Slow and jerky video

[yitbos]

Hello, I'm new to the forum and Just purchased VideoStudio 9 the other day and am having some challenges. I was trying the video editor with a video clip and applied a transition to the clip. Then when I play the project, I see my video, but it's not smooth. Instead, it's jerky, skips from spot to spot and generally looks like the computer can't handle the amount of info that is being processed.

This is really surprising as I have been using Cyberlink's Power Director 3 for the last couple of years and it plays perfectly smooth on my computer. On top of that, I have a new Dell Dimension 8400 with 1gig of memory and a 256M graphics card along with plenty of hard drive space. So I'm not sure why I would be getting the poor quality preview.

Can anyone provide some suggestions? Did the program not install properly? Is there a setting I need to adjust? Any help would be great.

Thanks,
John

[michaeltee]

Hi John,

I have been using Cyberlink's Power Director 3 for the last couple of years and it plays perfectly smooth on my computer.

When I was experimenting with different editing apps I found that some are more consistent than others with "instant preview" at transition points. After installing VS9 I encountered quite a bit of preview stuttering but over time I've managed to improve things quite a bit. Unfortunately it's difficult to attribute the improvements directly to a specific workaround. Of course system config plays a significant role but in your case it doesn't seem like that would be a factor.

That said, there are several settings you can experiment with from the File > Preferences > General tab.

The guaranteed solution is to switch your playback method from "instant playback" to "high quality playback". Most would consider this a last resort because some additional rendering time is involved.

As far as "instant preview" is concerned, here are a few more things you can try:

From the "instant playback target" (General tab) drop-down menu, experiment with the various profiles and see if it makes any difference. Also check your "working folder" destination to make sure it's on a partition or drive with adequate space. In the Preferences UI you can also select the "Preview" tab and specify up to 3 additional destinations for your preview files.

Going back to the preview window itself, in "project" mode, I've sometimes found that quickly dragging the "jog slider" from left to right (through the entire project) before executing a preview may help. Also try switching to "clip" mode and click on the transition preceding any given clip and press play. This should allow you to preview the transition effect from clip A to clip B smoothly.

Some users have mentioned that frequent defragging has lead to a major improvement. I'm using Diskeeper 9 with the "I/O Smart" setting enabled. This keeps my drives free of fragmentation by running the defrag process in the background whenever my system is idol.

Perhaps some of the more experienced users will have some additional (or better) suggestions. In the meantime, give these a try and let us know how you do

-Mike

[Ken Berry]

I would simply endorse Michael's comments that the preview window in VS is not great. In fact, IMHO, it is one of the single, most consistent drawbacks of the program. But I suppose, since I started using VS 7 nearly 3 years ago, that I have simply developed a mindset which treats it as 'work in progress' -- it gives me a fair idea of what is in the video I am editing, and how the final editing *might* look. Beyond that, however, I have developed the practice, regardless of the preview window, of always burning a copy of my entire project (after first going to Share > Create Video File, of course) to RW disc, just to see what it will look like on a stand-alone player.

That being said, I used to find, in VS 7 and 8, that the Clip preview was more reliable than Project preview. I have not changed my computer since using VS 8, but now find the exact reverse -- in fact almost to the point that I never use Clip preview anymore. I acknowledge, however, that this result may not be the same for everyone, particularly those who do not have computers overly endowed with resources.