Solved Movie Studio Platinum 12 - Pop up windows empty!

Hello...hope someone can help.

I just purchased and installed the Movie Studio Platinum (12, build 1184) software on a 2 month old, pretty powerful computer (8gb ram, E5 3.7GHZ processor, 1TB hardrive, dedicated 2GB video card).

Everything seems to work fine/smoothly (so far).

Here is the problem:
When I hit "make movie"....the window pops up fine. Then I hit "Save to my hard drive" - and the next window pops up (presumably to fill in more information about saving the file) - but the screen pops up blank....with nothing inside.

I can close it, redo...and the same thing happens over and over. I can let it sit for 1 minute or 10 minutes - and the screen remains blank. Attached are screen shot pictures





PLEASE HELP! Thanks-

Hi JPW

I haven't ever seen this before.
The first thing you should do is a full program reset.

Do this:
Turn Movie Studio/Vegas Off.
Hold down CONTROL and SHIFT keys at the same time AND ALSO AT THE SAME TIME double click program icon to Boot program.
Window will pop up.
Select Delete Cache and Yes.
This will restore program to Factory Default Settings.

Make sure you DO NOT have any other programs running at the same time. Your screen shot shows other things open, but I can't quite see what they are.
After it boots back up, start a new project and add a "normal" video. Something that actually has an audio track attached to it.
The go to Make Movie and see if you can render.
If it works OK, then open your existing project and see if you can get it to render.
Be careful NOT to start checking the filter options in the Render As window. Sometimes if you go crazy selecting options and then try to render ONLY a Video with no Audio, it can do weird things.

What type of computer do you actually have ?
Make and Model ?
OR
Did you build it yourself ?
Not many people use Xeon Processors for home computing.

Also, what make and model is your Graphics Card ?
You may want to check if the Graphics Card is turned ON in the Movie Studio settings.
Go to Options - Preferences - Video Tab
Check GPU Acceleration of Video Processing
If it is ON and you are still having problems, turn it OFF, re-boot and see what happens.
OR do Vice Versa.

Let me know how you go.
Derek

Thank you for your help. Unfortunately, this did not work.

Also, if I hit any of the other functions (like save to youtube, or DVD or online) those bring up the next window and seem to be working fine.

I also realized/noticed that the same "empty/dead" window happens on the program startup. I hit the icon on the computer desktop...the software loads....then what I presume to be a "welcoming" window opens (usually, you can hit a small radio button in the corner that says "click if you don't want this to appear again")...but it is just an empty/dead window....that I have to "x" out - to start using the program... (see screen shot attached - the blue/painted insert is a "window" copy of my desktop background - filling in the space of the pop up window. If I move the pop window around...the borders/edges of the pop window get "dragged/repeated" over and over....it's not frozen...just sort of "stuck").

Other points:
- I went to options, video: GPU acceleration - is set to off....but it is not giving me an option to turn it on. "Off" is the only thing available.
- attached is a screen shot of my computer details. It was made by a company called @Xi - a well known "assembler" of high performance computers. This computer was made for my business - initially intended as a "mild, windows based "server" - but then a number of events happened - with it ending up becoming my computer....and since I do photoshop and graphics....we added the video card - which is an AMD Radeon HD 5450

Here are a couple of things for you.

#1. The Graphics Card you have installed is only a $40 entry level, very basic card, with not much processing power. So it isn't going to be of any great assistance.
You need a $150+ card if you want to see some actual solid performance increase. Any of the new AMD R7 and R9 Series cards should work well.

#2. I just did a quick Google search on your problem and think I may have fluked a good answer for you.
Read this thread here on the Sony Creative Software forum.
www.sonycreativesoftware.com/Forums/ShowMessage.asp?Forum=4&MessageID=868389
The interesting part is right at the very bottom of the thread. For this person, the problem ended up being the Graphics Card Driver.
You could try doing exactly what they suggested in this thread - un-install your ATI Catalyst Driver and then get Windows to automatically search and install a driver. I have actually seen this work well myself, when dealing with basic Graphics Cards. I have a very distant memory that the same exact thing happened on my old laptop that used a AMD Radeon Graphics Card. Changing the Driver fixed it.
OR
Just try updating the Catalyst Control Centre software and get it to check for the latest Drivers. Definitely try option #1 first. You can use Windows System Restore and create a restore point before experimenting. If nothing works, then just use System Restore and roll back in time.

#3. One final thing which is un-related to your problem.
This forum is only brand new and I am still adjusting the settings.
Can you tell me the file sizes of the two last screen shots you just uploaded ?
I am trying to work out if the forum software is over compressing image uploads, or whether you already did a super compression on the images and that is why it is difficult to read the text in images.

I am about to go to bed here in Australia. It is 1:00 AM in the morning.
So I won't be able to respond to any further messages tonight.
I am crossing my fingers that your Graphics Card Driver is the culprit and you can fix this problem easily.
Please let me know how you go.

All the best.
Derek

Derek- GOOD MORNING!

I got it to work!!!

...not exactly sure what I did...but it was a combination of reinstalling the software and the graphics drivers (a few times in different order) .... a couple of attempts/work arounds later ...and bam...it finally started to work! Yeah!!

As for images:
- "screen shot III" - 474kb (full screen resolution (72dpi) - I left full size so you could read the copy. On my computer, it looked clear. On this forum, it appeared blurry
- "Screen shot IV" - 180KB (full screen resolution (72dpi) - I shrunk this down a bit - to save on file size (not realizing how small it already was!) - since all you needed was the "idea" of what was going on. It was a bit blurry on my screen...seemed a bit worse on the forum.

Hope this helps...and if you want more details - let me know - it is the LEAST I can do for your help! Thanks!!

Excellent news !
Glad you got it fixed

Thanks for information about image uploads.
I am going to adjust the File Manager so it is not so aggressive.