Herky jerky video

Hi--

I've been trying to edit a movie from multiple clips--AVI clips. I also
tried converting them to WMV 8 clips.

When I assemble them in the timeline, trim them, etc., the video is jerky
jerky, and sometimes doesn't play at all.

Importing the video clips also is extremely slow--whether I check "detect
scene changes' or not.

I'm working on a 2.67 gHz P4 system with 1.25 GB of RAM and about 30 GB of
free HD space.

Any advice for making this run smoothly? I am eager to press on with my
video editing, but it gets pretty frustrating. Thanks--




--
kc

How do your clips look when viewed with Windows Media Player? Are they
jerky there as well as within MM2?

A couple of thoughts,

1) Your system is more than adequate with the possible excpetion of the
amount of HD free space. You don't say how big your clips are. Also,
has your HD been defragged lately?

2) How many background tasks are running on your machine? Is the
system tray pretty cluttered with icons? If so, figure out which ones
you don't need when you do video editting.

3) Were your AVI clips compressed with something like DivX? If so,
then try converting the clips to a non-compressed AVI, DV-AVI, or a
good resoltuion .wmv. I've had better results with .wmv 9.


D

kc wrote:
> Hi--
>
> I've been trying to edit a movie from multiple clips--AVI clips. I also
> tried converting them to WMV 8 clips.
>
> When I assemble them in the timeline, trim them, etc., the video is jerky
> jerky, and sometimes doesn't play at all.
>
> Importing the video clips also is extremely slow--whether I check "detect
> scene changes' or not.
>
> I'm working on a 2.67 gHz P4 system with 1.25 GB of RAM and about 30 GB of
> free HD space.
>
> Any advice for making this run smoothly? I am eager to press on with my
> video editing, but it gets pretty frustrating. Thanks--
>
>
>
>
> --
> kc

A couple things to add to what Spambucket wrote.

First the system resources issue S eluded to could affect playback in the
preview but wouldn't affect how the video was rendered when saving it to
your hard drive, it would only slow down the process, making the question
about how it plays in your Media Player a key question.
Save it to your hard drive as a High Quality NTSC file (no need for DV-AVI
since you are only testing plus 30GB space is not adequate if you want to
work with DV-AVI) and play the clip in your Media Player to see how it
looks. If it is good then you have no worries, the preview quality is lower
than the final product quality.

Another possibility other than system resources is the hard drive space
especially if it is a large hard drive with only 30GB of space left. Try
defragmenting your hard drive.

--
Wojo

Wojo's Web: www.wojos-web.co.nr
Also please visit:
www.remember-christopher.dostweb.com/christopher

"kc" <kc@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:E804ACEA-853B-4311-B668-303CEFA5804C@microsoft.com...
> Hi--
>
> I've been trying to edit a movie from multiple clips--AVI clips. I also
> tried converting them to WMV 8 clips.
>
> When I assemble them in the timeline, trim them, etc., the video is jerky
> jerky, and sometimes doesn't play at all.
>
> Importing the video clips also is extremely slow--whether I check "detect
> scene changes' or not.
>
> I'm working on a 2.67 gHz P4 system with 1.25 GB of RAM and about 30 GB of
> free HD space.
>
> Any advice for making this run smoothly? I am eager to press on with my
> video editing, but it gets pretty frustrating. Thanks--
>
>
>
>
> --
> kc

Thanks to you both for your replies.

This is my second attempt at a response. The first time, MS sent an error
message saying the server was too busy, and my text was wiped out. Here’s
what I remember:

The AVIs look fine in Media Player. How can I tell which type of AVIs these
are?

Background programs include the Zone Alarm firewall and a McAfee anti-virus
suite. The tray also shows icons for my graphics card and audio accessories.
Recently I launched Task Manager and saw some other stuff, too, but it’s hard
to deduce what those programs are and whether they can be safely killed.

I also have resized and defragged the HD, and added an external HD with lots
of storage.

How do you suggest converting my AVIs to other AVI formats, or to WMV9? My
conversion program does not offer WMV9 as an option.

I also notice that when converting a file, my conversion program does not
automatically change the file extension. So if an AVI is converted to WMV8,
for instance, the converted file still has .AVI at the end. Is that likely to
cause problems? Should I manually rename the converted files, changing the
extensions?

Some of my clips, while running only 20 or 30 seconds, add up to many
megabytes. A four or five minute movie might be 200 megs or more. Can MM2
handle these kinds of projects?

--
kc


"Wojo" wrote:

> A couple things to add to what Spambucket wrote.
>
> First the system resources issue S eluded to could affect playback in the
> preview but wouldn't affect how the video was rendered when saving it to
> your hard drive, it would only slow down the process, making the question
> about how it plays in your Media Player a key question.
> Save it to your hard drive as a High Quality NTSC file (no need for DV-AVI
> since you are only testing plus 30GB space is not adequate if you want to
> work with DV-AVI) and play the clip in your Media Player to see how it
> looks. If it is good then you have no worries, the preview quality is lower
> than the final product quality.
>
> Another possibility other than system resources is the hard drive space
> especially if it is a large hard drive with only 30GB of space left. Try
> defragmenting your hard drive.
>
> --
> Wojo
>
> Wojo's Web: www.wojos-web.co.nr
> Also please visit:
> www.remember-christopher.dostweb.com/christopher
>
> "kc" <kc@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:E804ACEA-853B-4311-B668-303CEFA5804C@microsoft.com...
> > Hi--
> >
> > I've been trying to edit a movie from multiple clips--AVI clips. I also
> > tried converting them to WMV 8 clips.
> >
> > When I assemble them in the timeline, trim them, etc., the video is jerky
> > jerky, and sometimes doesn't play at all.
> >
> > Importing the video clips also is extremely slow--whether I check "detect
> > scene changes' or not.
> >
> > I'm working on a 2.67 gHz P4 system with 1.25 GB of RAM and about 30 GB of
> > free HD space.
> >
> > Any advice for making this run smoothly? I am eager to press on with my
> > video editing, but it gets pretty frustrating. Thanks--
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > kc
>
>