Roxio: VideoWave Crashes When Attempting to Add Media Files to a Production

This article provides resolution for a VideoWave crash that occurs while browsing for files to add to your production. If the crash takes place immediately after launching VideoWave, then this is not the article for you, as it is a different issue altogether and caused by other factors not dealt with here.

Symptoms

The crash generally occurs while you are browsing for media files (e.g. video clips, songs, photos) either via the “Add Photo/Video” or “Add Background Audio” buttons on the Task Pane’s “Add Content” area (Image 1), or via the Media Selector Dock (Image 2). The crash can also occur the moment you click on the "Add Photo/Video" button, or when clicking on the Media Selector's folder/directory drop-down menu.

Cause

When you attempt to add some media files to your production in VideoWave, and the application crashes while browsing for the file you wish to add, this would be a good indication that certain files located in that folder location where the crash occurred (e.g. the Videos, Pictures, or Music library folders, or other folder) are not playing well with VideoWave. They could be corrupted, or are in a format that VideoWave does not know how to handle. You should be able to correct this problem by locating and getting rid of the particular problem file(s).

Resolution

The idea then is to try to single out and isolate the problem files. Through isolation, contact between VideoWave and these problem files will be avoided completely, thereby preventing any further crashing. Once isolated, the decision then would be whether to delete these problem files or to simply keep them in permanent isolation.

The following procedure is based on the scenario whereby VideoWave crashes when browsing for files in the Videos library. The moment the Videos folder is opened in the Media Selector window, VideoWave stops responding, then crashes to the desktop after a few seconds with no visible error message.

Follow the steps below to fix the problem:

1. Identify which folder causes the crash when you attempt to browse from within VideoWave (e.g. Desktop, Video, Pictures, or Music folder);
   
   TIP: Broken shortcuts to web locations or network paths (pointing to actual media resources) are some of the files that may cause VideoWave to crash immediately once it comes into contact with them. So if you find any of these residing in any of the folders where you normally store your media files, you should delete them immediately, or at least relocate them to another location where there will be little chance for them to come into contact with VideoWave. In some cases, the errant file (or files) are located on the Desktop area, so do not forget to check the Desktop as well!
    
2. Once identified, open that same folder location in File Explorer 
3. Then, create a sub-folder within that same folder location. This will serve as an isolation container. Example: Videos\New Folder;
   
   In cases where VideoWave immediately crashes upon simply clicking on the Add Photos/Videos button, it will be difficult to determine which folder is triggering the crash. As such, you will need to perform this procedure for all library folders (i.e., Pictures, Videos, Music, Documents), plus the Desktop folder.
    
4. Move all files from the main folder location (i.e. Videos) to the newly created folder (i.e. New Folder). This will leave the source folder empty;
   
5. Try browsing to the Videos folder (which would now be empty, except for the new folder created above) again in VideoWave, and see if it will still crash. If it does not, this means the problem file(s) have been cleared after moving them to the new folder;
6. Go back to the new folder and start moving files a batch at a time back to the original location (I.e. Videos), each time checking if any of the files in the batch will cause VideoWave to crash;

   If VideoWave crashes after moving a particular batch back to the source folder, you can be sure that batch contains the problem file(s). It will then be a simple matter of running the files in the batch through a process of elimination in order to single out the problem file(s);

7. Create a new folder and give it a specific name that will remind you of its contents, such as “Quarantine” or “Dump”, or something to that effect, and place all problem files in there.

And that’s it. After the procedure above, VideoWave should no longer crash when opening or browsing the Videos folder, or whichever folder you selected to troubleshoot, as long as the problem file(s) remain in isolation and do not come into contact with VideoWave.