would like to try again to get the free template because I think it was for travel videos and that is what I am working on right now?
Thanks.

[Ron P.]

Try looking in C:\ProgramData\Corel\Downloads\540244232_807001 folder. There will be other folders, open them and there will 2 files in each, having a name like DoMore_Title_07.exe, and dim_params.xml. Of course the *.exe files are the installation files. You can use those to install them again. In fact when you have them all downloaded, and installed, you can copy all those to somewhere else on your system, another harddrive, so you really don't have to download them again, should you need to reinstall VS.

Ok, in fact I was able to download the Travel template to confirm my findings above. The exe file (travel.exe) was found in the following place on my system: C:\ProgramData\Corel\Downloads\540244232_807001\1291240546149. Then I had the box checked to open the location of where the template was installed to, and this is where that is located: C:\Users\Ron\Documents\Corel VideoStudio Pro\travel.

To backup the install files, I copy the folder C:\ProgramData\Corel\Downloads to an external hard drive.

Tutorial can be found HERE