I'm having the same problem, and it's driving me freaking insane!!
At first I thought I had the wrong frame rate, but I've since learnt that what I have is correct..

When it first happened, I changed the frame rate from 25 to 24 - it stopped the choppy playback, but resulted in one blurry frame every second..
I was told on this forum that 25 is actually correct, so I re-rendered from Vegas and did the menu etc thru Architect 4.5, and I've gone back to the choppy playback - which is basically as good as water-torture...

I don't know what all this deinterlace or drop-frames etc means, but do you think it would have anything to do with that?
Please forgive my ignorance, I'm quite the amature at this kind of thing..

Rory

p.s. I just played the 'movie' in Nero (the rendered file from Vegas). It plays fine, no choppyness, SO, it must be something to do with Architect. I have good DVDs, they have no stickers on them, no writing, they are blank Printable dvds which work fine with any other video.
Also, the CHOPPY playback I get is really only where there is movement.. If there is something still on screen, it looks fine.. If someone moves their arm across screen, it is extremely jumpy.

Sorry for the essay, I would really really appreciate if anyone knew what was going on here :)

Have you done what I suggested above -- played the VOB files with your DVD player software?

Also, what is the source of your video footage? Are these MPEGs output from Sony Vegas, or have them come from another source.

Finally, are your in PAL video format land? And if so, is your workflow set for PAL the whole way through -- both in Vegas and DVD Architect?

You should not have to mess with frame rate or interlacing if you're providing the source footage in the proper format.

Hi Steve.. I've done all that, the VOB's all play fine, It's only the DVD that plays badly - even when I put it into the computer..
As far as I can tell, everything is the same from editing thru to architect.. I'm using a Sony camera and the Raw files coming off the camera are in 25fps.. I'm not adjusting anything in the settings, if there's something I dont understand I leave it alone..

I thought I was using decent DVDs, I guess not.. what would you suggest I use?

Hi,

additional points to consider:
1) Check the bitrate setting of your output in Vegas, it should not go above approx. 9200kbit/s for Video and Audio. I.e., in case you've got e.g. AC3-Audio with 224kbit/s, the Video should not be rendered with more than 9000kbit/s regarding the maximum setting. Anyhow, Vegas' standard templates for DVDA should work okay.

2) Burn at a lower speed. My hardware player does not like DVDs burned at speeds higher than 4x. Either they play back choppy or playback is suddenly interrupted completely.

Cheers

darkframe

I don't believe I saw this mentioned, but shaking/choppy play back might be caused by not using the right video field order. The field order setting in one of the programs maybe got changed somehow when bringing the video into different programs.

You have to know what the field order is from the source (Top/Odd or Bottom/Even) and use the same order throughout the workflow or you get a jumpy/shaky look in the video.

A friend of mine passed on this awesome tip to check field order using TMPGEnc 2.5:

1) Load your video into TMPGEnc.
2) Go into settings >> advanced. Select the de-interlace filter.
3) Set the filter for even-odd field (field).
4) Scrub some motion in your clip.
5) If it moves normally, you have the fielding right. If it bounces, you have the fielding wrong.
6) Turn off the de-interlace filter when you are done testing.

Hope this helps and/or you get this problem fixed soon...MG

If it helps at all, & if you wanted to go to the bother, Virtual Dub mod, or V/Dub using AviSynth, will also let you to view interlaced frames on playback, & even play with which fields are displayed, though the best way is to view frames in a rapid one-at-a-time fashion. It's hard to tell on a PC without going frame by frame -- most vid cards & software will automatically de-interlace, & may even do pull-down removal, masking any frame order prob.

FWIW the field order for mpg2 is usually top/upper 1st -- the order for DV, which Vegas traditionally assumes for 720 width vid, is bottom/lower 1st. Far as DVDA goes, if at all possible encode in Vegas or elsewhere & make sure DVDA doesn't re-encode -- it's easy to wind up with reversed fields otherwise, because what fewer encoding settings you have can seem relatively buried in DVDA, & some of the settings are less clear. And be aware that DVD spec mpg2 can be encoded so camera moves like pans look horrible -- everything can be set right, but the encoder, &/or mpg2's limitations made a mess of things.

Far as turning 25 fps into 24... 24 fps is film, & slightly lower than that is IVTC, which removes any extra frames added to film's 24p fps to reach std PAL or NTSC. I'm not in PAL-land, so no idea how true it is or isn't, but simply setting the mpg2 fps flag to 24 or 25 is said to work... a potential problem is interlacing has to be accounted for so something like Vegas isn't putting out 24p when it's really interlaced, not progressive as set in some template. De-interlacing video to get progressive frames can cause video to jump (stutter, shudder etc)... if Vegas outputs interlaced video as progressive frames per a template, it's de-interlacing. Actually changing the fps -- not simply speeding up or slowing down playback, or doing IVTC (InVerse TeleCine) -- is a big NO unless you've got some high end hardware... software simply cannot guess at creating new frames, so it blends existing frames giving you a mess, though removing frames entirely can work *sometimes*. A Catch 22 is that set-top players are going to put out a legal signal to the TV, so if the player wants frames repeated to achieve a higher fps, it will often do so whether you want it to or not -- NTSC players will often do this if fed 24p video.

Burning DVDs is said to work best at 1/2 the rated speed, so 8X for 16X DVDs & so on...This is also often called an old wives' tale with no basis in truth anymore, if ever. Different burners make video DVDs of varying quality -- check out CDFreaks. MediaCodeSpeedEdit can alter firmware settings, including how DVDs with a particular code are written. Burners & players can each have their own dislikes when it comes to brand/model of blanks. And some blanks are real garbage. Most sites that have forums & anything to do with DVDs will have threads &/or lists of blanks to avoid. Often the real challenge is Dual Layer -- I can burn cheap DL blanks all day long, until I approach the max capacity, & then I have to use Verbatim or fail. However a disc problem usually results in the player not reading the video track well or correctly -- I've seen artifacts &/or playback stopping entirely... I have not ever seen anything that looks like bad field order, but imagine it may be possible.

MG = Mega Genius.

Thanks, you nailled it :)
I just re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-rendered the video and put it to dvd and it's perfect. Thanks so much!

Rory

p.s. sorry to the original poster for Hijacking this thread, I hope the problem is sorted for you too!