Problem viewing DV in Preview Monitor

Jillian wrote on 9/14/2013, 9:26 PM
I am using MS12 platinum/64bit, on Windows 7.

Normally I edit NTSC 29.97 AVCHD with no problems with the Preview Monitor set to Preview (Auto).

I recently needed to edit some old VHS footage which I captured through a Canopus capture card as type two DV using Win DV. The footage plays perfectly in several media players and I can play and edit it without problem in Adobe, Pinnacle, Avid, and Magix editors.

However, when I load it into MS12/64, my preferred editor, and begin to play the raw footage at Preview (Auto) it starts out playing at 29.97fps, but after about a minute it begins to slow down. After three or four minutes of playing the audio is still fine but the video slows to 3-4fps.

If I reduce the Monitor to Draft (Half) it will play at 29.97 for five or six minutes then slows down to 14-16fps.

I am using a GeForce 660 card with 2GB memory. Turning GPU on or off doesn't seem to make any difference.

At first I thought it might be a corrupt tape or file, but I've captured from 10 different VHS and SVHS home-burned and commercial tapes all with the same results. Everything can play the files with no problems except Movie Studio 12. Here are the quick specs on the files:

General
Complete name : D:\DV-Captures\50thAnniv-WinDV.13-09-14_09-06.00.avi
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
Format_Commercial_IfAny : DV
Format profile : OpenDML
File size : 2.66 GiB
Duration : 12mn 30s
Overall bit rate : 30.5 Mbps

Video
ID : 0
Format : DV
Codec ID : dvsd
Codec ID/Hint : Sony
Duration : 12mn 30s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 24.4 Mbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Standard : NTSC
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:1:1
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 2.357
Stream size : 2.51 GiB (94%)

Audio
ID : 1
Format : PCM
Format settings, Endianness : Little
Format settings, Sign : Signed
Codec ID : 1
Codec ID/Hint : Microsoft
Duration : 12mn 30s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 137 MiB (5%)
Interleave, duration : 33 ms (1.00 video frame)
Interleave, preload duration : 33 ms

Any ideas? Is this a known problem with MS12? I couldn't find anything with search, but maybe I didn't use the proper search terms.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Comments

Steve Grisetti wrote on 9/14/2013, 10:07 PM
That definitely should not be the case. DV should play more easily than anything!

What are your project properties? Have you matched them to the DV-AVIs?
Jillian wrote on 9/15/2013, 11:31 AM
Hi Steve, thanks for the response.

I used "match media" and the project is NTSC DV (720x480,20fps) lower field first, same as the file.

I've tried re-rendering to a "Sony" DV avi file, but the same thing happens. I've also captured some DV from my old DV cam with the same results. The same with DV footage that was stored on a back-up disc. All DV that is over a few minutes long seem to "bog" Movie Studio down. If I only put a few minutes of event(s) on the timeline it will play fine.

This is driving me nuts, because I could edit and view DV without problem since the days of Screenblast!

Thanks again
Steve Grisetti wrote on 9/15/2013, 11:37 AM
What device did you use to digitize your video and what program did you use to capture it?

It is possible that you captured your video as Type 1 AVIs instead of the more standard Type 2. Microsoft products (like Windows MovieMaker) are about the only editors that edit Type 1 AVIs.
Jillian wrote on 9/15/2013, 12:04 PM
Capture devices are a Canopus ACEDV computer card and a Panasonic Camcorder via firewire. All captures are Type 2.

Most of the captures have been with Win DV (a small capture/burn-only program). I've also captured with Sony Movie Studio, Pinnacle Studio 16, Corel Movie Edit Pro 2013, Adobe Premiere, Nero Video 11 and the Canopus Capture program that came with the card.

All captures show the same result... they'll play fine in everything except Movie Studio.

In Movie Studio, they'll play at 29.97 only if I use Draft (Half), or sometimes if I use Draft (Auto).
musicvid10 wrote on 9/15/2013, 3:14 PM
"
This is with no effects, pan/crop, titles or generated media on the timeline?
Very strange.
Steve Grisetti wrote on 9/15/2013, 3:52 PM
I agree. Something is definitely wrong here.

These DV-AVIs should fly through Movie Studio without the program even working up a sweat!
musicvid10 wrote on 9/15/2013, 6:43 PM
I have a single core XP desktop that previews DV smooth as butter.
Jillian wrote on 9/15/2013, 9:51 PM
Hi Steve and Musicvid,

Thanks for your responses.

I have been doing a lot of experimenting but have not made any advances in getting MS to play DV better. However, I have found out several interesting factors about what is happening inside my system after MS has been playing a project 15 to 20 minutes.

When I play a complex 1920x1080 60i AVCHD project with titles, effects, music and voiceover, MS uses all 8 threads (4 cores & 4 threads) of my CPU at 25-35%, about 3.5GB memory, and a CPU temp of 35-45 degrees. (By the way, I have 16GB memory available, so memory does not seem to be the problem.)

When I play a simpler 1920x1080 60i MPG2 project, MS uses 4 cores but no threads at 10% CPU, about 3.3GB memory at a CPU temp of 35 degrees. A 720x480 29.97 MPG plays essentially the same.

Playing a project with straight DV, no titles, effects, etc., uses One core and One thread at 80-90%, 4.3GB memory at a CPU temp of 50 degrees. The three other cores but no threads show a small amount of random activity.

So, it looks like MS12/64bit is dumping all of its DV preview processing onto one core which may be causing that core to overheat and automatically slow down???? Who knows?

At this point I am tempted to capture MPG rather than DV and edit that way. (It would be a DV stream transcoded to MPG.) I don't know how much quality I would lose, but my original tape is the only known 25 year old VHS copy of my parents 50th Wedding Anniversary and I want to save as much of the little quality remaining. I am capturing through a TimeBaseCorrector with noise reduction and color adjustment, but I still need to do some white balance, saturation, and highlight/shadow work where it is most needed.

So, I suppose the question is should I edit DV with lousy preview, or edit a transcoded MPG file?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again for your help.
musicvid10 wrote on 9/16/2013, 9:27 AM
"So, it looks like MS12/64bit is dumping all of its DV preview processing onto one core"
It's always been that way. It's the codec, not Vegas that sets the pipeline. Remember, VFW codecs started life in a 16-bit world!

Try this: Go into Preferences, uncheck "Use Microsoft DV Codec," and check "Ignore third party codecs." Close and restart Vegas. Try different combinations and see which ones make a difference.

A question I forgot to ask: Was your DV footage captured in Windows Movie Maker? If so, it is noncompliant, and may need recapturing to work right in Vegas. With the Canopus, you are capturing through firewire, right?
MSmart wrote on 9/16/2013, 10:23 AM
For comparison, here's a file from a DV-AVI cam captured with Video Capture (vidcap60.exe):

General

Complete name                    : L 2-1 - Clip 003.avi

Format                           : AVI

Format/Info                      : Audio Video Interleave

Format_Commercial_IfAny          : DV

Format profile                   : OpenDML

File size                        : 13.9 GiB

Duration                         : 1h 5mn

Overall bit rate mode            : Constant

Overall bit rate                 : 30.4 Mbps

Recorded date                    : 2013-05-18 19:09:38.000

TAPE                             : L 2-1

TCOD                             : 369702667

TCDO                             : 39594221333

VMAJ                             : 4

VMIN                             : 0

STAT                             : 117556 0 3.427366 1

DTIM                             : 30299131 1037780224



Video

ID                               : 0

Format                           : DV

Codec ID                         : dvsd

Codec ID/Hint                    : Sony

Duration                         : 1h 5mn

Bit rate mode                    : Constant

Bit rate                         : 24.4 Mbps

Width                            : 720 pixels

Height                           : 480 pixels

Display aspect ratio             : 16:9

Frame rate mode                  : Constant

Frame rate                       : 29.970 fps

Standard                         : NTSC

Color space                      : YUV

Chroma subsampling               : 4:1:1

Bit depth                        : 8 bits

Scan type                        : Interlaced

Compression mode                 : Lossy

Bits/(Pixel*Frame)               : 2.357

Stream size                      : 13.1 GiB (95%)

Encoding settings                : wb mode= / white balance= / fcm=auto focus



Audio

ID                               : 1

Format                           : PCM

Format settings, Endianness      : Little

Format settings, Sign            : Signed

Codec ID                         : 1

Duration                         : 1h 5mn

Bit rate mode                    : Constant

Bit rate                         : 1 536 Kbps

Channel(s)                       : 2 channels

Sampling rate                    : 48.0 KHz

Bit depth                        : 16 bits

Stream size                      : 718 MiB (5%)

Interleave, duration             : 267 ms (8.00 video frames)

Interleave, preload duration     : 266 ms


At first blush, the comparison indicates the OPs file is good and shouldn't cause a playback issue.
Jillian wrote on 9/16/2013, 1:39 PM
Hi Fellows,

The DV is Type 2, captured with Win DV. But, I've also captured with Movie Studio and several other capture programs.

The Video comes out of my VCR via S-Video, goes into the Canopus card where it is changed to DV, then captured. I've also tried capturing through two different DV camcorders via Firewire.

The files play fine in every player and editor I've tried except Movie Studio 12/64 bit.

I checked and made sure Use Microsoft DV Codec was "False" and Ignore third party codecs was "True," and I tried every combination of those two switches. If I make Use Microsoft DV Codec "True" I lose the picture in the monitor. Otherwise, no improvement.

This is what happens when I play a DV project:

The file plays fine at first at 29.97fps. CPU usage is 3% on four cores, memory is 2.5GB and CPU temp is 35 degrees. After a few seconds, Memory begins to rise as does CPU usage. When CPU usage gets to about 10% and memory to 2.8GB the fps starts to drop. Minute by minute the memory gets bigger and bigger and CPU usage and temperature keeps rising. Then the processing starts to move from four cores to the first core. After about ten minutes the Memory gets to 4.5GB and the CPU usage of the first core reaches 70%, although the overall usage stays about 15%-25% because three of the cores are essentially not working.

Now, the really interesting part. If I change the preview setting from say Preview (Auto) to Draft (Auto) the memory usage will drop to 2.5GB and processing will drop to 3% on four cores. Then the process starts all over again. It doesn't help to change from say Preview (Auto) to Preview (Half).

I believe I can have Movie Studio 64 bit and 32 bit installed at the same time, so I'm going to install the 32 bit version and see if this is a problem that only affects the 64 bit version. I also think I still have Vegas 11 so I can try it also.

Thanks for your help and suggestions.
Jillian wrote on 9/16/2013, 2:54 PM
SUCCESS!

I downloaded and installed the latest version of Media Studio 12 32Bit. It plays all the DV footage I've thrown at it. Preview (Auto) uses 3% CPU on four cores. If I increase to Best (Auto) the CPU usage on core one goes to 50%, but the other cores are not affected.

So, it appears that at least my version of MS12 64 bit has a bug playing DV.

It also appears that MS 12 32bit is "reading" all of my projects, titles, effects and add-ons such as NewBlue and VAAST, but I haven't had a chance to actually try out everything. In fact, I can't really tell which version of Movie Studio I've opened without looking in Help-About Movie Studio Platinum.

Interesting.

Thanks to all for your help.
vkmast wrote on 9/16/2013, 3:14 PM
>>>It also appears that MS 12 32bit is "reading" all of my projects, titles, effects and add-ons such as NewBlue and VAAST, but I haven't had a chance to actually try out everything. In fact, I can't really tell which version of Movie Studio I've opened without looking in Help-About Movie Studio Platinum.<<<
Those earlier (32-bit only) plug-ins don't even show in your v12 64-bit, so that will tell you as well.
When using the 64-bit version of Movie Studio, third-party plug-ins will work only if they are 64-bit plug-ins. (See Release Notes for more).