No, not really. Recently I've gone through and deleted most of my large files.

I have the same problem, I had to use Windows movie maker to capture my tapes.

Rendering has become very slow and the final product has not the same quality, if I render a movie longer than 5 minutes the final product looks all blury, like washed.

I guess the problem started when upgraded to Windows XP service pack 2, did you upgrade?

No, I haven't upgraded.

I have found the capturing to a recently defraged drive gives better results (less dropped frames).

What are you system specs? How fast is your processor, how much RAM do you have? Are you capturing DV via firewire or doing some other type of capture?

When you're capturing, does the program report dropped frames or does the playback just seem choppy to you? I'm asking because you noted that even old, successful captures are playing back choppy. Do your captures also play back choppy when you play them in Windows Media Player?

You also note that you've got a cable connection to the internet. Sometimes chatter between your computer and the internet (and between your computer and others on your network) are enough to interrupt your capture and cause dropped frames. Likewise, having more than one firewire device connected at the same time as your camcorder is connected.

Just to be clear about the problem, and ignoring the capture issues - movies that you rendered in VF2, and which previously played OK in WMP, are now jerky when you use the same player on the same PC? Have you upgraded anything at all? What format are the original movies and what format are the ones that play ok? You mention problems with "finished movies" then say that "movie clips" are OK in VF2 - are these the same things?

Ian G.

Same problems here... dropped frames seem to be a common problem. I used to use Pinnacle.... did two edits using that with no problems we couldn't solve. Until this newest project, which we ran into all kinds of problems with Pinnacle, so bought the Sony Movie System edit software, and are still finding ourselves with 'problems to solve'.

I just want to finish up a movie project... I enjoy the creative aspect of editting. I miss the fun I had working on a project, when the only problems I'd have was figuring out which of two really good parts to leave in or take out.

Now all the problems are technical and the majority of my time working on a project isn't anything but one gigantic frustrating day after another.

I wonder how many potential film makers have quit because of it.

/end rant.

You're right, I found this video editing very exciting. I was very close to start my own bussiness recording parties and events but one day, with no explanation at all, everything started to work bad. Capturing resulted in almost 50% dropped frames, rendering takes tree or four times what it used to. I used to render clips, import them to movie shaker to add some efects and then render them again in MS, now the result from that re-render after movieshaker looks aweful, all stills look like washed, no definition at all.
I blame it to XP SP2, I just uninstalled it and will give it a try. But to be honest, my excitment is not longer here, it has become so hard that I just don't wanna do it any more. I asked for tech support both in sony and microsoft and nothing.

Dropping frames is one of the easiest problems to solve, guys. But you've got to help us help you by giving us the specs and other information we ask for.

And, if the problem is SP2, there's even a video capture fix on the Microsoft site. You can find a link to it on this forum.

Among many trouble-shooting exerecises is attempting a capture and then export in Windows MovieMaker, if you have XP, or Scenalyzer (from www.scenalyzer.com). This will help you find if the issue is related specifically to MovieStudio or if its an overally operating system or hardware problem.

Trust me. Once you snag this bug, the stress level for editing goes way down and you can enjoy the excitement of outputting as much as you do the actual cutting and splicing!

I'm waiting for it to not feel like an exercise in stress-tolerance. I'll let you know if that ever happens... I think we burnt ourselves out pulling a few twelve hour days back to back trying to solve the problems. And when you've been working on a project for a few months and each time you go to work on it find yourself troubleshooting for nine/tenths the time, the magic of the whole process craps out. I'm a step-by-step kind of person, our manual looks like an old, worn Bible from a hundred year old church right now... we've read the thing a good ten times already.

Nevermind the clicks through every google link, every sony forum...

And once one issue is resolved, up pops another... I guess at some point there will be no more possibilities for any error to arise that we haven't learned to fix... it's getting to that point that is frustrating and it just seems that it shouldn't be a part of the process. It's sorta like asking your grandmother for an apple pie recipe and her explaining to you that you first have to grow an apple tree, from seed, and learn everything there is to know about how sugar is retrieved from sugar cane... it just seems like a lot of precudures to learn, instead of just doing what you want to do. Technology in this area (film making) is pretty young, though, so I guess this is all to be expected.

I'm just using this forum to vent on at this point. We're fixing more problems and know we're in this for the long haul (we're determined to finish this project, we just lowered our expectations for it being done this month.)

The strangest aspect of all this is we have made a few short films in the past with not nearly as much confusion and troubleshooting. For some reason, I expected when we bought this Sony movie edit program that technology had gotten even better since it's been quite a while (2 years) since we made our last film. Instead, we are having the absolute worst editting process; worse than all our other films combined, and then some. I think, by the sounds of all the forums I've read, this appears to be the norm... not sure why. People were making films and fixing probelms quickly... now it can take weeks to solve an issue.

I'm looking forward to the part that feels like a creative process again. We really miss the enjoyment of it... when we come over the computer to work on a project now, we both groan within five minutes and the excitement is replaced with fear, confusion, frustration and a host of other junky feelings. I never thought the day would come when logic would be replaced with 'crossing our fingers' that nothing goes wrong, but that's pretty much how it is. You push some buttons and hope it works. You read some more, you change some other options, you cross your fingers again. We're not stupid, but this program sure seems intent on making us feel like bungling idiots. And, seriously, that's what we've become at this point. Dorking around, not knowing what to do, 'guessing', trying this and that... trying everything, twice, three times sometimes. Having something work that didn't work before. Having something not work that worked before.

Ah well. We'll get through it. We'll get the project done. Hope to gosh that this kind of technology doesn't lose the world some potentially great film makers, though. Knock the wind out of them before they even get a chance to feel that magic of creating something great. Lose them to the frustration. We just happen to be crazy enough to put up with the frustration... not everybody is this crazy.

To Grisetti - I couldn't locate the MS video capture fix in this forum that you mention - can you help with a referece to it?