Newbie Needs Help Fast

Couldbe wrote on 12/21/2003, 4:39 PM
I have captured a little over 6 hours of 8mm film using both Scenalyzer and Vegas capture. Everything was going fine until I was preparing to export the footage to tape this morning and during playback the video is very jittery as a result I assume of dropping frames. I did a search and found someone had a similar problem that was resolved by defragging which I did without any changes to the footage. Some of this footage is on different drives as I have removable drive trays. they are now all defragged

I have tried changing the field order and deinterlacing. Still no luck There are no transitions just straight cuts with titles the footage looks the same, stuttering, jittery, before and after rendering both from the time line as well as from an external monitor and viewing the footage on tape.. However yesterday all the footage looked great no problems at all before and after rendering. When I quit for the night I left my PC on, I usually shut it down, Got up this morning and started to export to tape and well you know the rest. I have tried to capture again today with different footage same problem. The capture looks fine but playback won’t play smoothly. I tried playing back other footage that was captured several weeks ago and it looks great no problem. As I look over this post I hope I didn’t ramble to much but I’m in panic mode. I will appreciate any and all suggestions.
Athlon XP 1,800, 1Gig of Ram, several drives on removable trays, Windows 2000
Vegas 4.OD VX 2000.
Mark

Comments

farss wrote on 12/21/2003, 4:51 PM
So from what you're saying it would seem the problem has occurred during capture. If what was captured during the past plays fine and PTT of that is still OK the it must be the capture right?

I guess during capture you didn't get any Dropped Frames noted by VidCap?

How did you capture the 8mm film? This is the most likely source of the culprit. I'm assuming you did mean Film as in the celluloid stuff.
Couldbe wrote on 12/21/2003, 5:16 PM
Thanks for the reply farss. I use a Cinemate a modified projector with a condenser lens and a VX 2000. I just tried to capture without using 8mm film Just a regular shot and it isn't quite as bad as the film playback but it is still jumpy. I am using sceanalyzer to capture.
Couldbe wrote on 12/21/2003, 5:29 PM
I just used Vegas to capture no drpopped frames and playback works without a problem. I don't undersatand what happened to the all the footage that was captured with Scenalyzer yesterday. I am hoping some how to salvage it. Any ideas?
JackW wrote on 12/21/2003, 5:31 PM
Just a thought: Did you defrag both the data drive(s) and the drive that holds the OS and applications? I've had the same problem you've described, owing to temp files that wound up on the C: drive rather than on one of the drives I use for video and audio capture. The C: drive was nearly full and badly fragmented. Once I cleared out the temp files and defragged, everything worked as it should.

A second cause might be a faulty firewire cable. I've also had that happen. The cable got rolled under an office chair and (evidently) damaged. Changed cables and everything worked fine.

If the playback in the computer looks good, you might try rendering to a new track, then exporting the single track. I could be that the computer isn't fast enough to output bits and pieces from two different hard drives. Additionally, if you have room you might try putting all the video and audio onto one drive

Finally, you don't say what you're outputting to. If it's to VHS, you might try burning a DVD, then recording to VHS from the DVD. There's no recompression between the DVD and the VHS tape, so very little loss of image quality.

Good luck.

farss wrote on 12/21/2003, 5:32 PM
Look at it carefully, if frames are missing I'd say not a chance, you cannot put back what isn't there.
You could probably add some motion blur, that might smooth it out. Problem then will be the render times skyrocket so it might be quicker to recapture anyway.
Couldbe wrote on 12/21/2003, 5:48 PM
JackW-Thanks for the response, I didn't defrag my system drive but that is next on my list. I recently got a new firewire cable and inspected it and it looks fine .Tthe playback is stuttering on the computer monitor as well as the external monitor. I will be outputting to DVD.

Farss- I tried a new capture in both Scenalyzer and Vegas and both now are playing back fine??? I haven't changed anything to that would now make it work.
Couldbe wrote on 12/21/2003, 5:52 PM
A guess another piece to the puzzle is that periodically the capture would just stop yesterday for no apparent reason.