2 Replies Latest reply: Jul 4, 2010 6:08 PM by MurrayW RSS

    Soundbooth CS4 (v2.0.1) on Windows 7 x64?

    MurrayW Community Member

      Hoping to get some feeling of whether it is our environment or a known issue. We have a site license (500 seats) of CS4, and while everything else in the suite works fine, Adobe Soundbooth CS4 is driving us mad. Put simply, I can get it to install on our desktop image (Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit), and it initially tested okay during the build process, but almost ALL of our desktops have been failing - with this application only. Randomly (and for unknown reasons) the software will load and work fine on systems... but most of the time it crashes at the "Loading Windows Media" portion of the start process (only splash screen at this point). See below...

       

      SoundboothCS4b.jpg

       

      Here's today's test process, on my workstation:

       

      NOTE: I decided to test Soundbooth again. It says v2.0.1 on the plash screen, and no updates appear to be available. The Windows system is fully patched, freshly restarted, and has minimal applications running. i decide to run the program ten (10) times and log the results (as this is usually enough to get the error to occur).

       

      • First three (3) times using the executable directly from the install location ("C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Soundbooth CS4"). This worked a treat.
      • Next two (2) times using the shortcut on the start menu. This worked a treat as well.
      • On the next (third) attempt from the start menu, it froze at "Loading Windows Media". Left it for several minutes, nothing more happened. Clicking the splash screen gives you the "Not Responding" dialog and the option to close the application. At this stage the program was not consuming any CPU time, or disk access, and the "Adobe Soundbooth CS4.exe" process was consuming a fairly regular/static 62,692K of memory. I had to end the process as it had crashed.
      • Subsequent four (4) launches (two from the start menu, and the other two from the executable directly) resulted in the crash. It has not worked since.

      I have tied holding down the shift key, manually deleting preferences, changing user accounts/profiles... nothing works. It is completely random as to when this application will work, the rest of the time it crashes at this point. No amount of other programs being open or closed, freshly restarting the computer, or any other process can get the application to launch in a more stable/reliable manner. This is immensely frustrating for our users.

       

      Anyone have any ideas? Anyone else having the issue, or have seen the issue?

        • 1. Re: Soundbooth CS4 (v2.0.1) on Windows 7 x64?
          MurrayW Community Member

          Update: Tried it again (several minutes later)... worked again. Nothing changed on this system during that time. This is what we are facing, random crash/work on launch independant of hardware, running applications, etc. Weird.

          • 2. Re: Soundbooth CS4 (v2.0.1) on Windows 7 x64?
            MurrayW Community Member

            Update: I have been dealing with "Quality Engineering Lead for Adobe SoundBooth", Mr Ron Day, regarding this issue. After countless tests, runs through debuggers, loading into Virtual machines, tweaking, testing external CODECs and more... we have isolated the issue, but not the cause. The issue can be worked around though - so thats something.

             

            So what is the issue?

            Something in Windows has changed on these machines, and Adobe SoundBooth CS4 is no longer able to consistently load what it needs to get Windows Media to work. This does not appear to be anything "caused" by our environment, but rather is a core component of Windows that is refusing to play ball with SoundBooth. It is likely that a Windows Update to the media components may be the issue - although that cannot be confirmed at this stage.

             

            So what is the workaround?

            We can disable this Inpute/Output component entirely, to see if it is the cause of the fault. In our case it was, and the engineering team are now investigating the issue. The issue, as reported by Adobe, is that the Soundbooth team (that uses these components) are not the builders of the components. They are using shared technology (which is why I was asked to test the issue with "Adobe Premiere Pro" as well - which we do not own though) that is built by other teams and integrated SoundBooth to make use of the external functionality.

             

            Here's the fix:

            1. Go here: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Soundbooth CS4\MediaIO\writers\" and rename “WinMediaWriter.vwr” to "WinMediaWriter.vwr_original”.
            2. Go here: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Soundbooth CS4\MediaIO\codecs\" and rename “WMSDKACodec.vca” to “WMSDKACodec.vca_original”. Also rename “WMSDKVCodec.vca” to “WMSDKVCodec.vca_original”.
            3. Go here: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Soundbooth CS4\Plug-ins\Common\" and rename “ImporterWindowsMedia.prm” to “ImporterWindowsMedia.prm_original”.

            This will take “Windows Media” out of the equation completely, which while fixing the issue for now, does reduce functionality of Soundbooth. With this change, you will no longer be able export WMA or WMV files. If this is not something you do anyway, this won’t be a big issue for you but I wanted to make you aware if you plan to make this change on many systems that have the problem.