I am editing my first high definition travel video using Studio 12 Ultimate. My computer is a new HP desktop with 3 GB ram and lots of memory. I have successfully edited eight sections of the video, each of them 3 to 5 minutes in length. I've used a few transitions withing the pieces, mostly dissolves, and the transitions have worked perfectly. I then assembeled four of the pieces into a larger section adding background music and titles and connecting them with dissolves. I saved the larger section to file. When I viewed the larger section, I discovered the transitional dissolves had been dropped and replaced either with two seconds of flat green screen or with two seconds of previously used video that contains a title. I've played around with this trying to fix the problem and on several occasions I've gotten this message: "Insufficient Graphics Memory: project exceeds the capabilities of the system graphics board." I went to the Pinnacle help desk to try to resolve this. They asked for my computer specs. But before I could send those off I had to break off the dialogue to take a long-planned trip and they concluded my problem was "resolved." Any thoughts? Do I need to install a better video card on my computer? If so, what would be the ideal specs for that video card. If it isn't a video card problem, what might it be? Your help would be appreciated. I love my new Pinnacle software and I am determined to make it work.

Before anybody will be able to make suggestions, we will need to know what type if graphics card you currently have, and how much memory is on the graphics card, video editing in studio requires a fairly modern card. Also what type if editing are you doing SD (Standard definition) or HD (High definition) video.

I've had the "insufficient graphics memory" message come up in my S12 Ultimate before but the culptri was not having the Enable Hardware Acceleration box checked. Once I checked that, closed Studio and reloaded it, it was fine.

I was also having issues editing AVCHD issues and here are a few tips that I got from the forum or worked out myself:

• Turn off your page file...at least while you're working in Studio. I had Windows managing my page file and I encountered sluggish performance, hangs, and errors while trying to render my projects. WIth the page file off it is running MUCH smoother.
• End the Windows Search function. I'm not a 100% believer in this one because it has had mixed results for me. Click the Windows logo in the lower left corner and type "services" in the search box. You can scroll down to Windows Search, right click and stop this service. I guess this takes up some memory. Just by turning it off I didn't notice any change in the memory allocation (I have an LDC panel monitoring this on my XPS laptop) however it may use more memory during the render process.
• Turn off any background programs and startup services you don't need. There a free program out there called EndItAll and I've used it but have had mixed results. I prefer to use msconfig.
• Use the basic visual GUI of Windows. Right click on My Computer, Properties, Settings and set it for best peformance. Also remove any desktop wallpaper you have.
• Turn off your anti-virus (just remember to turn it back on before going back online).

These tips have GREATLY improved my ability to edit AVCHD video on my laptop. I have a Dell XPS M1730 laptop, 2.5GHZ Core 2 Duo, Nvidia GeForce 8800GTX with 1GB of ram, and 4GB of system ram (although Vista-32 only sees 3.3GB). Before making these changes I couldn't even preview AVCHD footage on my laptop. It was choppy and jittery and went black after a few seconds. But after these changes, as long as you are patient with Studio, it now runs smoothly. I also read on this forum that AVCHD editing is VERY processor-intensive and they are recommending a quad-core processor for AVCHD. I'm managing with what I have. If I had a spot in my house for desktop I would have definitely gone with a quad-core.

Finally, I've still had some issues with Studio hanging, etc. but it's NOT as bad as it was before. The LCD display on my XPS that shows the Dual CPU and Ram allocation via percentage is awesome. As I mentioned above, you have to have patience while editing AVCHD. What's nice about the LCD display is that I can click a function and watch the LCD as the computer processes the change. Once the allocation level goes down I know I'm free to move on to my next step. If you try to move too fast you get the "Not Responding" mention and might have to end Studio and reload. A major pain when you have AVCHD clips in your timeline. You won't lose the work but it takes a long time to reload.

Per ghuck, post your system configuration so that we can get more details on your setup.

Joe