> What application did you use to capture the video clip? What are the settings that make it "uncompressed AVI"?

I used the 'built-in' capture, i guess it's called vegascapture5.exe, straight from the File > Capture menu in Vegas. Re, settings, I didn't set anything up, except for location on HD for captured clip, so it's just the defaults. An uncompressed AVI is one that does not use any codec, thus the file size is huge (335 megs in this test case for a 1min 42 sec clip). Standard 720 x 480 NTSC from miniDV.

What's confusing is that the clip plays back just fine in Trimmer and externally in Media Player 9. You can even play the just captured clip in the capture window and it played back just fine there as well before I closed the window (which Vegas then asked if I wanted to put the clip in the Media Pool, which I did).

But in the Media Pool and on the timeline is where the playback skips and jumps forward for video only, not audio.

Thanks for you help,

Dean

The confusion here is that your video (based upon what you captured with) is definitely standard <compressed> DV format (13GB per hour of footage). It is not truly "uncompressed" as you say. Now that we know this is the case... we can rule out an issue caused by a truly uncompressed AVI file choking your system.

What it sounds like is similar to the dreaded "Firewire/playback stuttering" issue that is caused for various reasons (the common cure being to install new firewire card and/or change the external firewire enclosure). There are MANY posts on this going back a while (I experienced the same issue myself)

However - are you using an external firewire drive? I would think that would be unlikely as your drive is only 40GB right?

If not... I have no idea what the problem is.

> It is not truly "uncompressed" as you say.

I might be wrong, but even though it's true that the data on the TAPE is using DV compression, the
datastream as seen by the capture subsystem is nothing but a sequence of 720 x 480 pixel images
at 29.97 fps. The datastream is basically 'reconstituted' into an uncompressed form the same way
photoshop loads in a jpg image... the file itself is compressed, but the pixels of the image are
uncompressed RGB values in memory, thus taking up the same space in memory as an uncompressed
image. The compressed data coming off a tape is 'converted' to RGB space which can then be
recompressed with your codec of choice, be it none, Indeo 5.1, Divx, Cinepak, DV-NTSC.

With that said, the properties for the captured clip says it is uncompressed and not using any DV codec.
At least this is my understanding and like I said I could be wrong as your statement that DV is 13GB/hr
compares nearly equal to my 350 megs for a 105 second clip.

> What it sounds like is similar to the dreaded "Firewire/playback stuttering" issue...

The clip is not playing off of an external FW drive, so FW bottlenecking or power requirements are
not part of the picture.

> If not... I have no idea what the problem is.

What I have not done is see what happens if I close and re-run Vegas. This was the first time it was
used for capture and playback. Maybe it's just confused... hehehe

Thanks for troubleshooting. I'll report back after starting Vegas up agian and importing the clip.

If you are getting 13GB per hour - that is regular DV compressed video. In fact when you capture via firewire by it's very nature it does a bit-copy of exactly what is stored on the tape.

If you look at the properties in the Media pool it will show the Audio as being uncompressed but the video will show "DV" at the very end of the line. That shows you what it has in it.

That being said.. this fact does not actually help you solve the problem...

If you have not tried re-starting Vegas - I would guess you have not tried a lot of things. Try a re-boot as well.

Good luck.

> If you have not tried re-starting Vegas - I would guess you have not tried a lot of things.

That almost sounded rude. I AM trying things... this forum being one of them.
Anyway, I found the "problem" after restarting and the problem not going away.

The Audio Device was set to Direct Sound Mapper. I changed it to Microsoft Sound
Mapper and video playback did not speed up by 1000% (not a typo... at one point
the 105 second clip played the video portion in 10 seconds in random pulses of
great bursts of speed while the audio happily played normally).

Just changed Audio Device to Windows Classic Wave Driver and set up the various
I/O fields to my SB Live! card and video playback is at normal/correct "speed" using
this as well.

Don't know what the difference btwn the MS and Direct mappers are, but maybe
someone can confirm video playback instability when audio is set to direct rather
than others. Another one for the FAQ, maybe?

Thanks again,

Dean