Alludo USER to USER Web Board

Hi all,

first time post so I don't get deleted before I start !!
Thanks to all here for a HUGE amount of data, tutorials, help and patience...although, from the outside, it seems very daunting as to the amount of problems users seem to be having with this product !

I have VS Pro X2. purchased via the web recently over xmas, (and to complement Paint Shop Pro X2).

In VS :
Following a range of new user problems such as Preview grayed out and inability to create chapters, I have managed to make 6 DVD disks to the mpeg2 format, with both video and still images with loads of transitions to around the 1 hour range. Fairly happy with VS in terms of learning to do early basics as this is fist time for an editing program.

The post about updating Direct X fixed my dilemma with the Preview stage thanks a bunch.
I am still unable to create Chapters but I'll save that for another post.


A few days ago I burnt a short mpeg rendered image to DVD and when I played it back through the television and through my pc / LCD screen, the video was jittery and slightly blurred.
I checked everything I could and even reloaded the original avi files from my camera and did the whole process 3 times in the end but always with the same result.
Camera : Canon SX110 IS 9 mega pixel, 30 fps, exports video to .avi.

I have already made 6 mpeg2 / output to DVD renderings, and they seemed to be excellent in terms of resolution . clarity / playback continuity etc. (hope there terms are near to descriptive), so it was surprising to see this output condition.

I tried the render and save method, then start new project, import the rendered file and write / burn to DVD-R (16x).
I also tried same but from the "Share" tab, I followed through to render and burn all at once.
The result was the same.
SmartRender is checked in the output dialogue box.
MPEG is selected in the Smart Proxy end of Preferences.

Really, I have not changed anything I am aware of since making the earlier disks which included the same camera format avi files and stills from same source , as well as some /avi files directly exported out of CamStudio, (a free screen capture application)

Here, it is the Canon .avi files that were used for the problem rendered file.
I have read the Help but that is lacking in depth ion this score.
I have checked only a few other posts however the precise problem is not covered.
Thanks in advance for any clues. I am prepared to un-install and between boots, re-install as that seems to be a regular answer for VS problems ! but would prefer to avoid this purely for the sake of the time.
thank you
regardsjavascript:emoticon(':D')
trombe
NZ

Welcome to the forums,

Using video recorded on Digital Still Cameras(DSC) to create DVDs is problematic. While the DSCs can record video, it is no way comparable to video recorded on a camcorder. This was just added to DSCs as a means to get more people to buy them. If you look at digital camcorders, and their ability to create photos, you'll see that those photos are not very good compared to photos taken with a DSC.

Now here lies the problem when trying to use video recorded on a DSC, to produce a video DVD. The video must meet DVD specifications, which include:

1. Frame Sizes
   For NTSC: 525/60: 720x480, 704x480, 352x480, 352x240
   For PAL: 625/50: 720x576, 704x576, 352x576, 352x288
2. Frame Rate (Frames per second)
   For NTSC: 29.97fps
   For PAL: 25fps

Now your DSC records video in the following:
Frame Sizes: 640 x 480, 320 x 240, 160 x 120 (None of which meets DVD Specifications)
Frame Rate: 30 fps, 30 fps LP, 30 fps, 15 fps (again, none meeting DVD specifications).

So what happens when you create a DVD, VS must produce video files that do meet DVD specs. So it has to increase the Frame Size, which means that pixels will be added. This degrades the quality of the video. It also must adjust the Frame Rate, which if you're source video from your DSC records at 30fps, VS must drop .03 frames for every second of video (NTSC) or 5 frames for every second for PAL. This will cause the video to be jittery.

While you can create a wide array of video files, most of those can only be played back on a computer. Stand-alone (set-top) DVD players will only playback those that meet the specifications for video DVD. However there are the newer HD/Blue-ray that's a whole different discussion.

Next I want to point out that while your DSC records in avi, that is not the actual CODEC used. As you may have read in the numerous other posts on this forum, avi is a wrapper or container. Your DSC uses, like many others, the Motion JPEG, or MJPEG, which is a very good codec, which is commonly wrapped in AVI, however does show up in others such as MOV. So when you produce your DVD, VS uses the MPEG encoder (codec) to recode your "avi" to the MPEG-2 format, which would be part of the DVD specification.

So in summary your source video of 640 x 480 is going to be enlarged to 720 x 480 (NTSC) or 720 x 576 (PAL), and the frame rate adjusted, which is going to cause the quality in your DVD to be substantially less..

If you're really interested in video, and the quality of your final product, then use a device that is designed primarily for recording video. I would equate this to using a wrench to drive a nail, it works but not quite as good as a hammer...

I think Ron is being unduly pessimistic about DSC video.

I have a Panasonic FZ8, and one of the reasons I bought it was that like most Canon cameras, it can shoot video that's not as heavily compressed as that procuced by many other DSC's. It can also shoot 848 x 480 widescreen.

The optical image stabilisation on the Panasonic is much more effective than the electronic image stabilisation in my camcorder.

It handles motion very differently than the camcorder, probably due to the video being frame based. For example, in test video of my R/C helicopter, the main rotor blades are almost frozen in the DSC footage, and just a blur in the camcorder footage.

I don't believe the slight difference in frame rate is a factor. If I take a short .mov clip shot with a Panasonic FX10, it's 24.665KB and it shows as 30.000 frames/sec, 570 frames, and 19.000 seconds in duration.

When I encode that clip to mpeg2 using a video bitrate of 8000kbps (with VS11 in this case) it produces a file size of 19.040KB and it becomes 29.970 frames/sec, remains as 570 frames, but the duration is changed to 19.019 seconds.

So it's clear that VS does not "pad" the frames in any way but simply slows the video very slightly to account for the frame rate difference.

You can also see that the video bitrate for the DSC footage is pretty respectable, resulting in a larger file size than the 8000 kbps mpeg2. When I researched DSC video, most Canon cameras seemed to use the highest video bitrates, generating file sizes of 1.8Mb/sec or more and also shot the least problematical files to edit.

Not sure what is causing your problem, but you might try rendering to frame based video rather than interlaced (upper or lower field first) Frame based would be fine for playback on a pc or thru a progressive DVD player.

Perhaps you can post your output video properties.