VS11.5+ HD Video Output Jerky Stuttering Duplicated Frames

[simmosimmo]

Hi All,

Hopefully someone will be able to help. I¡¦ve looked through the forum for a possible solution but not had much luck.

My problem is with creating a HD Video File with VS11.5+. The 10 minute video is jerky in places and when I look at the video file created (MPPEG2 file) I can see that a few frames have been duplicated and the correct few frames skipped.

I¡¦ve been creating the video file (HD Mpeg2 1400x? ¡V same as the source files after a few simple cuts) and then converting it to an AVCHD file for playback thru my PS3.

The original source file has all the frames. If I step through them one by one on the timeline I can see then perfectly.

Everything I¡¦ve tried. Eg. All the options for HD MPEG create the same video file with the same stuttering problem at the same points of the video. With/Without MPEG Optimiser, or using ¡§same as Project settings¡¨ and/or switching the smart render off too.

I¡¦ve tried just creating a 10 sec video file for just a selected portion that I know was bad and it always creates a jerky video.

Creating a SD Mpeg gives a jerky video too. The only video that creates correctly is to a SD DV (AVI) file!!

Details:
Source files are from a Sony HC5 HD on DV tape, firewired to my PC.

My PC has a XP2400+ Athlon CPU with 1.3Gb RAM . I know it¡¦s not the ideal spec for HD video editing but it does seem to work generally ok.

VS11.5+ properties :
Under File->Preferences | Edit tab -> Resampling Quality = BEST

Project Properties Are (same as source MPEGs):

Compression Tab First:
Media Type = Mpeg2
Quality = 100% (Does leaving it at 70% make a difference ?)
Two Pass Encode = OFF
Video Data Rate = Constant bit Rate (CBR = 25000)
Audio = Mpeg2, 48000, Stereo @ 384kbs

General Tab:
FrameSize = 1440x1080
FrameType = Upper Field First
FrameRate = 25(PAL)

Ulead Video Studo Tab:
NonSquare Pixel Rendering = ON
Audio channels: = Stereo

I did forget to set the project settings as above until after I had first seen the problem. So I would have been editing my video with the default project settings. Is this the cause? Do I have to start from scratch?

Much appreciated for any ideas¡K. My brain hurts !

Cheers...

[Ken Berry]

Welcome to the forums!

While your computer is OK for editing and producing HDV format high definition video in that same format, which is what your camera produces, and even burning Blu-Ray discs using it, it is well below, and I mean well below, the specifications necessary to be able to work with the AVCHD format. You need at least an Intel Core 2 Duo or whatever the equivalent AMD version is, even for AVCHD to be able to play back smoothly.

I have a P4 3.0 Ghz with hyperthreading 2 GB RAM computer, which is now a secondary computer since even it cannot play AVCHD video smoothly. It stutters. However, it can at least edit AVCHD and produce a file which plays smoothly on either my Core 2 Duo laptop or Quad main computer. But I am afraid your Athlon has an Intel equivalent which I think is below 2.0 GHz (1.8??) and so is far too under-powered to work with AVCHD even using Video Studio's SmartProxy (which requires the equivalent of my old P4 3.0 GHz as a minimum...)

Now I know you are using and editing HDV format, and only producing AVCHD as a final product. But believe me, it is such an incredibly demanding format when it comes to computer resources that your Athlon simply won't ever play AVCHD with any smoothness.

What you would be far better doing is networking your PS3 with your computer, if it is not already done. Then you can use Windows Media Player or Nero MediaHome or some other software which the PS3 recognises, and stream your original HDV footage, either in original format or as edited, and it will play back just fine over the PS3. I do it all the time. And of course, if you have the PS3 connected to a HDTV via HDMI cable, you will get your HDV played back in its original high definition format.

Indeed, you can copy your edited HDV to a suitably large USB flash drive, or external hard disk formatted with FAT 32 (the PS3 cannot see a drive formatted in NTFS) and connect that to the PS3's USB jacks on the front, and it will see and play the video as long as it is contained in the usual PS3 folder called VIDEO (the upper case is important). The only problem is that FAT 32 imposes a maximum limit of 4 GB per file it can see or create, so your HDV video needs to meet that limitation. And that runs to about 20 or 21 minutes of HDV using the standard bitrate of 25 Mbps for HDV.

Heck, you can even burn 4.3 GB of HDV in that format to a standard DVD in archive/data format, in a folder on the DVD again labeled VIDEO, and the PS3 can play that too!! I have done all of the above many times over!

And forgetting about the PS3 altogether, you can export your edited HDV back to your Sony in its original transport format by using Share > HDV recording. Then connect your Sony via its HDMI socket to your HDTV and the camera thus becomes a sort of Blu-Ray player.

And if you have a sufficiently powerful computer, you can also convert your HDV to AVCHD and burn those videos as hybrid discs on standard DVDs, which of course also play on the PS3. Indeed, this has the nice extra that you can also make a menu for them in that format!

But I am afraid you Athlon won't allow you to do this latter thing... One thing you could try, though, would be to edit your HDV, and save it as a project file. Then instead of trying to convert it to AVCHD in the editing module, simple select Share > Create Disc > AVCHD. This means that the conversion HDV > AVCHD would occur during the burning process. This takes even my Quad about 4 times real time to do, so your old Athlon would really be struggling and would take a few times longer than that. And it just might work, as long as you only play the resulting DVD on your PS3 and don't try it on the computer first. However, once again I have to say I suspect that it may just not be powerful enough even to convert to AVCHD during the burning process...

[simmosimmo]

Hi Ken,

Thanks for the quick reply. I''ve been reading lots of your replies and picked up lots of good info. Infact I was eyeing up your PC spec to consider buying myself one that would be better for HDV. You also helped my to get my video as far as being playable thru my PS3 as a AVCHD file. I was using some software called SimpleCentre to "media share it". I also got myself a 4GB Flash drive to copy this 11min video file onto.

However, I don't think I described my problem too well ¡K I know that my PC isn't up to the job of playing back the HDV correctly. However on my PS3 (using a AVCHD file that I converted to) or thru my "upscalling" DVD player (using a SD version of the project)¡K most of the video plays great¡K it's just the odd cut that, about a second in, seem to stutter.

..and examing the HDV file (that the project was converted to in the first instance and which was used on a new project to convert to either an AVCHD or SD format) frame by frame I can see where the stutter occurs (always in the same places BTW)¡K. Duplicate frames have been added and the actual ones skipped over.

The original clips from the original source (that got turned into a HDV file), don't show the duplicated frames.

I know I can't view the finished HD videos without stutter on my PC but I thought I would have been able to render/create them ok.


Thanks again for any insight to what's going wrong¡K or is it just a PC spec problem!..... Stange though that the duplicated frames always happen in the same place of the action.. Even if I choose to create a video file from a project part selection.

Cheers..

[Ken Berry]

First, your computer should have no trouble playing or editing HDV in that format... It is only the AVCHD conversion and definitely playback which would be difficult or impossible...

However, thanks to your more detailed explanation, I think I am tending to agree that there may be some quirk or even bug in VS11.5+ which is not limited to AVCHD but affects HDV as well. In my own case, I have edited HDV in both Adobe Premiere Pro 3, but more often in VS11.5+. Using both programs, I output my projects into new HDV files. (Adobe outputs to a professional-end format .m2v which is video only. A separate audio file is produced, but Video Studio recognises both with no trouble.)

In fact, I only produced a couple of final HDV files using VS11.5+ because I quickly found that my intention of exporting the edited HDV back to my Canon HV20 was being thwarted by a known bug in doing this with Canon HDV cameras. (Adobe also has trouble exporting to them.) However, for some silly reason, VS10+ can happily export to the Canon using a Canon patch which only works with VS10 and which apparently was not rolled into VS11. So now, I edit my HDV in VS11.5+ but save it as a VS10 template. I then open VS10 and export to my Canon that way. Results are excellent.

However, all this is a long way of saying that VS10+ produces an excellent, smooth HDV .mpg. But when I played back to two HDV .mpg files prepared using VS11.5+ (including one which blended the Adobe video and audio files), there were brief but annoying blips following certain transitions (which in my case are mostly plain cross-fades). This even happened at the beginning of an edited video where I would insert a colour panel, a cross fade, a title, a cross fade and then the first video clip. This minute blip occurred regularly throughout the video, though curiously not after ever transition -- only some. The quality and everything else was excellent; just this annoying blip. But it is totally absent from the VS10 product which is excellent in every respect.

Again curiously, the VS 10 final video is also always a little smaller than the VS11 one e.g. VS11.5+ will produce a 1.68 GB file, but the same project in VS10+ will produce a file of 1.50 GB.

Anyway, I have learned to live with it and hope that things will be better with VS12 whenever that appears. But I don't know where it leaves you if you don't have VS10...

[simmosimmo]

Success!

I got my project to create a smooth HD file in the end, by ignoring the MPEG Optimzer, any of the Templates and "smart render" options.

I ran the Share -> Create Video File step and chose "Custom". Then chose the same options as my source "HD" video files, left the Quality at 70% and unticked the "smart render" option.

It took 1hr + to re-render the 11mins project to a HD (Mpeg2) video file but at least the jumps and stutters had gone away.

I also got it to play thru my PS3 as you described, by storing it to a flash USB drive in a folder named "VIDEO", with excellent results. I had tried the playback using the "media server" options before and the PS3 did not recognise the HD video file. Hence my quest to then convert the HD files to AVCHD files, which did get recognised. Now I don't need to bother.

It's a shame the process is slow (having to re-render each time) but at least it gives me the confidence to start on other longer HD projects.

Many Thanks¡K.

Cheers.

[Ken Berry]

Glad it worked, and I agree the long render times are the pits. But it does work, and that is really what matters. Also, by maintaining the original quality settings, a single recode does not involve any loss in quality that the naked eye can detect.

I am, however, surprised your PS3 could not see the edited HDV over the media server. Mine has no trouble with it at all. One thing you might try, though, is to change the HDV file extension from the original .m2t to .mpg if your editing and recoding has not already done that, as PS3 seems to prefer that extension.