MOD files intermittently crashing X5?

[Davidk]

Using X5 pro with the updates applied.
Over several versions and several years, I developed the habit of converting the video .MOD files created by a JVC camcorder to .mpg before doing any editing using them. For the purpose of this topic, the reasons for that are unimportant. But for the first time, in the last few days I needed to get several basic projects done quickly and elected to bypass this mechanism and work directly with the .MOD files in the edit mode.

And as a result, I am seeing for the first time intermittent crashing of X5 during an edit phase. It's happening on different source files and vsp project files. Never at the same place in a project file, nor during the same action activity. Occurs during clip mode and project mode.

When it happens, the X5 desktop just 'whites out' - the outline of the program desktop is discernable, but barely. The only way out is to kill the program and re-start. Wait long enough and windows will present that option anyway. If one has saved the vsp file (repeatedly) during edit, restart does not lose much. Otherwise - begin again from scratch.

Has this effect been reported by anyone else? And is there a fix or workaround that would prevent it?

Davidk

[lata]

Hi David

I do not know much about MOD video types other than what I just read via Wikipedia, makes interesting reading.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOD_and_TOD_(video_format)
The Mod types appear to be Mpeg based and as such can be re-named to use the extension .MPG as mentioned in Wiki -- Playing and Editing

If this worked would save you time in the conversion process and probably retain the original quality.
Sorry I cannot help with the crashes, I guess Mod is another of the many formats that Camera manufactures create or tweak without consideration of editing, leaving the video editing software to play catchup.

I searched the forum for Mod and came up with a few of your older posts so i do not think anyone has cured the problem.

Anyway try the re-name option.

[Davidk]

It keeps happening. the last time I trapped the error message panel and blew it up to display some of the failure data. The screen image is attached

[lata]

Hi David
Sorry but the error message does not mean much to me.

Did you try the option to re-name the Mod files to use the extension MPG.

If that works then you do not have to convert the Mods which takes time.
You did say the it works ok when using MPG.

Have you installed the Service Pack that is available for X5?

As an aside,
I notice the Mod in the timeline.
Dd you purposely leave the display to include the file name, I normally have “Thumbnail only” set

Post Edited

Hi David

I searched Google for QUARTZ.dll some reference to Direct X was made.

Have you / can you update Direct X from the following link.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download ... px?id=8109

The install is in three stages
1 / download the file “directx_Jun2010_redist.exe” file 59.6 Mb
2 / Double click file to run, this will extract the contents, create a new folder on your desktop for the files
3 / from those files Double click DXSETUP.exe to install the files

[Davidk]

Hi,

Nope, have'nt just renamed the file, because I long ago noticed that the same file in the different formats were different sizes. For example, the .mpg file created by VS from the .mod source is about 2.25% smaller than the original .mod file. If it was just a "name issue" that would not be the case, so obviously there is something xtra about the .mod data structure. Clearly Corel knows what this is and can convert it.

I normally have the file name set (leave it as program default) in the timeline because its not really an issue and sometimes a distinct help (eg, in a multi-clip project , just which file is under the hammer).

When I first installed X5 I had a Direct X issue with burning DVD's (Mar 2012), and the MS help service advised on finding the version installed and updating it if necessary, essentially the same procedure you outline. At the time, I updated to Direct X 10. Using Dxdiag in the Win 7 start programs search box and then opening it will tell you which version is installed, and currently on my machine its version 11.

Davidk

[lata]

Hi David

Would you like to try simply re-naming the Mod files to Mpg using Windows Explorer, then insert the Mpg to the timeline for editing.

When you use any video editor to convert the Mod files the resultant file will be a different size.

[Davidk]

So far, I've 7 instances of X5 crashing whilst editing a .mod file as the source.

On about crash 5 I noted an error message concerning a crash dump and notifying the Corel support team. Looking in the specified location, I found the dumps for all the other crashes as well. Because there was no support contact point specified or a return mail address, I logged a case on the Corel contact page and worked it thru with the support agent that responded.

The support agent indicated that Corel has identified that X5 has an issue with the Firefox browser manager, whatever that is. The terminology used suggested it was something that could be turned off. I use Firefox, with several extensions and plugins that can be turned on or off, and not one of them is that item by name (browser manager). However, I sent (at that time) 6 X5 crash dumps that occurred over 2 days together with screen images of the firefox extensions and plugins I use back to the support agent. And a day later after a further crash, I sent the 7th dump to the same address.

Firefox is the most popular browser after MS internet explorer, and there are reasons for that. If the identification of the browser manager holds up as the cause of the VS crashes I've experienced, then Corel will have a serious bug issue to fix. I don't imagine I am alone in using both FF and VS. VS is good, but I use Firefox much more frequently - daily, as opposed to daily use of VS only every 3-4 months. More to the point, I've used prior versions of both Firefox and VS for years without any of this sort of interaction.

Davidk

[canuck]

I doubt very much that Firefox has anything to do with it. If it does then other video programs have the same problem since there are many posts of problems with the "mod" files.

Have you tried changing the mod to mpg as has been suggested a couple of times?

[Davidk]

Hi,

Yes, as noted in one of the later posts on the echo issue. It did not change the echo results I got.

Regarding Firefox - all I can do is relay what the support agent provided. I wasn't actually asking for help on crashes, just that I'd had a few and needed to know where to send the crash dumps as the message box requested. The response gave me an email address and reference for the dumps, and the related case number is 01491381. The response also attached an article reference with the firefox detail - 000014030-Error-in-VXCODER-DLL.pdf

Davidk

[canuck]

I guess I was wrong about my Firefox comment above. It is the "Browser Manager" add-ons that may cause the problem. See this Corel article http://corel.force.com/index/articles/e ... 000000L53U

[Davidk]

Hi,
Yep, same article they supplied me. Corel must have it published under several different titles. Problem is - for this topic at least - that browser manager is not an extension I have installed in my Firefox, not does the dll specified in the article turn up in an OS file search of my machine.

So it seems likely that X5 may be sensitive to several things FF does. And - since usually when I'm using X5 I don't have a browser running at all, might occasionally have a minimised copy of explorer for confirmation of file locations - its obviously something that runs in the background when FF is not nominally open.

The only thing which seemed consistent in 5 crashes I had prior to opening the topic here, and 2 afterwards, was that I was working with a .mod file or files in the project timeline for very one of them.

I'd experiment, but the crash is so intermittent that turning an FF extension feature off is not guaranteed to get a crash result quickly, if it gets one at all. That sounds odd, given that I had 7 crashes over 3 days, but I was intensively using X5 at the time generating some quick results for review (see the opening post of the sound echo topic recently). The crash fix was always an X5 restart. The crash dumps are all located in the same tortuous place on the PC (in my case, C:\Users\David\AppData\Local\Temp\ with a unique name, date and timestamps. The most recent dump of mine is "vstudio_15.1.0.34_20121102_094601.dmp" at 864Kb, which seems about average - the range of the 7 is from 552Kb to 1200Kb). Of the 7 crashes, only two seemed to create the message panel advising of the existence of the dump and requesting that it be sent to corel support for analysis. But when I looked in that location, dumps for all the crashes were evident. A major issue with that is that there isn't a specific place in the Corel support page for this sort of data to be sent to, so I used the contact item to ask for one. And this sequence of events (with crash dumps) only came to light after creating and several posts on this topic.

Given this my current plan is to keep sending X5 crash dumps in until I don't get them any more. There has already been one service pack release within 6 months of version release and there may well be more.

David

[teknisyan]

Hello Davidk,

Where you able to send the .dmp file to Corel Support? If not then you can directly send it to me using the email address and case number that I gave you via Private Message, so that I can forward the file to our Tech Department. You may also include a brief description about your problem and use "MOD files intermittently crashing X5?" as your subject line.

Also, have tried updating the directX for your computer as per lata's suggestion, as well as updating other codecs on your computer?

If not.. then here are some of the codecs that you may want to install.
RealPlayer: http://www.real.com/
DivX: http://www.divx.com/en/software/divx-plus/codec-pack
XviD: http://downloads.xvid.org/downloads/xvidcore-1.3.2.zip
Windows Media Player: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/wind ... dia-player or just download the Windows Encoder at http://www.microsoft.com/expression/pro ... rview.aspx
QuickTime: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/
Direct X: http://on-msn.com/aLrk0j (WinXP)
Direct X: http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/window ... tx-11.aspx

[Davidk]

This keeps happening. But it seems that .mod files are not the cause - it just happens most often when they are loaded in the timeline. I've had it happen when .mpg files are in the timeline too.
The applications on my PC that I use (see list in prior post) are as up-to-date as I can determine. I don't use Realplayer and have not done for some years - it caused too many problems.

I've been sending dumps to Corel - I received a name and email address for them as an early response - but there's been no other reaction since then. One wonders if I should keep sending them in.

The windows error message details when this happens is consistently saying the quartz.dll module of vstudio.exe is the one that failed.

Davidk