video jumpy and voice not in synch

SusanS wrote on 12/25/2009, 8:00 PM

My camcorder is a JVC Everio GZ-HD10. My software is Vegas Movie Studio 9, Platinum, just upgraded to most recent version 9.0b. I put several short (about a minute) recordings onto the Project Media pane for editing.
But when I try to play these videos, ie before any editing, just from the track, there are 2 things wrong.
First thing is the voice is not aligned with the video. I did read about synchronization in one of the help articles - but in my case, nothing has turned pink and the lack of synchronization has not been detected by the program.
2nd thing is the picture is quite jumpy.
It's gotta be a simple setting somewhere - I'm hoping. But I can't find what to do. The original playback in my camcorder works just fine. And the playback is fine on the computer, even with the video-editing software that came with the camcorder, - so I know the files aren't corrupted. But obviously I want to use my Sony software.
Please help and spell it out for me. I'm a newbie. Thank you.
.....Susan

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 12/25/2009, 9:36 PM

Please post your system specs. Your CPU plays a big part in preview smoothness, especially with AVCHD source.

Although this has been posted many times, for best preview you must:
-- Match your project properties to your media,
-- Set preview properties to Preview / Auto,
-- Turn Off "Scale to Fit Preview"
-- (Possibly) Turn Off "Simulate Device Aspect"

If you are unsure what these mean, the Search function on these forums will help you.

SusanS wrote on 12/26/2009, 9:01 AM

System specs - windows XP professional, service pack 2, Intel (R) Pentium (R) M processor 1.86 GHz 1.86 GHz, 1.25 GB of RAM. So yes it's an older computer, but there's plenty of empty space left on the hard drive: only an 80 gigabyte hard drive but used space is only 29.1 GB, and available free space is 45.3 GB.

Now here's something which is probably hopeful: Altho the playback from the track IS awfully jumpy etc, the playback directly from the trimmer pane is beautiful and is totally in synch with voice. What the heck happens to it when it gets transferred to the track??

I'll definitely check those 4 suggestions you gave, MusicVid. Then I'll trim using the trimmer pane. But (I know this is putting the cart before the horse) after it's trimmed, won't I need the playback from track to work properly in order to add some background text and background music??

Thanks again and especially thanks for answering during this long holiday weekend!!
........Susan

musicvid10 wrote on 12/26/2009, 9:18 AM

Thanks for providing relevant information and asking good questions.
I'll try to tackle them one at a time in the order you asked.

1) Your processor is way too slow with one core to preview AVCHD on the timeline. The solution (short of a major hardware upgrade) is to do an "Intermediate" or "Proxy" render of your camera's video first to another codec, that is not going to be so demanding on your CPU.

2) The reason the preview is better in the trimmer is because it is smaller. Chopping the dimensions in half uses only 1/4 as much of your resources. You can see the same results by reducing the preview window size, assuming you have taken the steps in my first post.

3) Now this is where it gets interesting. Anytime you put a title, effect, transition, pan/crop, etc. into your project, there is no video file automatically created, so Vegas must do a virtual render and playback at the same time. This places an added burden on your system, and that portion will slow down on all but the fastest systems. The solution is to do either a Prerender or RAM preview of the effect, which Vegas handles nicely.

4) Doing a forum search for the quoted terms above will get you started towards success, even with a slow machine. I know my two posts are a lot to wrap your head around all at once, but if you take the suggestions one at a time, and read your Vegas help manuals, it will become second-nature after a while.

SusanS wrote on 12/26/2009, 11:56 AM

MusicVid thank YOU for validating my questions - it sure helps me to feel less like an idiot! After some forum searching, I've discovered you've given that same list of things - to optimize preview playback - MANY times! You must have infinite patience!

Also thank you for that explanation - it's all starting to make sense. Guess I'll use some patience myself, and just plod along, learning as I go. Good to know I'm on the right track.

.....Susan