Pan & Zoom stutter

[ando775]

Doing a slidshow with MSP 8 using only still images and using the Pan & Zoom filter, I'm getting a weird stutter effect on some of the images. It will stutter for just an instant, then be fine, then stutter again. It doesn't do it on every image, but enough of them to be noticable. Also, some of the pictures look awfully pixelated, especially around the titles. I have made many slideshows in this same way before and have never encountered this.

I'm using titles with overlays and moving paths also on some of the images with the problem, but not all. The weird thing is, when I do the quick-and-dirty preview it doesn't seem to be doing this, but if I do the "high-quality" preview or create a video file it happens. I'm using NTSC DVD. It's only a 3 minute show, so I cranked the quality to 100 and CBR at 7500. Could the compression settings be causing this?

I'm pretty frustrated and can't understand why this would be happening. Some one please help!

[tv_news_guy]

Might be that your contstant bit rate is too high and is causing the "stutter" on playback. Try going to a 4k cbr see if that does it. Seems to me with still pics and not a lot of fast moving action that 7500 might be overkill anyways.

Hope this helps

Bill tv_news_guy

non-linear editing is half art/half brain damage

[ando775]

Would this cause the stutter in the "high-quality"preview though? I adjusted the compression settings from the default NTSC DVD only after I was creating the final video file. But the stutter was evident in the preview as well.

[tv_news_guy]

The stutter on high qual preview might just be trying to playback to complex a section of the timeline. try this. Create an avi rather than an mpeg file. Make a dv avi file. It should be easy on system resources once its created. Since it wont take long to render. It is a good way to see if the stutter is from your system or the program.

Bill tv_news_guy

[ando775]

I'll have to give that a try. THanks.

Another thing that was a little unexpected was that a few of the pictures had poor resolution. They had really jagged edges. I did apply a moving path to them, but I didn't make them larger than their original size and there isn't that much movement, so I was surprised they looked as jagged as they did. Has anyone had a similar problem or know how to fix it?

[ando775]

The stutter on high qual preview might just be trying to playback to complex a section of the timeline.

Bill tv_news_guy

actually, I thought of this, but when doing the instant preview it didn't appear to have this problem, which seems odd to me.

[tv_news_guy]

Ando,

Not weird at all. Instant preview is lower quality. Making it easier (hence the instant part) for systems to play back the video. You really still have to render them to the the higher quality playback. Let me add.. this problem is multiplied ten times when working with HD.
At work I use the latest greatest hi tech state of the art avid stuff. Even though most of the files I work with are less than two minutes long.. we still gotta render the complex chunks to see em in action. This using pc's that are crammed full of memory, fast drives etc.

Bill tv_news_guy

[ando775]

I think I found the source of the stutter problem. I noticed when rendering the high quality preview that the "percent done" meter at the bottom of the screen had itself a stuttering-like problem. It would go from say, 10% to 25% really fast, then pause for a second, then run up to 35%, pause for a second, and so on. And I had noticed that the last few pictures I had added to the show ran very smoothly, no stuttter. The difference being I had not done a high quality preview with them in the show before. So I deleted all the preview files for this project so the program couldn't look back at them for help and would have to render a brand new preview file. This removed the stutter in the high quality preview.

I then created the final video file (NTSC-DVD) using quality 100 and CBR of 4000 as suggested and it turned out perfect. It even eliminated some other artifacts that were visible the last time.

So it seems the preview flies were causing the problem. Has anybody else ever seen or heard of this before?

[tv_news_guy]

Ando,

Yes.. a couple of times preview files have caused some headaches. It, however, hasn't happened for a while so I totally forgot about that possibly being a cause of the problem. Thanks for the reminder. Next time maybe I'll catch it quicker cuz of this memory jog.
One thing I do, (learned it here), is every so often rename a working copy of the video I'm doing. Saving it under a new name creates new preview files so if it craps out on me.. I only have to go back one generation to find a known good working copy. This can really save your bacon.

Enjoy

Bill tv_news_guy

[ando775]

THanks for the tips. I'll have to start doing that.

[sjj1805]

Another thing to try is right click the still imasge on the timeline and select Media Source Options. Place a tick in the Flicker Reduction box.
Also select Frame Based for the still image.

Steve J