photo sequence gettting hung up

s k r o o t a y p wrote on 8/9/2006, 8:05 PM
~i have a dozen pictures on track 1 that are supposed to appear for about a third of a second each then go to the next one on the beat of the backing music (so the sequence is only a few seconds long). is it me or does VMS4 not really like to perform this sort of thing? every time i bring up the project i have to readjust the photos length because it gets hung up and drags on like the 8th or 9th photo and is then "jerky" to the end of the sequence. i tried locking and grouping but it didn't help. all the other intracacies of the project stay put nicely. is there any way to help this?

Comments

ritsmer wrote on 8/10/2006, 12:19 AM
I guess that the problem appears using the preview function?
If yes - it is because VMS needs very much CPU power to create the preview "on the fly".
In the lower right of the preview window the actual frames per second is shown - you will see it decrease to nearly nothing - and then the jerky preview comes.
There are 3 ways to get around this:
1) decrease the preview quality. Making the pictures change to the music beat I often have to go down to Draft and even only see this in a small preview window.
2) prerender the sequence to RAM. Select a loop region and go to the Tools + Build dynamic RAM preview (or just press Shift+B in the selected loop region) Then VMS prerenders the region and when you now preview the region it does it without jerking. Because this is very RAM consuming it is only possible to prerender a small amount (5-10 seconds)
3) prerender the sequence to a file. Select a loop region (may be much longer than the 5-10 seconds - can go into minutes) Then goto Tools + Selectively prerender video (or just press Shift+M) Then VMS prerenders the selected region. The prerendered region is then marked with a bar over the loop and when it is previewed VMS does not create the preview "on the fly" but automatically shows the video from the prerendered file (or files if more parts of the video were prerendered) - again without jerking.

By the way: If anything is changed on the Time Line in a prerendered region VMS automatically finds out that this region is not prerendered any more and removes the bar over the region.

Oh sorry - I see you wrote VMS 4 - I only have version 6 but hope there are similiar possibilities in version 4 also.
mtnmiller wrote on 8/10/2006, 8:20 AM
I've come across similar problems in creating slideshows, and have solved the problem by reducing the size of the images in Adobe photoshop, then reinserting them in the timeline. Given the limits of TV resolution, there's no reason to have a 2mb photo at 20 inches, unless you're zooming in super tight.

It can take some time, depending on how many photos you have, but I just go into photoshop, and under "Image size", adjust the setting to 72 dpi, and the photo at 10 inches for each image. Then simply place the resized images in the timeline. That sizing seems to work for me in allowing a smooth preview, and also decent quality when fully rendered.

There may be a better dpi/size ratio to use that someone can comment on, but this works well for my purposes.
s k r o o t a y p wrote on 8/10/2006, 6:23 PM
great ideas! i am trying to decrease the preview quality to get started but i can't see where. right clicking on the preview window seemed the intuitive thing to do but the option does not appear. where do i decrease the preview quality?
rustier wrote on 8/10/2006, 7:48 PM
sorry skrootayp - there is no preview quality settings in VMS4. The best you can do is scale the window down to a smaller size - or - you can render to an external player. click help, index, render to external player for the procedure.

Just remember these two things: 1)preview is not always an accurate view of what you will see - Especially with mixed media. This goes for any and everybody I don't care how good a computer you have. It is not uncommon for people to see stuttering or jerkiness in the preview - depending on the source video type, the amount of effects applied to it, and your computer.2) IMO the best way to see how the thing will look is to just go with your best shot and burn it onto a DVD or whatever final format and view it in its final form. Sometimes the timing of complex sequences may need to be adjusted to deal with the way it will be watched.

In your case you can select a short loop to burn into its final form to check your timing (your photo sequence timed with music). The short loop will spare you the time of rendering and burning the whole project. Use the sound graph to help you set your shots to the music (i.e. a downbeat of a drum is represented by a large swing on the graph)

you may just discover you were worried about nothing.
IanG wrote on 8/11/2006, 1:34 AM
There might be another option - go to Options /<shift>Preferences. This will bring up a new tab called internals. Select this, type "preview" in the search box and you'll see an option "Display preview every x frames" (or something like) which should be set to 2. Try increasing that number and see if it helps. NOTE I've never had this problem, so I don't know whether it'll work. I did try playing with different values though and my pc didn't explode, so it looks like you won't do any damage even if it's unsuccessful.

Ian G.
Chienworks wrote on 8/11/2006, 3:23 AM
"There may be a better dpi/size ratio to use"

Yes, there is. Ignore DPI completely. Don't even think about it ... at all. It's an extra confusing step that has no place in video. Simply think about pixel size for the image. NTSC is 654.5x480 and PAL is 787x576. Resize your image close to or a bit bigger than those sizes and you'll be fine.

If you want to zoom in, say 3x, then multiply those sizes by 3.
s k r o o t a y p wrote on 8/11/2006, 6:18 PM
~thanks for the great responses. i thought i was going to be stuck on this one - but with your help it's coming together!