VS 2021 wont start

[zaphodikus]

splash screen appears and after a minute goes away.

pretty sure it's related to the app crashing every few minutes last night while I was creating video masks, far too fragile IMHO, but
Any pointers to bits of the manual that show how to get going without re-installing as I'm pretty sure it's a corrupted masks cache or other ? (I reinstalled VS over xmas already, so it's a bit of a chore now.)

[Ken Berry]

First, I would try rebuilding the databases supporting the program. This in effect means resetting VS 2021. Go to C:\Users\[YourName]\AppData\Roaming\Ulead Systems\Corel VideoStudio Pro (x64)\24.0 and either rename or delete the 24.0 folder. Restart VS. Be very patient as it takes time to rebuild things. But when it reopens, see if your problem is still there.

[lata]

Hi
If you think you may have a corrupt mask that indeed may cause some problems
The masks are saved here:-
C:\Users\UserName\Documents\Corel VideoStudio Pro\24.0\Mask
Rename the Mask folder to “Mask_Old”

If the program runs without problem then you may have to identify which mask is the culprit.

First rename so folder back to “Mask”.
Now rename each mask in turn, I would start with the last mask created
If the mask is a video then it will be a folder full of PNG’s, (rename the folder) if an image than a single png file

[zaphodikus]

That second trick solved it, deleting the 24.0 folder also did solve it, but it removed all my pinned clips in the clip library, so I went with deleting the masks folder and now happy again.

It's still too easy to crash VS, especially if you drag a "VS project" into your timeline to use it as a pre-built overlay or other. But at least we know what to do next time, thanks all.