Question about cropping/performance

Farzide · Post by **Farzide** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 7:16 am

I'm recording my 2 favorite shows, Lost & Family Guy, to later burn to DVD after I edit the commercials out.
The problem is with Family Guy.
Fox (OTA) broadcasts 16:9 and the show is 4:3 so I have the black bars to the left/right of the picture. I'm able to effectively crop using the "Distort" option so that the show fills the whole preview screen (I do have the project properties set to 4:3 and "keep ratio").
Great... only problem is that once I do this, the program slows to a halt.
I can edit the commercials but it takes forever.
Once I go to play the preview I get the "Not Responding" message from Windows. Eventually it recovers.
I tried rendering the file, thinking it may work, but 6+ hours later I gave up.

Now, I bring up Lost because I have no issues whatsoever editing the commercials, throwing it into the included DVD Movie Wizard along with 3 other edited episodes and ending up with a quality DVD in somewhere around 2 hours after hitting "burn" without a single slowdown. The size of the Lost .mpeg's are 4.6gb whereas the Family Guy .mpeg's are only 2.1gb.
Only difference is I do not crop/distort because Lost is 16:9.

What am I doing wrong? Is it me or the program?

I'm coming from Sony's Vegas and am using the trial version of VideoStudio 11+ so I'm not sure this is even the best method for cropping with this program. It's much different (in a good way IMO) in Vegas but Vegas refuses to run on my Vista system.
Plus I love how DVD authoring is integrated with VideoStudio so if I can get this sorted I believe I will be purchasing VS11+ once the trial runs out.

Which brings me to my next question... is VideoStudio 12 due soon?

And one more question seeing as I already sound like a long winded idiot... is the trial missing DVD menu templates?

Thanks!

Clevo · Post by **Clevo** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 7:31 am

My guess to the slowdown is:

Cropping a 16:9 video is still a 16:9 video. Changing your project properties to 4:3 will cause problems

Post by **Ron P.** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 7:39 am

Adding to Clevo's suggestion, when you're cropping the entire video clip, VS must render each and every frame. With Smart Render, only the changed portions are re-rendered. So you're changing every frame, and that's a lot of work..

Farzide · Post by **Farzide** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 7:59 am

Clevo wrote:My guess to the slowdown is:

Cropping a 16:9 video is still a 16:9 video. Changing your project properties to 4:3 will cause problems

I wondered the same thing so I took the FG episode and edited/rendered it in Windows Movie Maker.
Opened up VS11+, new project, 4:3 then imported the file I had just made, distorted/cropped so it fit the screen and didn't have the issue at all. And the end result was 4:3 with no distortion.
But that was just a test and the newly rendered MSMM file was not nearly as large (.wmv).

vidoman wrote:Adding to Clevo's suggestion, when you're cropping the entire video clip, VS must render each and every frame. With Smart Render, only the changed portions are re-rendered. So you're changing every frame, and that's a lot of work..

With that in mind plus what I just mentioned about it being fine with the smaller test file, is that my only option for getting an end result of 4:3 when the original is 16:9? (other than 6+ hours per half hour show)
Rendering it first as a .wmv? I don't really have too much of a problem as it's just a cartoon in this case but there is a loss of quality and would like to figure how to avoid this if I can. If i can't, I can't.
Plus is the "distort" method the best way to about cropping with VS?

Thanks again for your help guys.

Post by **Ron P.** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 8:24 am

I wouldn't recommend using the WMV option, as like you stated will degrade the quality.

Something apparently is not correct. I dropped a 16:9 clip into VS11, which in my case is VS11.5 +, changed the project properties aspect ratio to 4:3. I then selected Distort Clip, then right-clicked on the preview pane to open the menu, and choose Keep Aspect Ratio, and Fit to Screen. Pressing Play to preview the clip in either Project or Clip mode did not slow down my computer at all, which is a turtle compared to your system.

I haven't tried to render this, to see how long it would take. However I would suspect no longer then normal. The differences being I'm running XP Home SP2, and using DV clips, not MPEG-2.

Edit
I rendered my 2 minute 16:9 DV clip to DVD 4:3 and it only took 5 mins to render. This is while running in my Normal hardware profile, where everything is running in the background. So it took about 2½ times the duration of the video clip to render.

Is VS12 due out soon? Well I don't know, we only get notified of such things about a week in advance. They can't release that sort of info, because sells would drop off in the interim period shortly before the release. Based on history, they generally will release the next version around April.

Farzide · Post by **Farzide** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 8:55 am

vidoman wrote:...

I haven't tried to render this, to see how long it would take. However I would suspect no longer then normal.

Yep, no need to render. You would notice the second you tried to preview if you had the same issue. Just a choppy, sloppy mess.

vidoman wrote:The differences being I'm running XP Home SP2, and using DV clips, not MPEG-2.

I can't help but suspect it's Vista causing my headaches.
Oh well... not a deal breaker. This is, so far, the only program I've been able to do even this much on with Vista.

vidoman wrote:
Edit
I rendered my 2 minute 16:9 DV clip to DVD 4:3 and it only took 5 mins to render. This is while running in my Normal hardware profile, where everything is running in the background. So it took about 2½ times the duration of the video clip to render.

Wow, thanks for doing that. Something definitely is up then.

vidoman wrote:Is VS12 due out soon? Well I don't know, we only get notified of such things about a week in advance. They can't release that sort of info, because sells would drop off in the interim period shortly before the release. Based on history, they generally will release the next version around April.

Looks like I came along at the right time

I'll experiment some more with DV clips tomorrow, thanks for your time. Much appreciated!!

Farzide · Post by **Farzide** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 2:16 am

Well, I spent the past few days trying to figure this one out and have come to the conclusion that the software that I use to record TV (TotalMedia3) is to blame... somehow.
I finally came to this conclusion when I simply attempted to use the "Save as First Clip" option in VS11+ and it locked up. This was without any editing or cropping of any kind... I was just testing if it would work.
So I attempted the same actions that were originally causing me problems (crop & edit) on many other mpg's (I tried as large as 5.5gb) and I am able to do so with no problems.
The only files I'm having trouble with are ones recorded from TotalMedia.

So I went to ArcSoft forums and found a post from someone else having trouble editing TotalMedia's mpg's in "several" editing program software he tried. (I don't know if he tried VS11)
Does this make sense? Is there maybe a codec that might help this issue? (I'm grasping)
He didn't mention Vista so I went and reinstalled Vegas 8 trial to see how that would run other mpg's, including mpg's created with VS11+ (I had originally only tried with the unedited mpg's that TotalMedia spit out) and it ran fine. No lockups. Tried the original (from TotalMedia) mpg again and it locked up.
(I only bring up Vegas because of the fact that it also had problems with the TotalMedia mpg's only)

Also, a few things that might be worth mentioning, on one of the few times that Vegas didn't lock up I noticed that the audio track ended before the video track.
Updated my DX today (newest version came out yesterday btw) but the only codec's I've personally installed on this rig were DivX.
And I'm using the trial version of VS11+
Any further thoughts?

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 2:39 am

Please view:
Working with widescreen using Video Studio

Clevo · Post by **Clevo** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 8:14 am

Farzide...the onlythoguht that come to mind is a curiosity to know what your video properties are when you put them on the VS11+ timeline. (right click video and copy properties please)

This will show up any codecs used

Farzide · Post by **Farzide** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 8:47 am

Clevo wrote:Farzide...the onlythoguht that come to mind is a curiosity to know what your video properties are when you put them on the VS11+ timeline. (right click video and copy properties please)

This will show up any codecs used

Thanks.
Here's a screenshot from VS11+ and also one from Windows Media Player.

Arcsoft makes the dvr software that came with my tuner.

[edit]wrong screenshots... fixed

Farzide · Post by **Farzide** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 1:44 am

My problem above still isn't resolved and I'm really thinking that my current USB tuner with it's software encoding is to blame.

Can anyone recommend a TV tuner card (company) that 'plays nice' with 3rd party editing software such as VS11? (although I'm going to wait for VS12)

I don't want another USB this time though. I want to go either PCI or (preferably) PCI-e.
I don't care so much about the software included with the card as much as I do about the encoding of the mpeg's. I want to go with hardware encoding.
I just want to be able to record a show, throw it in VideoStudio, edit the commercials, and make a nice looking DVD (menus and all) without all the problems I've run into with my current situation.

I'm more looking for advice on which company to go with... Hauppauge, AVerMedia etc... rather than a specific card.
Are any of these better than others at producing an mpeg that won't give me such problems editing in a 3rd party editor?
I definitely want to stay away from a company that bundles ArcSofts TotalMedia with it's product this time

Thanks

Post by **Ron P.** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 2:36 am

Have a look at Canopus Products.

Farzide · Post by **Farzide** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 4:50 am

Thanks, I'll take a look.