Help: MSP8 Demo Bugs: Few days left!

[XOR42]

Few days left on my MSP8 Demo. Nice features. Since having MSP8 requires support of all my MSP 7 projects, I'm testing with a large MSP7 project with the following problems:

1. Faulty Audio File Load: MSP8 triggers errors on several audio files that loaded fine in MSP7 project saying something like "bad format" or "invalid length".

2. Title Overlays: All my title segments which are overlaid title pages with transparent backgrounds all appear without transparency and solid white backgrounds.

3. MP3 Playback: Several MP3 soundtracks (old or new) produce a repeating clicking about every second during project preview while some others play fine.

4. Project Anomalies: Overall, the details of my MSP7 timeline seems shifted or skewed here an there. Coupled with the title and soundtrack problems, it requires a complete re-edit of the whole poject.

Are these bugs or incompatibilities? I could not move to MSP8 if I had to rebuild a 100 hours of projects which would take a 1000 hours to re-edit.

On a plus note, two improvements I like are:
(1) the long overdue fix of the timeline scroll problem. It now scrolls whilst previewing. In MSP 7-7.5, when a preview reached the right edge of the timeline, the window didn't scroll, the cursor went off screen, but the preview displayed correctly.
(2) The capture program now works better and more quickly with more capture modes.

I'd like to upgrade but not if the above problems are normal! I received no asnwer to my MSP8 Trial Survey after a week. I await your collective thoughts with bated breath.

XOR42

[Devil]

I've said, so many countless times on this and other forums, that it is an error to try to swap dvp files between versions. I've repeated this in this forum twice in the past two days, so you don't have to search far to find more details.

I've also said countless times that it is not good practice to take MP3 files into video editing, particularly if they have been downloaded over the Internet, as the wrappers are frequently curtailed and there is often a conflict of the sampling rate. The right thing is to convert them to WAV files at the correct sampling rate before pulling them into a project.

[XOR42]

Thanks, Devil. I searched for problems, not for DVP conversion. I just found your Mar-05 thread on DVP compatibility. That said:
Q: DVP Incompatibility: I assume you still find v8 (Release) doesn't support v7x DVP's and you need v7 to maintain v7 DVP's? If so, has ULead commented on providing a DVP7 conversion feature or utility?
Q: Audio compatibility: Are you saying v8's handling of simple MP3/WAV audio is not as forgiving and/or capable as v7x? I had no problem with WAV or MP3 tracks in v7x. To have to first convert 30-60 minutes worth of sound to WAV would be a huge step backward. Besides the MP3 loading and clicking-sound-in-preview problems, v8 also choked on a WAV with something like a "file format" error. Same files worked fine in v7x.
Q: Overlay Transparency: I assume the v7 DVP incompatibility also explains the titles-as-overlay problem.

Thanks again. Your thoughts are very appreciated.

[Devil]

A. Its compatibility is limited to setting the files up on the timeline. AFAIK, there is no converter software in the offing and, frankly, find it difficult to imagine how one could be made. For example, the titles algorithms are so totally different, that it would be like trying to fit a Jaguar V12 engine into a Mini.
A. V 7.n (and earlier) also had problems with MP3 when the wrapper or datarate were incompatible. I've been recommending conversion to WAV for about 3 years, so this is nothing new. MSP will work with correctly formatted MP3 but most MP3 is not correctly formatted according to requirements. You see, Layer III audio is very complex and can handle four modes of operation, but it was never intended to be a stand-alone audio compression. It was initially designed to be the audio part of the MPEG-1 video compression. As it was "wrapped" with the video, stripping away the latter left the system wide open to variations in the encoding headers. It's compression algorithm works mainly in stripping away sound that is masked by other sounds, allowing 8-bit quantising at a variable level. It is relatively easy to decode but very difficult to manipulate. A good analogy is DVD MPEG-2 as a video editing format; it, too, is easy to decode for viewing, but very difficult to do editing with. In your case, you have done one difficult operation renderting it into a format compatible with v. 7, and then importing that into v. 8. My advice has been and always will be never to use raw MP3 sound in video work.
A. See the first answer.

As I have said: if you start something in one version, keep it in that version unless you are willing to rework it.