Movie Factory 4 freezes with multi-trim video

frumpy_uk · Post by **frumpy_uk** » Wed Jan 18, 2006 2:06 pm

I have recently started using Movie Factory 4. Every time I run through the process the application freezes at the same stage.

With the same settings and the same video the application always freezes when the percentage complete values are the same (7% total, 68% detailed). If I change the video source and/or some of the settings (e.g. motion menus, chapters, menu music) the application freezes at a different percentage complete value.

However the actual activity is always the same - it always freezes whilst "Preparing video title data"/"Converting video title".

The preview works perfectly.

The problem occurs on my primary PC and also my secondary one.

If I look at Windows Task Manager it shows the application status as Running, however the application itself doesn't respond if I click Cancel. I have to end the task.

I know that rendering is very resource hungry but I'm convinced that the application has frozen because it does not progress even if left for 24 hours.

Through some extensive testing I have found that the common factor is the use of multi-trimmed video. If I simply select the whole of the source file, or one single chunk, the process completes with no problems.

I wonder if the root cause of this is the extra processing required by using a mutli-trimmed source? My machine may not be up to the job? It's a laptop, with the following spec :-
1.4GHz P4
512Mb RAM
9Gb free hard disk
ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 Series with 32Mb RAM

The video source is mpg file captured via built-in firewire port using MF4. The file is 1.7Gb.

Project settings :
MPEG files
24 Bits, 720 x 576, 25 fps
(DVD-PAL), 4:3
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 7000 kbps)
LPCM Audio, 48000 Hz, Stereo

I'm using version 4.01

keithm · Post by **keithm** » Wed Jan 18, 2006 4:07 pm

There has been two updates since 4.01 - I would try those.

DVDDoug · Post by **DVDDoug** » Wed Jan 18, 2006 6:44 pm

The video source is mpg file...

Most likely that's your problem. Try re-capturing to AVI/DV*, if possible. MPEGs are not meant to be edited, and Ulead doesn't seem to be very good at it.

When I edited MPEGs, I had "lip sync" problems almost every time, and occasional crashing. And, if you do any "real" editing... anything other than cutting & splicing, the MPEG must be decoded and re-coded. This can't be done without some loss of video quality.

If you can't re-capture, or if you have a camera or capture device that's MPEG only, you may need a special-purpose MPEG editor. In that case, check-out VideoReDo ($50) which is a good cut & splice MPEG editor, or Womble MPEG Video Wizard ($100) which is a full-featured MPEG editor. Both of these have free 30-day trials.

* [EDIT] - Oooh! Your hard drive may be too small for AVI/DV.

And, real-time MPEG capture requires lots of CPU processing.... But, your problems show-up only during or after editing.

Other than real-time capture, the processing power is only a matter of speed. A slow, underpowered system should NOT corrupt a video file any more than it would corrupt a big spreadsheet or big text file... It's all just digital-data to the computer!

frumpy_uk · Post by **frumpy_uk** » Fri Jan 20, 2006 9:49 am

Thanks guys. The latest update fixed the problem.

The one thing I forgot to check was the one thing I needed to make it work! Typical....

I will also test the AVI format to check whether or not it has any performance advantages.

Thanks again
Paul