Hi,

Have been using Studio v12 a couple of times a week for past few years. A few days ago after mastering a DVD like I have done hundreds of times before, I closed Pinnacle (like normal), and the next time I attempted to start the program, while loading (at about 24% complete), I get a window titled "XML Parsing Error" and it reads "Error 15 [Illegal Character] Line 0 ^----"

I upgraded to 12_1_3_6605a back in November 2008, and have not been having any issues.

I searched the forums, and found the same error message on a v11 installation, so I attempted the most basic recovery.

> Attempted to re-apply the latest patch (failed with same message)

> Attempted to do a Repair/Install of v12 from Control Panel (failed with same message)

I did not want to hack at the registry or other manual delete operations until I checked for log files, etc...

Any advice on where to look for the file that has an issue here ?

Hardware / Software in use:

Win XP Home SP3 + Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz + 1764 MB RAM + NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS 512MB + Pinnacle Studio Ultimate v12.1.3...

 

Taking a wild guess, I looked for xml files, and there are LOTS of them... there appears to be a file for every transition, effect and do-dad available in Studio. They live in different directories - distinct to the add-ons that have been installed (RTFX vol1 vol2, etc..)

Could someone verify that Studio is attempting to load these files at about 22-24% complete ? That is when I hear the error pop up.

Maybee I could copy/move these XML files to another place and set up a test where studio would only load one or two of them from each directory (hopefully good ones?)

What do you think ?

Good news... that worked. Now, just need to put them back one directory at a time, then find the offending xml file.

Not sure if this is faster than a manual remove/re-install, but it seems to be a more surgical approach to the problem.

BTW, I was having problems rendering with a Lens Flare and Pan and Zoom applied to one of the photos in a recent project.I just eventually removed the two effects from the project and it would then render OK. (It will be interesting to see if one of these is the offender).

Thanks for the more detailed approach. Unfortunately I'm not a programmer and may not be able to offer more specific bits of the technical side of this issue. I'll wait for your progress. Keep us posted

I've moved this thread to the Edit Section.

Found a group of xml files with "funny names" in the C:\Program Files\Pinnacle\Studio 12\Plugins\RTFx\3DServer\AlphaMagic3DXML  directory. There were 225 of them to be exact. An example file name is: 뗾ശᰏ∁4Boxes4.xml   All of these files have the funny characters as a prefix to the regular name.Not sure how or when they got there, but removing these files fixed my problem : )

I have not re-tried the lens flare with pan and zoom yet, but I think this issue is unrelated to the render issue that I referenced earlier.

 

Strange. Can you also provide us a screen shot of the directory showing the path and the files with the funny names?