New user, seemingly simple project, help please

[Cadillac STS]

I am new to video editing. I thought I had a simple project with this: We have a dog that runs to catch a ball and jumps high in the air to get it; sort of interesting. Thought we would get some video on our portable digital camcorder of this from a couple angles and make a brief video we could share on Facebook. Seems like a simple editing job and seemed like the Videostudio Pro X5 would be able to handle this.

I hope the specs of my system show when I post, in short Intel Quad Core, 8GB RAM, 500X2 GB HD, Windows 7 Home. Seems like a stout enough machine for simple editing.

Video recorded as 1920X1080. Have 3 samples of the video, one about 35B, one 700MB and one 3.3GB.

Problem is when importing the video it is extremely slow. the 35MB one takes over 10 minutes and when loaded the program is very slow to respond to controls to the point of not even being usable. The larger files loaded but it took over half an hour and also not usable.

I know I could re-shoot at a very low res and probably get better response from the program. It was advertised as being able to handle high res though.

All we want to do is open the file, clip a small section out of both and put them together for a minute or so video. Is it too much for this program?

I did go through the manual and activated hardware acceleration.

Any advise on loading file video and working with same?

[Ken Berry]

I am assuming here that your video is AVCHD, which is high res mpeg-4 in effect. X5 can certainly handle it, and 'importing' it should be near instantaneous. But you didn't explain how you were going about the import process. All you need to do is connect your camcorder to your computer via a USB (or even mini HDMI) cable. The computer should see it as another drive, as should Video Studio. You can then simply drag and drop the video as you would from any other drive. Some, though, find it easier to first transfer all the video to the computer hard drive and simply import from there. You just right click in either the timeline or the library window, and select 'Insert Video', then navigate to where the video is located.

[Cadillac STS]

I moved the files to the desktop first. Drag and drop causes the Videostudio to freeze and take a long time to open the file. I can open and browse same video with Windows Media Player almost instantly and browse around and look for the clip I want. I've searched on this forum and saw someone else noticing it took a couple hours to open a video seemed like and wondered if that is how Videostudio worked. I bought X4 first then upgrade purchased to X5 when I noticed it advertised better multiprocessor support.

Could it just be a setup problem on my part with the program? Any other thing to change beside hardware accell?

[Cadillac STS]

Here's a request that would help me and demonstrate the new X5 pro abilities: Could someone click on the screen capture and make a short video doing just what I am wishing to do? Open one clip, edit a small part, open next clip, edit a small part and put them together, output for web posting.

In my imagination of how the program is supposed to work it should be about a 3 minute or less video in the hands of someone familiar with the program. Then we all could see what the new screen capture can do with it posted right here.

[canuck]

I moved the files to the desktop first. Drag and drop causes the Videostudio to freeze and take a long time to open the file. I can open and browse same video with Windows Media Player almost instantly and browse around and look for the clip I want. I've searched on this forum and saw someone else noticing it took a couple hours to open a video seemed like and wondered if that is how Videostudio worked. I bought X4 first then upgrade purchased to X5 when I noticed it advertised better multiprocessor support.

Could it just be a setup problem on my part with the program? Any other thing to change beside hardware accell?

I have no problem opening HD videos of GB sizes in X5 for editing. Loading it is almost instantaneous and moving around etc, is almost the same.
If it takes that long then you have a faulty install, something in your system is interfering with the proper operation of X5.
Exactly what are the steps you are taking? "Drag and drop causes the Videostudio to freeze and take a long time to open the file" is not very informative.

[canuck]

Here's a request that would help me and demonstrate the new X5 pro abilities: Could someone click on the screen capture and make a short video doing just what I am wishing to do? Open one clip, edit a small part, open next clip, edit a small part and put them together, output for web posting.

In my imagination of how the program is supposed to work it should be about a 3 minute or less video in the hands of someone familiar with the program. Then we all could see what the new screen capture can do with it posted right here.

There are dozens of video tutorials already on the web showing exactly what you want. Just do a google search for "VideoStudio Tutorials"

[Cadillac STS]

I moved the files to the desktop first. Drag and drop causes the Videostudio to freeze and take a long time to open the file. I can open and browse same video with Windows Media Player almost instantly and browse around and look for the clip I want. I've searched on this forum and saw someone else noticing it took a couple hours to open a video seemed like and wondered if that is how Videostudio worked. I bought X4 first then upgrade purchased to X5 when I noticed it advertised better multiprocessor support.

Could it just be a setup problem on my part with the program? Any other thing to change beside hardware accell?

I have no problem opening HD videos of GB sizes in X5 for editing. Loading it is almost instantaneous and moving around etc, is almost the same.
If it takes that long then you have a faulty install, something in your system is interfering with the proper operation of X5.
Exactly what are the steps you are taking? "Drag and drop causes the Videostudio to freeze and take a long time to open the file" is not very informative.

I think I need to slow down and figure out if there is a problem with the install or something. The problem was with X4 and X5 same.

Drag and Drop = Open the source folder, place the mouse pointer on the desired video file, hold down left button, drag to the open X5 pro, let go of mouse button. More precise description of that. Videostudio still freezes, takes a long time to load and then freezes repeatedly after each button pressed.

Is there a way to tell if the install is bad? Is there a way to know if anything else is interfering on the system? I am sure Videostudio is the only thing running at the time. I tried to search Google for "Slow Videostudio loading" "Optimize computer for Videostudio" etc.. but not much help.

[Cadillac STS]

Here's a request that would help me and demonstrate the new X5 pro abilities: Could someone click on the screen capture and make a short video doing just what I am wishing to do? Open one clip, edit a small part, open next clip, edit a small part and put them together, output for web posting.

In my imagination of how the program is supposed to work it should be about a 3 minute or less video in the hands of someone familiar with the program. Then we all could see what the new screen capture can do with it posted right here.

There are dozens of video tutorials already on the web showing exactly what you want. Just do a google search for "VideoStudio Tutorials"

Fair enough. I thought it would be a fun couple minutes for another user here just to do it and throw it on; a way to test out the screen capture video.

[Ken Berry]

Have you tried the normal way of importing files into VS: right click in the VS timeline and select 'Insert Video'. In the dialogue box which appears, navigate to where your captured video is located, select the clip or clips, and press OK. The clips should appear in the VS timeline or library window in near instantaneous time.

[canuck]

I just tried Cadillacs "drag and drop" method of adding a long HD video to the timeline: it's almost instantaneous.

[Ken Berry]

I also have no problem with drag and drop. But since Cadillac was having problems with it, I suggested the other 'normal' way of doing it...