Really bad quality of preview/project playback ( VF tech dudes...help me! :->)

Madmardigan wrote on 12/12/2001, 8:41 AM

Hi,

I am having really bad quality issues both in video as well as audio. I have put together a six minute clip from .avi clips shot with a sony PC-100. Each individual .avi looks/sounds great when "launched" using Media Player (or whatever actually). But...when I bring multiple clips into VF from the trimmer and put them into the video and audio tracks w/ an accompanying music track, the "playback" has serious quality problems. Skipping video and audio. Pixelated image etc. THEN when I try to Rend to Preview it's absolutely unviewable...huge pixels, terrible sound etc.

I am using a WIN ME Sony VAIO 800+mhz machine with a 40gb hard drive partitioned into 2 fully optimized partitions. Prior to working on the project I also disable every startup item except sys tray and load power profile so I am using next to no resources and there should not be any thing else competing.

I actually had this problem about a year ago when I first got VF and I quit in frustration. My hope now is that the experts (you people) have perhaps gotten this all "dialed in".

Any ideas?

Thanks hugely in advance. I've promised this project as a Christmas gift and I'm beginning to panic!

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 12/12/2001, 12:34 PM

What file type are you rendering to? What settings/template are you
using when you render? What player software are you using to watch
the rendered video?

Madmardigan wrote on 12/12/2001, 1:46 PM

Actually, I haven't even done a full rendering, I haven't tried that yet as the results i'm seeing just doing a "Render for Preview" are so bad. Are these types of rendering different? I guess I don't really know what happens behind the scenes but when I Render for Preview (using Windows Media Player), the sound is terrible (screechy, sounds like it's coming out of a can etc) and the video is all blocky and unviewable. That said, I even get bad results just "playing" the project within VF. The original source .avi files look/sound great before I put them into a project but it seems as tho' when they are added to a project, something is going wrong.

wvg wrote on 12/12/2001, 2:22 PM

If your source file is good, I would first suggest you render just a minute or less to uncompressed AVI and see how the quality is. It should remain high.

Certain rendering templates use high compression. That can cause the video syptoms you describe. They will only get worse if you attempt to view the video at double or full screen with MediaPlayer or some other player.

Which template you select depends in part on how you plan to view the completed video. I almost always make VCD's so they can play on my DVD player.

Just curious, how is your resolution and color depth set on your video card? You can check from Control Panel in Windows.

I would try rendering with various templates to see if you can rule out one or more causing you problems. I happen to like to render to RM. Try rendering at 1 MBPS which will give excellent quality and still offer pretty high compression compared to AVI.

As far as playback being choppy in the preview window that is related to your CPU speed. Today a 800 Mhz PC isn't that fast. It will not effect the final output.

Madmardigan wrote on 12/12/2001, 2:41 PM

Thank you very much! I will try all you suggest!

SonyEPM wrote on 12/12/2001, 2:51 PM

Capture some DV clips thru your 1394 card, add them to the timeline, (and cut them up/move them etc to create a small video sequence).

Render that sequence as .avi using the PAL DV template, then print that file back to your camera- it should look great.

If it doesn't you might have a 3rd party DV codec on your machine. If you aren't rendering to .avi/DV, please tell us what you are rendering to-

Madmardigan wrote on 12/13/2001, 8:38 AM

I'll give that a try. Thanks!

Bobsquarepants wrote on 12/14/2001, 9:19 PM

I know what you speak of! I have a P4 1.5Ghz with an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon. I can capture .AVI's with no problem and play them back with great quality in Windows Media Player, but as soon as I put them in the editor and render them as AVI's, I lose half of the colors and its really grainy....it looks like I have my video card set at 256 colors...which I don't, it is set at 32bit true color. Help!

Madmardigan wrote on 12/18/2001, 1:50 PM

I wish I could BSP! I just don't know what to do. I'll keep working on it and if I find the magic bullet I'll let you know!