Choppy video in preview window

AbqBill · Post by **AbqBill** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 1:05 am

I have a PIII 733 MHz with 256 MB RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 video card. The video card has 256 MB as well. I installed a PCI firewire card and bought a firewire cable to connect my miniDV camera (a JVC GR-DVL307U). The firewire card came with a copy of VideoStudio 8 SE Basic.

I open the VS editor and click on the Capture tab. When I press the play button, the video is not smooth. It plays, but it's a bit choppy (both video and audio). (Note I'm not capturing here -- just pressing play.)

When I click the Capture Video button (I'm using DV Type 1), the captured AVI file's choppiness matches what I'm seeing in the preview window.

Any ideas/help appreciated.

Thanks

--
Bill

Post by **Ron P.** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 1:24 am

Hi Bill, welcome to the forums..

Preview playback is more times then not, going to be jerky. VS is throwing everything together "on the fly" to give you an idea of how your project has been assembled. The finished product, ie, your rendered video file, should not be like that, if so you have done something wrong. Since it is trying to put all the edits, filters, transitions, overlay videos and images, music, narration together "on the fly", it needs a tremendous amount of computer horsepower. A PIII 733 MHz is at the bottom end. When I first obtained VS8, (upgraded from VS5), I was running it on a PIII 850 MHz, rendering took forever, and it was just a big struggle.

Next is the fact the VS8SE is a stripped down version, of VS8, which is known to have been riddled with bugs, such as audio/video sync. So you will be somewhat limited in what you can do. You may (or may not) be able to burn DVDs. It may limit you to burning VCDs or SVCDs, you will not be able to use Dolby Digital audio compression.

The real test on the quality of your video, is to render a short segment to a video file. Then play that back using a third party player like Windows Media Player. It should playback smoothly.

The current version of VideoStudio is 10 or 10 Plus, which has been out for about a year. You might be able to run VS10 + on your system, as long as you are not interested in HD video. My machine does not meet the specs for HD, which is an AMD Athlon 3200+ 64 bit, running at 2.0 Ghz, however does quite well with SD video.

If possible you should entertain setting up a video editing profile. Instructions can be found here:
Creating a Video Editing Profile.

You might want to read through From Camcorder to DVD tutorial, and then the Recommended Procedures have been developed to help guide you through the mine-field of video editing, as it pertains to Ulead's VideoStudio Programs. They can be viewed here:
Recommened Procedures Updated Version

AbqBill · Post by **AbqBill** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 4:00 am

Hi vidoman,

Thanks for the reply.

When I say "preview window", this is before any capturing or editing of any kind. I'm merely pressing the play button when I select the Capture tab in the editor. I'm not even performing a capture; I'm simply pressing the play button.

As I said, when I capture some video to a DV Type 1 AVI file, I'm seeing the same thing as I see when I click the play button in the preview window.

Any ideas are appreciated.

--
Bill Stewart

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 4:09 am

The preview windows is what it says it is - a preview. It is low quality and designed to give you an idea of what the video looks like. It is not a video player.

Post by **Ron P.** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 4:17 am

Bill,

Sorry about that...

When you are previewing and/or capturing what other background applications are running? To better understand this, launch task manager, (CTL + ALT + Delete). Look at the Processes Tab, how many processes are running? When I am capturing, editing or burning (DVD) I have no more then 15 services running. In my normal profile there are about 37 processes. The more processes that are running, the less resources available for video work. Video editing is one of the most demanding on computer resources. Anytime a background process thinks it needs to do something, it takes that horsepower away from a process/application running in the foreground. Video editing has a very, very, very low tolerance to it's resources being stolen.

So now looking at your system, it would not take much at all to cause a preview to hiccup, stall, or freeze. I might think that VS is acting up, if your system was more current. Using your system, without tweaking it for video editing is like asking a horse to pull a loaded train smoothly down the rails..

AbqBill · Post by **AbqBill** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 4:50 am

Hi sjj1805,

I am aware of that; thanks for the information, though.

Hi vidoman,

Thanks for the advice.

To all:

This seems to have been a problem with my firewire card in some way. I removed the PCI card and rebooted, then reinserted it and rebooted again. The problem has now gone away.

I appreciate your responses. Hope this helps someone else.

--
Bill

Post by **Ron P.** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 4:59 am

Glad you got it working, and thanks for posting what was causing it. It will certainly help others in the future.

AbqBill · Post by **AbqBill** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 5:00 am

Hi vidoman,

Thanks for your input.

--
Bill

AbqBill · Post by **AbqBill** » Fri Dec 29, 2006 5:32 am

Follow-up:

The "choppy" video problem happened again even after removing and reinserting the FireWire card in its PCI slot. Next, I tried removing and reinserting all PCI cards in different slots, with the FireWire card last. The choppy video problem continued to occur.

I ruled out the camera by attaching it to another computer (capture worked flawlessly on the other computer).

Bottom line: Bad FireWire card. Replaced it and all works perfectly now.

--
Bill Stewart

Post by **Ron P.** » Fri Dec 29, 2006 5:36 am

Yippie..

,

Darn PC cards, I thought they were suppose to last forever or until the warranty expires, which ever comes first

Glad you got it going Bill, now you can start a New Year, Happily, with a New Firewire Card..

Post by **Ken Berry** » Fri Dec 29, 2006 10:10 pm

I have now decided always to test how the captured DV plays back or burns to disc before replacing the Firewire card. Hard experience was my teacher.

I have been using Firewire on successive computers for 5 years now. About 4 months ago, on my current computer, I replaced a TV capture card that contained my Firewire connection (which worked perfectly). The new HDTV card did not have a Firewire connection, so I bought a PCI Firewire card. My problem was exactly the same: jerky video in the preview screen and during capture. I tested this in VS10+, WinDV and Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 and the results were the same. So I bought a new Firewire card, different brand, and results remained exactly the same.

Anyway, I then decided to process the captured video and convert it to mpeg-2, then burn it to an RW DVD. And there was no jerkiness!! All was fine. So I simply ignored the problem during capture, as after that it played perfectly. I simply went and made coffee or read a magazine during the capture so I was not distracted by the jerkiness on screen.

More recently still, I replaced my graphics card, which had been an nVidia GeForce 5200/256 MB RAM, with a GeForce 7600 GS/512 MB RAM. And now I don't even have the jerky capture. So all's right with the world again for me!