Nervous Newby...

Stratocastermagic · Post by **Stratocastermagic** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 11:11 pm

I've been playing around with the trial version of VS9 for a couple of weeks now and have had problems with it crashing constantly - while adding clips to the timeline, while trying to play back movies, while trying to render movies and while trying to compile DVDs to burn.
I've tried contacting Ulead technical support, but because I'm using a trial version, they won't talk to me. Customer Services wouldn't talk to me, because they say this is a technical issue... In the end they advised me to buy the full version "and download updates designed to fix certain bugs and hardware incompatibilities". (Nice of them to be so honest about the product!)
So, I have the full version on order but am nervous about whether it will fare any better than the trial version. I've read on this board that people have had problems when installing the full version after the trial version, and after downloading the patches. And I have now read the sticky posts at the top of this forum...
I'm aware that my PC is not exactly top-of-the-range, but, as far as I can tell (and get my non-techy head around) it more than meets the minimum spec for the program:
It's a DELL DM051 with an Intel Pentium 4 (3GHz), with 1.5 GB RAM, running Windows XP Home Edition, Service Pack 2.
It has a RADEON X600 256MB HyperMemory display adapter and a Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS sound card. I have an 80 GB hard drive (NTFS).

My camcorder is a Hitachi DZMV350E - i.e. it records on to 8cm DVDs - and I have imported files directly from DVD-RAM and DVD-R discs and by transfering files to the hard drive before importing them into VS9.

When I first got the camera two years ago, it came with Panasonic's Movie Album SE which worked perfectly well on a PC much inferior to the one I am using now... and if I could find the disc I'd have installed it on this machine!

So, I will follow the advice about removing the trial version before installing the full one and I will follow the recommended procedure on this board... but will VS9 let me burn my DVDs without crashing every time?
Or am I missing something or possibly just throwing my money away?
This nervous newby would be very grateful for a helping hand...

Post by **Ron P.** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 11:29 pm

Hi Stratocastermagic (must be a guitar player)

Even though I prefer Gibson Les Pauls over Fender Strats I'll do my best to help...(just kidding)...

The first part of your post is correct. Ulead does not provide support for the trial versions. I guess it's business, can't make any cash from freebies...

The TBYB (trial) is not eligible for most patches/fixes, but I will say that Ulead should insure that the TBYB's are fixed before. So if you are having problems they probably have been corrected by the fixes, patches, SP's.

We also must keep in mind, video editing is very demanding on a computer, so if your system is not configured correctly, then something will give sooner or later. I started with Video Studio 5, and have learned a lot along the way. I'm still with the VS programs. I've tried plenty of others, including some high-end that I could not begin to afford, and would take about 5 years to figure out how to reallly use them. Computer programs are susceptible to bugs and errors. It is nearly impossible to to replicate every possible computer configuration today, so as to develop a program that works all the time on everything.

I'll cut to the chase now, Will VS9 crash on you? It's possible, but if you do as it looks like you are starting to do, follow recomendations, then you will have far less trouble. I also use to rant, and rave about the programs, but have since learned that is not so much the program as my hardware and setup. I don't think you are throwing your money away. If something happens, a crash, lockup or whatever, take a deep breath and start trying to look at the problem. I look at it this way, if I was able to produce DVDs and then suddenly I can't, then It must be due to a change in something, and that something is what the program didn't want me to do...

Hope that helps...

Ron P.

Stratocastermagic · Post by **Stratocastermagic** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 11:39 pm

Thanks very much for your swift response. I'm hoping that my full version will arrive in the post tomorrow - so I'll let you know how I get on.

(And, yes, I'm a guitar player! If I had the money, I'd love a Gibson LP as well as the Strat, but I'm a Fender man, really...

)

Best wishes,

Alan "Stratocastermagic"

jchunter · Post by **jchunter** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 11:41 pm

Strato,
Repeated crashing is not normal if you carefully follow the procedure in the top post. Moving outside this procedure seems to unleash Pandora's Box of bugs...

I had your symptoms with version 7.0 until I brought the driver on my video card up to date (new Dell computer arived with obsolete driver). I solved other problems by installing a firmware update on my DVD burner.

You could also have a corrupt download.

DVDDoug · Post by **DVDDoug** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 12:07 am

...it records on to 8cm DVDs...

That could be the problem. DVDs use MPEG-2, and Ulead doesn't seem to be very good at editing MPEGs.

I didn't get crashing that often, but I got "lip-sync" problems almost every time. Some people have no problems, and the updates might help.

I'm pretty sure your problems are being caused by bad MPEG files. They could be getting corrupted during the editing process, or there may be something "wrong" with the Sony-DVD... or something about the Sony-produced files that makes them incompatible with Ulead. Most of the files I've had trouble with seemed OK... they would play-back fine with Windows Media Player. (So, it took me a long time to figure-out that the files were bad!)

MPEGs are not supposed to be edited. I bought a special purpose MPEG editor from Womble ($50 - 140). As long as I do all of my editing with Womble, I can use Ulead to author and burn DVDs (without crashes or other problems). When I bought Womble it was an editor only, they did not offer a version with DVD authoring features. I usually use Ulead DVD Workshop for the final step. Ulead is probably better than Womble for the first step too.. Importing the DVD into an MPG file.

Your camera may have come with software to copy the DVD to an MPG file, and it may have come with a simple MPEG editor. You can cut and splice an MPEG without re-coding and degrading it. As long as you don't want to do any "fancy" editing, a simple special-purpose MPEG editor should work.

Both Womble and VideoReDo include tools that can fix corrupted MPEGs... sometimes...

You can't follow the "recommended procedure" because that involves capturing to AVI/DV format, and you are not capturing. Or, does your camera have a Firewire port that would allow capture to AVI/DV? A couple of people have tried saving the MPEG file to AVI/DV format before editing. That should work, but I think those who have tried it have had problems. Of course, if you convert to AVI/DV and back you will get some video degradation due to the 2nd MPEG-2 encode step. (Re-coding is sometimes required, even with a special-purpose MPEG editor.)

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 12:39 am

Just building onto what DVDDoug has said above you may be interested in my explanation of MPEG -v- AVi here:
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?t=12118

Once again may I stress that editing MPEG does not automatically mean you WILL introduce out of Synch errors but an awareness of the possible pitfalls is surely a good thing.

Regards
Steve J

Doverwhite · Post by **Doverwhite** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 12:56 pm

This thread is very interesting and I do wonder whether this is the source of my problems with VS9. I am also capturing from DVD. I am trying to edit material from an old S-VHSC camcorder. I transferring the tapes to DVD using a S-VHS VCR with a C adapter and recording onto DVD using a domestic DVD recorder. The resultant DVD is used then as the capture source on my PC. Everything seems to work well until I get to the rendering/burning stage where even following the advice in the Sticky I still get problems and cannot get any result if the file is too big to fit a SL DVD or at best using the quality settings get a very poor quality copy. I have got reasonable results by resorting to external packages at this stage

Would I be better off using a direct S-VHS hardware capture device on my PC? If so what is recommended.

I also have DV material shot on my early Panasonic DV camcorder that does not have an iLink/Firewire output wouldi be also best to use an S-video direct capture or is going via the intermediate DVD better?

jchunter · Post by **jchunter** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 3:22 pm

Alan,
You are using a rather unusual, atypical workflow, which may be at the heart of the problem.

I suspect that the properties of video that you "captured" to your 8cm DVD may be non-standard. Please post a complete list of the video properties as seen from within VS9.

Stratocastermagic · Post by **Stratocastermagic** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 10:38 pm

Thanks for replies and comments.
The package arrived by post this morning, so I have now removed the trial version (Add/Remove programmes didn't work, so I have had to do this manually, and have hopefully removed all traces following advice elsewhere in this forum. Slightly anxious about the suggestion that I might have to re-format the hard drive and reinstall XP! Didn't do this!)
I followed the recommended procedure at the top of this forum - without the 'capture' section, because I'm using a DVD camcorder. (No Firewire port, just USB that makes the camera appear as a drive on the PC. )

The full version of UVS9, with updates, seems rather more stable on my machine than the trial - but even so I have still managed to crash it a few times.
I have suceeded in compiling a few short movies from clips imported from the camcorder - with some simple transitions, titles etc - and in burning them to DVD, having first created a video file, as per the recommendations.
JCH: I realise that I'm in a bit of a minority using a DVD Camcorder! Is this the information you asked for?

PAL (25 fps)
MPEG files
24 Bits, 704 x 576, 25 fps
Upper Field First
(DVD-PAL), 4:3
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 5744 kbps)
Audio data rate: 256 kbps
MPEG audio layer 2, 48 KHz, Stereo

I did update the video driver as you suggested.

So that's where I'm up to! It looks as though UVS9 is going to be usable - but a few crashes make the process rather more frustrating than would be ideal.

Thanks again for advice offered. Don't know where I'd be without you!

jchunter · Post by **jchunter** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 11:32 pm

Alan,
You have no need to reformat you hard drives or reinstall you operating system.

I'm in NTSC land and not that familiar with PAL, but I think your frame dimensions should be 720x576 for a PAL DVD.

If one of the PAL guys could verify this, then you should convert your project to 720x 576 when creating your project video file.

Then burn the DVD after setting the burn properties to exactly match your video file properties.

There have also been posts on this forum that, I think, recommended reading the 8cmDVD in your DVD reader rather than the USB2 port... Again, someone with specific experience on the 8cm DVDs needs to chime in here.

Post by **lancecarr** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 11:44 pm

Stratocastermagic,
I used to have a Sony DVDcam and it too recorded in an unusual frame sixe of 704x480. (It was an NTSC cam.) The normal frame size for PAL is 720x576 however there are a number of other frame sizes that comply with the PAL standard and 704x576 is one of them.
Per jchunter's top post (the sticky) you don't have to change that attribute when rendering, you will still end up with a DVD compliant MPEG2, and it will avoid re-rendering the whole project.
It was also my experience that it is far easier and faster to place the 8cm DVD's in the DVD reader of the computer to transfer the files into VS rather than use the USB and treat the cam as an external device.

DVDDoug · Post by **DVDDoug** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 12:46 am

Doverwhite,

Would I be better off using a direct S-VHS hardware capture device on my PC? If so what is recommended.

Probably so... you can capture to AVI/DV and avoid all of these MPEG issues.

I can't make a specific recomendation, because I have a Hauppauge capture card... and it's MPEG only... Seemed like a good idea at the time.

If you want to learn more about analog capture, check out DigitalFAQ.com. Analog capture is the trickiest part of this whole digital video business.

The best solution might be to borrow a digital camcorder with an analog input, Firewire output, and analog pass-thru capability. If your DV tapes are compatible, that would solve both of your problems! Using a DV camera as an analog capture device seems to be getting very popular....now that "everybody" has a DV camera!

ATI makes the very popular All-In-Wonder capture cards.

Pinnacle makes capture cards and external capture devices that connect to your USB port.

Most internal capture cards have a TV tuner, so you can use your computer as a TiVo.

I still get problems and cannot get any result if the file is too big to fit a SL DVD or at best using the quality settings get a very poor quality copy.

You should get quite good quality if you capture to AVI/DV and encode to MPEG-2 only once. And, if you use a bitrate of around 6000 kbps. A bitrate of 6000 will allow about 90 minutes of video and AC3 audio on a SL-DVD.

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 1:26 am

DVDDoug wrote:I can't make a specific recomendation, because I have a Hauppauge capture card... and it's MPEG only... Seemed like a good idea at the time.

DVDDoug, I think this is still within the remit of this thread. Just out of interest how are you feeding the Hauppauge Card. Up until now with the normal terestrial channels with Nicam Stereo I have been using a normal co-axial cable. My computer is in a different room to my Satelite Receiver and so was also using a co-axial cable and having to put up with Mono.

I have recently purchased 12 ft. 3-in-1 Composite RCA Audio/Video Cable (Those cables with the red/white/yellow jack plugs)
and taken the output from the one of the Satelite receivers Scart outputs through a Scart/RCA adapter and fed that into the Hauppauge card and wow what a tremendous difference - and stereo now from the satelite system.

jchunter I would be interested in your method of connecting TV feeds to the computer as you've mentioned a few times that your MPEGs never have audio/video synch issues.

Steve J

jchunter · Post by **jchunter** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 3:04 am

Steve, Dover,
I capture analog through an ADS Instant DVD 2 box connecting the video from my Hitachi analog camcorder using S-video cable and use standard 2 channel cables (red/white)for the audio. All 3 source cables connect to the IDVD2 box and the only connection to the computer is a USB2 cable.

The IDVD2 has a fast CPU that digitizes the video and audio and encodes the Mpeg2 in the box. I've used CapWiz and Video Studio to "capture", which I think is mostly a copy process because the PC is not very busy.

BTW, I used the same setup to capture from my old SVHS VCR, with good success. A taped Grateful Dead concert had perfect AV sync...

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 11:02 am

jchunter
I think thats confirmed a suspicion I have. when I have a bit of downtime I shall try comparing an edited capture from standard co-axial -v- RCA Cable. I am interested to see if the stronger signal has any effect on the OOS issue.

Thanks
Steve J