Digital Camera Media Studio 1.0 - the most frequently asked support questions

  Your top 25 questions… And the solutions…
1) How do I redownload and/or re-activate the software  

  • You may re-download the software by logging on to your account. If you bought directly from Makayama or one of it's affilliates (all powered by Regnow), your login page is here.

    Or choose one of the other distributors, where you may have bought it: Handango, Clickapps, Mobile2Day.

    Activation keys may expire. If you need a new activation key, please email orders@makayama.com and include your original purchase confirmation data (such as order reference number, your original serialnumber, address, etc). After verification, we send you the new activation key (usually within 24 hours).

2) Sound Issues. My video has no sound, wrong sound (such as directors commentary) or I receive a warning 'unsupported audio'.

No audio can be caused by a few things:

1) You have chosen the default audio track from the DVD and it's the wrong track. You can change the audio track by pressing Open, Advanced, Next, Next, Next and change the value of the lower listbox to a different channel (for example 6 channel AC3)

2) The camera volume is too low. You can set it louder by pressing the dial switch upwards

3) Some DVD's (for example home-made DVD-recordables and rewritables) may contain audio tracks that our software can't handle. Make sure, if you burn your own DVDs, that they contain AC3, DTS or LPCM sound.

3)

Path/file error 75
  • Most likely, the temporary file on your PC is 'locked' as read-only in Windows. You need to turn off and restart your PC and then manually delete the VIDEO_TS folder from the root of your C:\ drive. To prevent it from happening again, you need to close the software and start it again in between conversions.
4) Error Message: this video has unsupported codecs
  • AVI files can contain many sorts of compression (so called codecs). Most of these are supported, some are not.
    The only workaround is to use a third-party application (for example widely available shareware/freeware tools) to convert the source file to MPEG and then use our software to convert it to the camera
5) Step 1 doesn't complete, it hangs. Or it gives a 'cyclic redundancy' error.
1) Your DVD disc may be damaged, dirty or scratched. Please try different discs.
2) You may be using a DVD r(w) instead of a store bought disk. These usually have more sector read errors. Try a new, store bought DVD.
3) Your DVD drive may be bad. If it makes much noise or ticks, it's not good. Try a different DVD drive.
4) The disc has a new form of copyprotection that our software doesn't support. However, we can guarantee 95% of all discs ever produced.

6)

I receive a ‘Digital Camera Media Studio has encountered an error and has to shut down' error.

7)

I cannot transfer the file to my camera

 

When conversion is finished, a video file will be on your desktop.

There are 3 ways to copy the video file from you desktop PC to the camera:

1) Transfer it manually from the desktop to the camera or memorycard. You need to copy it in a specific directory in order for the camera to 'see' it. For Sony camera's, that should be X:\DCIM\101MSDCF\ (where X:\ can be any drive letter that corresponds to your card/camera drive letter in My Computer). For CASIO the directory should be X:\DCIM\100CASIO\

2) You can transfer the file directly to the camera. You have to put it in the cradle/dockingstation and connect the USB cable that came with it. Then press the Camera button in the transfer window.

3) The fastest way is by using an attached or built-in USB memorycard reader. Put the memorycard in the drive and press the Memorycard button in the transfer window. 100-minutes of video should copy over in 2 minutes. Memorycard readers are very affordable nowadays, so we highly recommend this. It's the fastest and most reliable way to do it.
8) I'm getting black bars on top and bottom when I play a movie on my camera.

Camera screens and a movie theater screen aren't the same shape. Movie screens are much wider. Today, films generally come in one of two basic widescreen sizes (called aspect ratios): 'Academy Standard' (aspect ratio 1.85:1), and 'Anamorphic Scope' (aspect ratio 2.35:1). Films in 'Academy' are widescreen (like English Patient, Toy Story or Silence of the Lambs), but do not appear quite as wide as Scope films (like Star Wars, Lawrence of Arabia, or Apollo 13). Pocket PC screens and TVs have a (1.33:1) aspect ratio.

1) To display a movie in a zoomed mode, cropping the picture from left and right, choose Zoom in the Advanced Settings. This will blowup the picture and remove the black stripes.

2) To display a movie or tv-show in its original aspect ratio, without zooming or squashing, choose that setting when asked.
9)

My DVD holds multiple episodes, such as tv-shows, but only one gets converted.

 After opening the DVD, click on Advanced and press Next three times. In the upper listbox, a default episode is chosen, change this to the episode you would like to see. Then press Next again and then Action. Note: not all DVDs have the episodes as seperate files on the DVD disc. Sometimes they are stored in one title and can't be converted seperately.
10) After I press 'Action', nothing happens. It hangs.
  • Restart your PC to reset all resources (cold boot).
  • Don't press Action to quick. Wait for the on-screen preview to appear
  • If you're using subtitles, make sure that you see the preview running in the onscreen camera before you press Action.
11) I'm getting a 'Disk Full' message

    You need at least 5 Gigabyte of free space on your temporary disk drive. Choose the drive from the DVD Settings menu. Delete unused files if you don't have enough free space left.
12) Can't install the software
  • Please unzip the package to your DESKTOP, then install. Don't use some temporary directory and don't launch it from within Winzip.
  • Make sure you have Windows XP
  • Make sure you have a C:\ disk
  • Make sure you have the latest Winzip version from www.winzip.com
  • Don't break off the installation too early.Don't press 'cancel' at any time during the process. Wait for all items and installation windows to disappear from your screen, this may take up to 2 minutes.
13) Norton Anti-Virus or Firewall software reports Digital Camera Media Studio accesing the internet, or reports a virus. Are you sending information about me or my PC back to your company? Does the software contain a virus. Our software seeks access to the Internet on the following occasions:
  • To activate the serialnumber on first startup
  • From the Help Menu to display the online manual
  • From the Help Menu to display this online error database
  • From the Buy Menu to connect to the Makayama Store
  • From the Help Menu\About to connect to the Makayama website.

All other firewall or virus alerts are false positives. Our software does not connect to the internet to store or process information about your system, your personal data, your video files or DVDs. Our software does not contain virusses. It does contain some special code to protect against software crackers/hackers, unfortunately some virus scanners - such as AVG- mistakenly identify this as a virus. You may turn AVG off temporarily in order to use our software.

14) I'm trying to convert a video file, but it won't convert, it crashes, or it has no sound. The software converts most AVI, MPEG and DV video files, however, there are video files that use non-standard file formats and compression techniques (so called 'codecs'), which our software does not natively support. Use other tools, often freely available, to convert your video to a compatible format (such as DV or MPEG) before you convert it with Palm Media Studio.
15) I cannot activate my serialnumber, the software cannot connect to the internet.

Five possible causes:

A) You have no active internet connection. Make sure you can browse to
websites etc. using Internet explorer
B) Javascript is disabled. Enable JavaScript on your Internet Explorer

1. On the Tools menu, click Internet Options.
2. On the Security tab, click Internet.
3. Click Default Level, and then click OK.

C) Security levels too high. Open Internet Explorer.

1. On the Tools menu, click Internet Options.
2. On the Security tab, click Internet, and then click Custom Level.
3. Under Active scripting, click Enable or Prompt.
4. Click OK, and then click Yes.
5. Click OK.

D) You have a firewall. Turn it off during the activation procedure.

E) You're in China. Chinese government sometimes blocks access to our
server. There's nothing we can do
14) Does your software work on Windows 2000?
  • If you have a software DVD player on your Windows 2000 machine (like WinDVD or PowerDVD) and if you can succesfully play DVD's on your PC, then you should also be able to convert DVD's to your camera with our software.
15) Where do I find free movies on the internet?

There is lots of of free content on the internet, which can be downloaded and converted to play on your camera. For example, check out these cool websites
16) Cannot find MSVBVM60.DLL
  • You see to be missing a file that is normally part of Windows XP
    please download the file (click here) and unzip it to your c:\windows directory
17) When I choose subtitles, the conversion is very slow
  • Subtitles need to be rendered in the video file, this is a time-consuming process. When no subtitles are chosen, the first step can go much faster.
18) My DVD won't open, it's not recognised
  • Restart your PC (cold boot) and try again
  • Make sure you use a factory DVD, not a DVD-R(w)
  • Clean your DVD disc

 
19) My problem is not in this list

Contact tech support and provide your serial number (mail support is for registered users only)
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updated 16-march-06