Jerky playback on DVD

[Mr.Chips]

I have looked through the forum, but can't find anything on this subject.
VideoStudio 10+ works beautifully for me, except the DVD is jerky on playback when displaying panned shots.
It has improved since I put my video HD on Secondary, rather than Primary. Both HD's are DMA 'ON'
I have only just found this forum, so I wasn't aware of some of the 'musts' mentioned in the sticky. Is the answer in any of those please? .... or should I be trying something else?

[TDK1044]

The error you describe is most likely a field order problem. Is your field order consistent from capture through render and burn? If at any point you accidentally change the field order from upper field first to lower or visa versa, you will see this error.

[Mr.Chips]

I hanen't played around with any of the 'preferences' and as such the field order remains at default throughout all of the rendered DVD.

As the problem was worse when I had my video Hard disk on Primary .... and improved when I moved it onto Secondary , I wondered whether my PC was 'man enough' for the job.

Might another 512mb of RAM help?

[jchunter]

Mr Chips,
The Recommended Procedure at the top of this forum http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?t=27 advises you to always explicitly set video properties in every stage of editing and to never trust default settings, which could be entirely inappropriate for your application.

[Ken Berry]

If you are first capturing video from a digital video camera, this can happen using either Lower or Upper Field First, depending on the camera. The great bulk of mini DV cameras use Lower Field First, though a handful (including some Sonys) use Upper. I could be wrong, but a lot of mini DVD cameras use Upper Field First, as do (it seems) hard disk cameras. But again there are probably exceptions.

Once you have captured a file, then in Video Studio you should right click on it and look at its properties. If it is Lower Field First, then you have to use LFF throughout your project. And conversely, if its Upper Field First, then you use UFF throughout your project.

As John has said, though, you need to manually check this every step of the way, and not just accept VS defaults. A case in point is probably highly relevant to you. For some unknown reason, on installation, Video Studio does not default to either LFF or UFF, but uses Frame Based. This is fine if you only intend to play your video back on a computer monitor or you happen to have an expensive progressive scan TV. (It is also fine for slideshows.) But if you do not check and proceed to use what started out as video captured using LFF/UFF but the settings subsedquently used are Frame Based, then you are going to get the sort of problem you are experiencing.

So first of all, you should go to File > Preferences > General, and about two-thirds of the way down that page change the Default Field Order to what your camera uses.

And after that, also on the same page, check the box beside "Show message when first clip is inserted in the timeline" (about one third the way down). This will give you a reminder as you start your capturing and project to have VS make the project properties match exactly the properties of the first captured clip.

In 99% of cases, this should suffice. But as John has said, and I repeat, 'check, check and check again' just to be on the safe side.

[Mr.Chips]

Wow Ken,

Thanks for all the effort you have put into responding to my query.
I have printed it out and shall spend Monday morning (my wife will be out of earshot ... so I can concentrate) on going through your advice step by step.

It is a shame that the defaults are suspect as it seems to work really well ... except for that jerky playback when panning the camera.

I am very hopeful that you have the solution for me.

Many thansk again ... I shall respond here with the results of Monday morning's efforts.

[Mr.Chips]

Thanks Ken,
Well ... my wife didn't go out for a walk with her friends because it was too wet .... but I did go through your suggestions, with mixed results.

I set the preferences to LFF and it certainly improved the fluidity of the video in the preview window which was very jerky, at all times. It is now much better.
I also set up the 'show message when first clip is inserted into the timeline'.

When burning the DVD, however, there was only a marginal improvement in jerkiness. It is still too much to be comfortable on the eye. Viewing for too long would be likely to induce headaches.

I looked through the 'sticky' and did as much of that as I could understand, particularly writing to the video file before burning the DVD.

When playing back the video file on the PC it is perfectly steady, so does that point to a conversion or burning issue?

I have purchased a further 512mb RAM which I hope might improve matters.

Ken, do you think there may be anything else which might make a difference?

I am most grateful for your time and advice.

[Black Lab]

Please post your clip, project, and burn properties. Perhaps if we see them we can determine what your problem is.

[TDK1044]

When playing back the video file on the PC it is perfectly steady, so does that point to a conversion or burning issue?

I have purchased a further 512mb RAM which I hope might improve matters.

.

Additional RAM is always a good idea, as is closing all unnecessary background programs during a burn. My guess here though is that the burn template has a different field order, and or settings, from your rendered video file. Make sure at the burn stage, that all the burn settings are identical to your video file. The Video Studio NTSC DVD setting at the burn stage and your video file could be cosmetically different and you will have problems.

[Mr.Chips]

I hope this makes sense ... and that I have understood what it is that is needed to be able to further help me.
These are the Clip properties
FILE
File format Microsoft AVI Files - Open DML
File size 138.010 KB
25.000 frames/sec
duration 39.240 seconds
data rate 3515.63 kbps
VIDEO
DV Video Encoder - type 1
attributes 24 bits, 720 x 576; 4:3
total frames 981
AUDIO
compression DV Audio - PAL
Atributes 32,000 khz, 12 bit, Stereo
total samples 1,255,680 samples

Project properties
Edit file format = MPEG
PAL (25 fps)
MPEG files
24 bits, 720 x 576, 25 fps
Lower Field First
(MPEG-2), 4:3
Video data rate: 1800 kbps
Audio data rate: 224 kbps
MPEG audio layer 2, 44.1 KHz, Stereo

Burning properties
I couldn’t find anything for this …. Except that the ‘Buffer under run protection’ box was ticked. … and the recording format was ‘DVD-Video’

I hope this all means something to someone …. It seems rather like a black art to me.
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[TDK1044]

I'm not currently at my computer with video studio on it, but as soon as you select the Create Disk option and you add your media file, look at the bottom left of the screen for a couple of settings buttons. One looks like a little wheel cog. This is where your burn settings are decided. If you're happy with the overall quality of your video file, then make sure that the settings below are selected.

Project properties
Edit file format = MPEG
PAL (25 fps)
MPEG files
24 bits, 720 x 576, 25 fps
Lower Field First
(MPEG-2), 4:3
Video data rate: 1800 kbps
Audio data rate: 224 kbps
MPEG audio layer 2, 44.1 KHz, Stereo

You can change the Audio to dolby Digital Stereo if you choose to for better stand alone DVD compatibility, but make sure that the video properties are identical to your completed video file by clicking on the settings button at the burn stage.

[Erik1967]

In addition to TDK1044's answer: make sure the setting "Do not convert compliant MPEG files" of the burn properties is checked. In that case the mpeg movie you added won't be reencoded again.
Another annoying thing of VS10+ is that it always adds the clip of the DV file of my project to the list of clips about to be burned on disc. You first have to remove that and then add your .mpg to the list (created with "Create Video")

If I burn the DV-file of the project to DVD (after a timeconsuming conversion from DV-format to DVD format), then I get jerky playback. If I burn the .mpg file I created with "Create Video", then I get smooth playback. I fail to understand why this is the case

[Ken Berry]

Mr Chips (and indirectly, Terry) I am puzzled by that mpeg-2 bit rate of 1800 kbps. It is way too low and the end quality, IMHO, would be terrible... How long is your total project? If it is an hour or less, then you can select the highest quality setting of 8000 kbps, and with mpeg layer 2 audio, this will allow you to burn roughly 70 minutes of video to a single layer DVD. If your project is up to 90 minutes or a bit over, then you can reduce the bitrate to 6000 kbps and still get excellent quality. If you reduce it to 4000 kbps, you will get 2 hours, but the quality will drop to that of VHS tape. Anything below that, though, will show very noticeable degradation of quality, though of course you can fit a lot more on a disc.

Mr Chips -- another hint (though completely unrelated to your current problem). You might want to look in your camera's manual to see how to adjust the audio bit setting. Just about every camera comes set to 12 bit 32,000 khz by default. For better quality it should be set to 16 bit 48,000 khz.

Erik: the reason your original DV file is added to the burning list, and you have to remove it manually, is that you are not following the recommended procedure. After doing all your editing and producing your DVD-compliant mpeg-2 file, you should close the whole project (i.e. have an empty timeline). You start a new project to do this, but leave the timeline empty, and go straight to Share > Create Disc > DVD. You will see that the burning 'timeline' is now completely empty, and you can add your mpegt-2s without having to manually remove anything.

[Mr.Chips]

Unfortunately I have to work today, but I shall be right on this first thing tomorrow.

Very many thanks all of you.

[EdInJapan]

Since the video file itself plays fine, but from the DVD it doesn't I'm going to take a totally different approach to this.
Mr. Chips, from your first post, I can tell you know about DMA settings for your hard drives.

Is it possible that the "DVD" you are talking about is the DVD drive on your computer, and that DMA might still be set to OFF for that drive (that IDE channel in XP)?

As another suggestion, if you have a computer that borrows video memory from main memory, if you still have VS (or other programs) running when you start your DVD player software, oftentimes there is just not enough memory to go around and the DVD player software memory starts going to the swapfile--a good way to get jerky video. Sometimes even if you don't have the programs running the memory doesn't release, so you might want to try rebooting and then running your DVD player software to see the results before booting any other software.