Raymond.CC Blog

I have installed the latest Nero 9.0.9.4d on my new Acer laptop running Windows Vista Business edition. I still prefer to use Nero Burning ROM to burn my discs even though they add in more bloat to every major update. All I need to do is to do a Custom installation and uncheck whatever I don’t need. Nero Vision is my favorite application in burning a download movie or TV episodes to a DVD discs. There may be other video encoding software but since I use Nero Burning ROM, I might as well install Nero Vision together for this feature.

To burn a movie or TV episode with Nero Vision, I only need to select whether I want to Make CD or Make DVD, then import the AVI videos by selecting Add Video Files, create a menu if needed, and it will automatically encode the AVI video files to VCD or DVD format which can be played on my DVD player. However, I got really frustrated with my new laptop running Windows Vista and nearly wanted to format the hard drive to install Windows XP because Nero Vision just crashes when I import an AVI video file.

This problem has never happened on my desktop running Windows XP with Nero 8 but happened on the clean Windows Vista SP1 with all latest hotfixes and Nero 9.0.9.4d activated with a genuine license! At first I thought it was a bug on AMCDocBase.dll file because the APPCRASH window did say something about it. After spending an hour researching on this problem, I am glad that I found the cause of Nero Vision crashing when adding a video file.


At first I thought it had something to do with missing codecs because I did not install any codec pack on my laptop’s Acer. So I downloaded the latest K-Lite Codec Pack, installed it and tried importing the video file in Nero Vision, still the got the same Nero Vision APPCRASH window.

I checked the Nero Vision settings from Default Video Options and found something that could have caused the problem. In General tab, the video mode setting is blank. I went to my desktop running Windows XP with Nero 8, and found that PAL is selected for the Video Mode. I did the same on my Acer laptop running Nero 9, and voila! Nero Vision no longer crashes!

I don’t know why Nero 9 didn’t automatically set a video mode for me this time when there’s no such problem in Nero 8. An empty video mode causing Nero Vision to crash is really sloppy programming. They could have included a prompt asking the user to set the video mode if it is not configured rather than not telling anything at all and leaving Nero Vision to crash.

Anyway, to configure a video mode in Nero Vision, click the More button and then click Default Video Options button. The General tab should display, and select the video mode according to your country.

Some country uses PAL and some NTSC. NTSC is the video system or standard used in North America and most of South America. In NTSC, 30 frames are transmitted each second. Each frame is made up of 525 individual scan lines. PAL is the predominant video system or standard mostly used overseas. In PAL, 25 frames are transmitted each second. Each frame is made up of 625 individual scan lines.