Music file is on my hard disk.... wma format, 65 kbps bit rate. Even when I shut down background tasks, including virus checker, it is still choppy.

Is it possible to save the music as a WAV file or MP3?

WMV is more of a compressed video file format and, while you can use the audio only from it, it may not be the most direct route.

Though I've never tried using a WMV for music.

Anybody else have any experience there?

Actually the file type mentioned was WMA, not WMV. But even still, there might be a problem decoding this file in real time while the rest of the processing is going on. Djcc, you might try rendering your WMA file to WAV, then using the WAV version in the project instead.

I've tried MP3 and WAV formats without success - regardless of the format, the audio is very choppy. I opened a new project, without any video at all, and there is no problem... could it just be an issue of processing all this information (ie, stills, video, transitions, video FX, etc)??

Try right-clicking on the preview window and select Show Details. This will show you the frame rate at the bottom of the window. If the frame rate is less than 29.97 when you play your video then there is nothing wrong with the audio. Your system is just bogging down trying to display the video. This would be consistent with your comment about the audio alone playing fine.

~jr

>Your system is just bogging down trying to display the video
Which then begs the question of why it's bogging down - I don't have that problem on a pc with less than half the horesepower. Could the size of the preview window be an issue?

Ian G.

Project properties are NTSC DV, 720 x 480, 29.97 fps. The size of the preview window does not seem to have an effect - audio is choppy regardless... This computer is blazingly fast for everything else, so I find it difficult to believe it is a lack of horsepower.

The total show is approximately 6.5 minutes in length. Has about 20 stills, originals of which are 2272 x 1704 (4 Mp). There are 10 video clips, all AVI format, ranging in length from 10 seconds to approx 30 seconds.

I'm beginning to wonder if it isn't all the processes running on my computer.... anyone have a reference to what are, and are not, the absolutely necessary processes in Win XP?

Here are some of the unneccesary annoyances that can get tangled in your computer's processing and what to do about them:

1) Turn off virus software. Better yet, use freeware program Enditall2 to turn off as many background processes as possible. (It's hard to say exactly what to turn off, since different manufacturers put in different enhancements. Just experiment until something stops working right.)

2) Turn off indexing in XP. Otherwise your computer is constantly tracking every file in order to speed up your searches a la Mac's Sherlock.

3) Disable scheduled tasks. In Control Panel, open Scheduled Tasks and disable everything. (If you think something might be necessary, you can set it to only run on boot-up.)

4) Disable all network connections. Just disable the hardware in Device Manager. This includes your internet connection, if you have a broadband connection. Don't worry: when you re-enable it later, all your settings will be as you left them.

5) Get rid of spyware. I run Spybot Search & Destroy every couple of days. It's amazing how many little applets you gather as you cruise the net.

6) Clean your registry. RegCleaner is a great little program that clears out all the little artifacts that gather in our registry and slow down our computers.

That should take care of most of it.

Adding a second hard drive dedicated to video can also solve a lot of problems.

Hope that helps!

May be worth seeing if there's updates for your sound and graphics cards drivers.

Have you added any track Video FX like Gaussian blur, or Color Correction, etc.? These will cause playback to be choppy because a lot of processing is going on with each frame. How many tracks are you using? Do you have an overlay track with content that extends the duration of the project so that everything is being composited? What is your frame rate? 4Mp images are a bit large and will slow down MovieStudio because it’s resizing them to 720x480 on the fly. You might want to keep your images under 2Mp.

When you tried making the audio a WAV file did you resample it at 48Khz or keep it at 64Khz? If the audio is 64Khz, MovieStudio will be resampling it on the fly because DV is 48Khz. Optimally your audio should be using a 48Khz sample rate.

Does this happen in a new project with just an AVI file on the timeline or is it unique to this project?

~jr

OK - tons of suggestions for me to try here, and I will do as many of them as possible, inclusive of cleaning up my computer, recording audio at 48, and reducing my still images to 720 x 480.

I do have a question regarding AVI's though - is it better to edit the video file first (ie, brighter, darker, color correction, etc) then resave the AVI and use the modified AVI in the project??

If you’ve done a lot of processing to the AVI and your PC can’t play it back in real-time, then it’s probably best to render the AVI and bring it back in. This is what I do when I capture VHS tapes. I do all my video noise reduction first and render that out. Then I just do composition second with the already corrected AVI files. It just keeps a smoother workflow.

~jr

Another way to reduce work while previewing is to build the audio peak files (press F5) before playing. At least that's what VideoFactory help says -- I don't have Screenblast Movie Studio installed at the moment.

-Suzan

I could be mistaken here, but aren't the audio peak files created at the time the audio is inserted in the project?