DVDA2 preview problems

wobblyboy wrote on 4/20/2004, 8:05 PM
When previewing mpeg2 from explorer, sound drops in and out. After placing on menu and doing preview using F9, sound is fine but video preview is jerky. Also preview of avi files placed on menu is jerky. Preview resolution does not seem to effect this. I do not have this problem in DVDA1. I will probably use DVDA2 because of new features, but the lack of good preview will bug me.

Comments

PeterMac wrote on 4/21/2004, 1:33 AM
Yes, I have this problem too.

The same clips that play more or less smoothly in DVDA1, play in a very stroboscopic way in DVDA2. The latter seems to display one frame and then skip 50!

I can get an idea of how the finished DVD will play, so it's better than nothing, but if there were a way of obtaining the fluidity of DVDA1 I'd be happier.

-Pete
SonySDB wrote on 4/21/2004, 4:36 AM
What is your preview quality set to? Low/Medium/High/Best?

Is external monitor enabled?

This is also being discussed on another thread.
http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?Forum=22&MessageID=271965
PeterMac wrote on 4/21/2004, 7:40 AM
The settings are the defaults as far as I'm aware: specifically, High, with no external monitor. Dropping to Medium fixes the skipping, but then the display is a lot smaller, which is a pity. The system is a W2K Pro machine with 512Mb RAM and an AMD 2400+ processor. The card is a GeForce2.

It (the problem) seems to be with buffering. Even a quite short clip (19 seconds) exhibits the jerkiness, but after one or two plays it becomes much smoother. Curiously, playing a clip first with DVDA1 seems to make its subsequent playback in DVDA2 smoother - in the same session, of course.

As I mentioned before, I look on the Preview simply as a quick and dirty way of seeing how the DVD will hang together, navigation and all. It doesn't have to impress me with its silkiness ;-)

I'd also like to record my admiration for DVDA2; it's a really usable tool now and on my very limited acquaintance as rock-solid as all SoFo/Sony software.

-Pete
wobblyboy wrote on 4/21/2004, 5:56 PM
I tried it at all preview levels. Same result. Also if I turn on external monitor, all I get is the menu. Preview does not show. The sound dropouts occur before I have placed clip on menu and I am previewing directly from explorer window. This occurs with mpeg and quicktime files.
wobblyboy wrote on 4/21/2004, 7:49 PM
So here's whats happening. I set fire wire to NONE (can't preview to external monitor). I try to preview an mpeg2 file from explorer window, and the video is fluent but the sound goes in and out (mostly out). If I place mpeg2 on menu and preview project the sound is fine and the video is jerky. It dosen't matter how high or low I set the preview quality. Quicktime has audio dropouts but not as long or frequent ad mpeg2. Avi's preview fine from Explorer window but have hesitations in project preview.
wobblyboy wrote on 4/21/2004, 9:33 PM
Problem is really pretty minor. I only lose audio when preview directly from explorer window. When previewing timeline or project I get good audio and only slight hesitations in video. Preview to external monitor is quite helpful. Considering all the new features in DVDA, I can live with that. Setting up buttons, backgrounds etc. is not as stright forward, but I like all the options.
SONYBMO wrote on 4/23/2004, 6:54 AM
We've determined the problem with the jerky video playback. This only seems to happen on some systems, and will be fixed in an upcoming release.

In the mean time, please ensure that there are no background processes running, such as virus checkers, other applications, etc.

Thanks

johnmeyer wrote on 4/23/2004, 12:15 PM
Sony,

Glad to hear that there will be a fix. I, too, have a problem with "jerky" preview. I don't know whether it is the same thing. It happens even in the lowest quality resolution. The external preview is turned off. It happens whether I load the AC3 sound file associated with the MPEG, or whether I don't. The same MPEG file plays flawlessly in WinDVD 4.0 on the same computer.

The MPEG file was created with Vegas 4.0 using the standard NTSC DVDA template.

Here's some further information that may help you:

When I play this file in DVDA 2.0 and use Windows Task Manager to watch the CPU resources, it initially pegs at 100% and then settles down to 75%. Wow! If I play the same MPEG file in WinDVD, the CPU usage is between 20% and 25%.

I have no other applications running. I do not use any virus checking or firewall software (or anything else) on this computer. The computer is a 2.8 GHz P4 with 512 Mbytes RAM and two 120 Gbyte drives. I tried changing the temp files to different drives, but this made no difference. I also checked the DMA settings and both drives are set to Ultra DMA Mode 5.

Finally, I also had this same behavior on DVDA version 1.0c. However, that product had lots of problems, and this didn't high enough on the list to complain about. Now that you've done so much to improve the product, this one is now worth complaining about (and fixing).

Hope that helps!
RedEyeRob wrote on 4/23/2004, 5:33 PM
It's not the computer guys it's your software. DVD1 doesnt do this at all on my system. No problems. DVDA2 has terrible audio preview.
johnmeyer wrote on 4/23/2004, 8:23 PM
DVD1 doesnt do this at all on my system. No problems. DVDA2 has terrible audio preview.

I think my problem may be different than yours. I had the problem in DVDA1 also.
wobblyboy wrote on 4/23/2004, 10:09 PM
Don't worry about it. I have communicated with Sony and they have a fix for preview. In the meantime, enjoy all the great new features. I am loving all the stuff I can do now to author very COOL DVDs.
RedEyeRob wrote on 4/24/2004, 7:21 AM
My preview problem has disappeared completely now. It's just wierd that I when I did have it happening with 2, I opened 1 it didnt happen. I don't know what to say about that but it works fine now. No preview glitches.