Digital Home Thoughts: Video Vault PVP from Diversified Multimedia

A Bumpy & Buggy Ride
If you decide to take the trial for a spin, be sure to reboot after you install the program. Even though it doesn't prompt you to reboot, I've had all sorts of problems with the application unless I do install > reboot > start. The single most problematic issue of all though is something that I've run into on two different laptops: the endless install loop.

While working on this review I installed Video Vault PVP on my Futjisu P7010D laptop. I rebooted, then ran the application. I entered my registration information, which requires online product activation. I've installed and activated the program at least twice, and no problems with the activation so far, but I'm always extremely leery of any form of product activation because it's inherently hostile to the customer that bought the program in the first place. But back to the problem: after the activation, the application started up ok. I shut it down, then moved the shortcut from the Diversified Multimedia folder to my Video Tools folder. I started the application again, and that's when it all fell apart: somehow the application thinks it's not installed. It kicks off an install routine that looks for an MSI installer that doesn't exist anywhere on the hard drive. If you cancel out, you get one error, then another. I contacted developers about this and they were unable to offer any suggestions or fixes. Playing a hunch, I tried drilling down to the Program Files folder and executing the EXE directly - and it worked. I created a shortcut directly from the EXE. It doesn't make any sense - I examined both shortcuts and they're identical. The only difference was the location of the shortcut - the one that didn't work properly was in the \user\Start Menu folder, while the one that did work is in the \All Users\Start Menu folder. The problem is solved, but I went through weeks of frustration with this on my other laptop before finding this fix.

Can't Someone Get it Right?
As you can tell, I have a lot of admiration for the technical abilities of Video Vault PVP, but I also have reservations about the unpolished nature of the application, and the lack of a walk-through wizard to simplify the process of encoding. In many ways, I wish I could combine the features of Video Vault PVP with Slysoft's CloneDVD Mobile to get an application that has a great interface, is simply to use, updated often, and has every feature that I want. Someone has to get this right eventually, don't they?

Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys mobile devices, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, his sometimes obedient dog, and just can't get enough powerful CPUs for video transcoding.