DVD Creation Canceled

Posted by bb on Wednesday 22nd of August 2007 at 11:54 am;.
Filed Under Rants 

No that is not a typo – that is the error message I keep getting from ProShow Gold v3.00.1974.

Why am I mentioning this? Well it is because apparently it is quite a common error message and the best advice I could get from the interweb was to disable an option within the program. I even looked on the ProShow Enthusiasts forum.

There are a few things about this that bother me.

  1. $80 for the full version. You can’t even spell your error messages correctly!
  2. It doesn’t work properly so rather than investigate what the problem was, you (and your enthusiasts) suggest just disabling a function.
  3. Emails to your tech support go unanswered 🙁

Now I’m not a software programmer – but the fact that disabling the function stops the problem, indicates to me a very good place to start looking. So I did. And the problem was with DirectShow (quartz.dll). Using Sherlock,  Codec Sniper and DirectShow Filter Manager meant that I could correct the problem in a few minutes.

Now what are the chances that this is the same problem other people are having (since 2006)? Pretty good I guess because the problem relates to video thumbnails which use … video codecs like DirectShow … *sigh*

Yet you still expect people to spend their hard earned dollars/pounds/euros/smarties on your product when the problem has existed for over a year and emails to your techsupport are left unanswered? Let me explain to you what happens then- FrustratedUser(tm) gets hold of a debugger to try and track the damn error down himself. On the way to finding the problem he notices the registration routine and saves himself $80.

Of course, that didn’t happen here – honestly 🙂 It’s just a what-if type scenario. You know, like what would happen if you found the blacklist of names and serials in PLAINTEXT in a DLL (with a cunningly renamed extension … oh noes … wh4t j00 going to do now h4x0r?)

Sheesh.


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5 Responses to “DVD Creation Canceled”

  1. Phas on August 23rd, 2007 9:59 pm

    Maybe I’m kicking (as always) the English dictionary but… aren’t “canceled” and “cancelled” both accepted? 😛
    http://www.answers.com/canceled?cat=biz-fin
    GoogleBattle

    Edited by bb : Format GoogleBattle link to prevent wrapping

  2. bb on August 23rd, 2007 11:49 pm

    That is plain silly Phas 🙂

    Next you will be telling me that color is an acceptable spelling!

    Just because the illiteratti have managed to crowbar another ‘acceptable’ definition, doesn’t make it right 😛 It does however let Photodex off the hook for not spellchecking their error messages – perhaps they used a US dictionary. Actually, according to the Compact Oxford English Dictionary cancelled is English, canceled is American. I must admit to not having noticed the US spelling before so I guess I can apologise for going off about that one … my bad!

    It does not get them off the hook for shitty error handling, crappy tech support and one of the daftest anti-piracy schemes I have seen in a very long time – and I’ve looked at some of your work 😛

    Finally googlebattle says cancelled is the victor … and that is the last word on the subject 🙂

  3. Manuel Castro on September 27th, 2007 5:21 pm

    I have this problem in ProShow Gold, DVD Creation Canceled
    I don’t find this file (quartz.dll)
    Can you help me please?

  4. bb on September 28th, 2007 8:13 am

    Hi Manuel,

    For me quartz.dll was located here :

    C:\windows\system32\quartz.dll

    A new quartz.dll can be downloaded here :

    http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?quartz

    Alternatively, you can use the DirectShow Filter Manager I linked in the original article to repair this for you.

    Cheers

  5. Drunk on February 16th, 2009 7:02 pm

    Your blog is very useful! Thanbx!

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