Jim West's dashboard

That worked. Rolling back the driver to the Intel Vista one let me install the program, and it runs OK. Now to evaluate it.

YihYeong, thanks for replying. I'm using the 32 bit version of Windows 7.

You are correct, there is no driver on the Intel site for this new OS. Windows 7 itself comes with a driver for the Intel Chipset which is a later version than what Intel currently has for Vista (see driver versions in org post).

I think I'll try putting in the latest Intel Vista driver (7.15.10.1666), and see what happens.

Well, this is what I have found in all my testing:

I have dual monitors. Specifying only one monitor in the driver software AND physically disconnecting the external monitor would allow me to preview a movie made up JPEG’s only, without the error. If I throw in a video clip, I get the same GDI error at the preview stage.

However, I found a way to be able to preview with video clips. First, you open a project with pictures only, and do the preview. Then, WITHOUT closing Muvee, open another project that has video clips. This works 80% of the time. The times it doesn’t work, I get a brand new error – “Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library. Runtime Error! Program C:\Pro... R6025 – pure virtual function call”. At this point, I also get the Microsoft notification that muvee has encountered an error and needs to close, etc...

This is consistent with either the older (12/29/07) driver, or the newer one. I also installed Google Earth, and it works perfectly with both versions of the driver.

Now that I can get to the saving stage with the above workarounds, I can only consistently save using H.264. I tested the mpeg1, mpeg2, avi, and they all caused XP to catch an un-handled exception, and close down Muvee.

I have not tried the Burn DVD function. Derick, I suggest you try mpeg2 first as this is the DVD encoding method. If mpeg2 fails, try H.264. In either case, once you get the actual file saved, you can use other free programs to author and burn the DVD.

Other problems I have with Reveal:

1. Sometimes will not start. The executable stays in memory (as viewed by task manager) just sitting there, without actually launching the screen. I have left it for up to an hour. I just have to kill it, and try again.

2. The Magic moments window – At the top of this window you are supposed to see all the clips, and you can go forward and backward, the current one being shown larger. Most of the time (90%) this does not work. It initially populates the thumbnails on opening the window, but after a few seconds, they all disappear, leaving just the left and right arrows on either side.
3. When saving to H.264 (the only one I’ve tried that works), there is a long period at the beginning where the window is totally un-responsive (3-5 minutes). It then refreshes, stating that it is 5% complete, then after another 10-20 seconds, it goes back to 0% and actually starts the process.

4. It always starts in a maximized window. Doesn’t remember the last setting.

5. In general, in this version of Muvee I find that windows quite often freeze up for seconds (up to about 20 seconds) when it is doing something. I never know if it has crashed, or what.

6. At the end of a created movie, it leaves around 10-15 seconds with no music, even though I have selected summarize to fit song length. Only one song. So you see 10-15 seconds of video at the end with no sound. This varies with the styles, but looks weird.

7. Not really a problem I guess, but important for me – I record video on my (non-HD) camcorder in Wide mode (16:9), where it squashes a 16:9 view into the native 4:3 format. I haven’t found a way in Muvee Reveal to correct this at either the input stage, or when I write out to H.264.

All in all, there seems to be quite a few issues with this release. I’ll think I’ll probably wait around 3-4 months and re-visit this program then. Hopefully, Muvee will have sorted out most of these issues by then.

Thank you for replying chetan! While I have not solved the error, I did some investigations yesterday and tried several things.

First of all, the error occurs just before the preview starts. So that when I press play, it goes through "Analyzing", then "Making Movie", then as soon as "Buffering" starts, the error pops up. The error is "[Preview] GDI Generic detected. Please update your display driver. Click OK to exit Muvee Reveal".

After realizing the GDI generic is Microsoft’s generic driver which does not support openGL 1.4, I started looking at why Muvee was choosing it over the 945GM. I performed the following:

Downloaded and ran “OpenGL Extensions Viewer 3.0” – It showed both the generic GDI, as well as the 945GM. I could choose between the two. The 945GM was fully 1.4 compliant.

After Googling, I saw that some people had similar problems with other graphic drivers (nVidia), where they had to totally remove all traces of the driver and re-install. So, I booted XP (SP3) into safe mode, removed all display drivers from device manager, and then ran “Driver Cleaner” (a third party product to wipe all traces of it, including CAB files, backups, etc). I also deleted all files containing the driver (both HP’s, and from Intel directly).

Upon booting normally, XP could find no graphics drivers, and in device manager just listed two adaptors – Video controller, and Video controller (VGA mode). I then downloaded a fresh copy from Intel, installed, rebooted, and the same error occurs.

Then, I repeated all the above cleaning steps, and used the HP version of the Intel driver. Same problem.

I’m in to this for around 5 hours so far, so I might as well keep going. I need to know what the problem is, even if I don’t get Muvee running!

Thanks,
Jim. – Jim West, on January 28, 2009 15:56