Visual artifacts when saving to DV-AVI in MM2

[Tom Trombone]

When I save a movie in MM2 as a DV-AVI file, visual artifacts periodically
get inserted into the movie. These are usually little white (or sometimes
green) boxes that pop up on a frame or two. This happens even if I do
nothing more than capture an AVI file into MM2, drag one scene onto the
timeline, and save it as DV-AVI with no other processing. (If I save this
scene a second time, the artifacts appear on different frames in different
places).

I am running nothing else in the background, and in any case I was under the
impression that saving video as AVI was more akin to file-copying than to
video-capturing, i.e., the copy should be identical to the original. The
saved AVI file *does* look identical to the original when played except for
these artifacts. It's very annoying, as I'd hoped to use MM2 just for
simple editing (scene arrangements, a few fades, etc.) of home movies, and
then encode and author with TMPGEnc Plus and TMPGEnc DVD Author, but right
now it seems like I can't trust it. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Tom

 

[Tom Trombone]

Can someone here at least tell me the answer to this question: If I import
a newly captured AVI file into MM2, drag it to the timeline, and save it as
DV-AVI, should the output file theoretically be identical to the original
AVI? Or does MM2 process it somehow? Thanks.

 

[Dean Rowe [MS]]

As long as you're not changing the format (i.e. going from NTSC to PAL or
vice versa or switching between 4x3 & 16x9) then the frames will be directly
copied across from the original DV-AVI file to the new DV-AVI file without
being decoded and re-encoded.

 

[Tom Trombone]

And yet somehow little "blips" are getting inserted every so often. How
could this be happening? There are no other apps running and I've killed
all unnecessary processes. All I do is choose to save a completely unedited
AVI file as DV-AVI (NTSC), and there they are in the output file, though NOT
in the input one. It's quite frustrating, as MM2 would otherwise be a great
editing tool. Is this a known problem? If not, what could be wrong?

Tom

 

[Dean Rowe [MS]]

If you try to save the movie to a WMV file do you have the same problem or
is it just when you're saving to DV-AVI? Have a look at the Problem
Solving... Acceleration and Codecs section on Papa John's website

http://www.papajohn.org

It's possible that you have a codec on the system which is causing the
direct pass through of frames to fail.
Dean Rowe
This posting is provided "as is" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Tom Trombone]

I've posted an example of the artifact I am seeing on my MSN Photos page:

http://tinyurl.com/3ycgz

This is a still from the DV-AVI file I output using MM2. The artifact (the
little blue rectangle) does not appear in the source (in fact, the source
for this one is just a jpeg, but it happens using AVI files as source too.).
I don't seem to see these artifacts when saving as WMV, but as I want to
make DVDs out of these clips I want to save them as DV-AVI.

These artifacts appear on a single frame at random throughout whatever
DV-AVI I save; otherwise, the output file is perfect. If I save the *exact
same* MM2 project a few times in a row, I will see these artifacts in each
resulting DV-AVI file but in *different*, seemingly random places in each
file. Shouldn't MM2 output exactly the same DV-AVI file if I have made
absolutely no changes to the project?

I've tried renaming codecs & turning down hardware acceleration on my system
as Papa John's page suggests, and I've tried killing every non-essential
process and service, to no avail.

Am I asking too much of MM2? Are artifacts like these simply to be expected
when using it?

Thanks,
Tom

 

[John Kelly]

Hi There,

I don't know if this is related, but a similar problem occurs on my
system...and I can not find out why.

Whenever using media player is sometimes get a ghost of the video clip, this
ghost is about a fifth of the original size and appears in the top left corner
of the video display. It occurs maybe 2 or 3 times a week and my solution at
the moment is to exit media player and then re-start it.

I expect its the decoder that is the actual problem but try as I might I cannot
get rid of the problem.

So the point of telling you is this....if the issues are related then exiting
the program(s) and then re-running them may be a solution for you too

 

[John Kelly]

Hello again Tom,

Your message/problem keeps whizzing around the old brain box....so here are
some thought for you...

1) I realise that you have said they appear at random, but, what happens if you
save the video again but to a different file name....does the artifact appear
in the same place/frame?

2) Are all of your cables well shielded? and of good quality

3) Is the electrical supply to your computer a good steady supply with no
brownouts

4) Do you have a spike or surge protector in between your computer and your
power supply. I have one as does my son in Virginia, USA...his power supply is
what some call "Dirty" so like myself he protects all of that equipment with a
Surge Master from Belkin (Model number FSC100u here in the UK)

5) Are all of your cables both internal and external connected firmly?

6) Have you tried gently pushing all of the PCI or whatever cards firmly back
into their slots and done a similar job with the cabled for your disk drives
(of all types)

7) Does anyone on the same electrical supply from your supplier have any large
electrical units, Lathes, Water Lift pumps etc

8) Is the power supply in your house "Smoothed" by your junction box If item
four does not apply

9) If you have children or a neighbour has children do they have any radio
controlled toys or any toy that might develop an electrical interference spike.

10) Brain has seized up !!!

 

[wayne wilhem]

Seems to me the codecs are affected by system performance, that if any of
the system components experience a delay, a hickup so-to-speak might cause
the affect. Since the harddrive represents the slowest device with today's
PC, perhaps some PM on your harddrive might help (scandisk, defrag, obsolete
file cleansing.)

Now, I can't prove the above. Its' simply my suspicion.

 

[John Kelly]

Hi there,

Very valid points indeed....I don't know why I did not say the same as you...I
did the other day to another and we found that his hard drive was not setup for
32 bit transfer and as well was only running in DMA Mode 2.

 

[Tom Trombone]

Hi John,

Hello again Tom,

Your message/problem keeps whizzing around the old brain box....so here are
some thought for you...

1) I realise that you have said they appear at random, but, what happens if you
save the video again but to a different file name....does the artifact appear
in the same place/frame?

No, the artifacts appear in completely different places and on very
different frames. This happens even if I do nothing but save the file and
then immediately save it again under a different name. I've tried saving a
very short file six or seven times in a row; when checked with fc, a couple
of the resulting AVIs are identical (and free of glitches) but the others
are all unique (because they all have artifacts in different places and at
different times).

I wonder if you know for sure: if one saves a MM2 project repeatedly (with
no changes made to it), should all the resulting files be absolutely
identical, or is some kind of variation between them normal? (Perhaps based
on the time the file is saved?) I can't see why there should be any
variation at all; it's not like capturing analog video, after all.
Shouldn't identical input AVIs, video effects, etc., *always* produce
identical output DV-AVI files? (This is the part that really bugs me.)

2) Are all of your cables well shielded? and of good quality

Generally, yes.

3) Is the electrical supply to your computer a good steady supply with no
brownouts
Yes.

4) Do you have a spike or surge protector in between your computer and your
power supply. I have one as does my son in Virginia, USA...his power supply is
what some call "Dirty" so like myself he protects all of that equipment with a
Surge Master from Belkin (Model number FSC100u here in the UK)

I do have a surge protector but it's probably not a particularly good one
(offhand I don't even know what make or model it is). My power supply has
always been pretty clean here, but I suppose this is a possibility (though
I've never had any kind of problem before that could be traced to power
supply fluctuations).

5) Are all of your cables both internal and external connected firmly?
Yes.

6) Have you tried gently pushing all of the PCI or whatever cards firmly back
into their slots and done a similar job with the cabled for your disk drives
(of all types)

Not yet, but I will when I swap my second hard disk with my DVD burner (see
below).

7) Does anyone on the same electrical supply from your supplier have any large
electrical units, Lathes, Water Lift pumps etc
Nope.

8) Is the power supply in your house "Smoothed" by your junction box If item
four does not apply

Not so far as I know (I live in an apartment building).

9) If you have children or a neighbour has children do they have any radio
controlled toys or any toy that might develop an electrical interference spike.


10) Brain has seized up !!!

That's ok, and many thanks for all your suggestions! Here's what I've just
finished trying: I created an empty partition on my first hard disk and
performed a second fresh install of WinXP Pro to it, then installed only the
critical updates, and MM2. The artifact problem *still* occurs but it seems
to do so less frequently. Both my hard disks are on the primary channel,
and the DVD burner is on the secondary; tomorrow I'll try shifting my second
hard disk (with the video files) from primary slave to secondary master, on
the off chance this will help. (Still, I can't help but wonder at the fact
that I've never had a problem before with file transfers between hard
disks.) Both hard disks are currently in Ultra DMA Mode 5, btw.

Thanks again for your help,
Tom

 

[John Kelly]

Hi There,

If the artifacts appear in a truly random way, then there has to be some
external fault. I say external because and provided that you are using the same
computer and that you have not changed the "State" of the computer by rebooting
or adding, removing, exiting or starting any other software then MM2 MUST
produce the same results each time. There is an assumption there that any other
software running does not create a "condition" that affects the state of the
computer during one or more of the rendering process's

I feel that the steps you mention taking still leave it likely that there is
some sort of electrical interference going on. On the matter of living in an
apartment...you will all be drawing power from a common source and any
protection provided at the source will most likely only stop interference
coming in along the wires from the outside. If, for example one of the other
apartments has a device (The Fridge or Freezer is a classic) that is not
properly suppressed (smoothed) then you could easily get this kind of
interference. A question to ask your self about it now seemingly appears to be
less of a problem....Has the weather outside changed such that the temperature
has gone up or down quite a bit, and am I doing the rendering at a different
time of day. Either of these would indicate, because of what we know already,
the possibility of Electrical problems.

A one man business I know eventually solved problems he was from variable
voltage supply (small brown outs) by purchasing a UPS (Un-interruptable Power
Supply) Apart from the more obvious benefit of owning such a device, one of the
benefits is that the supply out of the device is VERY clean...the good ones are
expensive and bulky though.

Here in the UK you can buy just a mains plug, its much bigger than a normal
one. It has built into it a buffer which helps remove spikes. Even though you
may already have such a device it might be an idea to but one of these and make
it so that all power to your computer equipment must pass through this plug
first (All assuming that the loading does not exceed the plug)

Your idea of moving the drive to Secondary Master is one that I have done...in
order to ensure that the drive receives data at the fastest possible rate.

I have to admit that I am now scratching head )

 

[Dean Rowe [MS]]

Very strange. As I said in another post, MovieMaker should be passing
through the frames without any re-encoding if you're going from DV-AVI to
DV-AVI without any format change. You can normally test this yourself by
timing the publish, if the frames aren't being re-encoded then the publish
should be substantially quicker. E.g. If you're have an NTSC 4:3 file then
ensure the options within the Tools...Options dialog match that and then
publish and see how long it takes. Then go into Tools...Options and switch
it to PAL for example and publish it again. It should take longer this time
as every frame has to be converted. Did you get the original DV-AVI file
from capturing within MovieMaker?

Another thing that may be worth trying if you haven't already done it is to
run a memory diagnostic just to make sure you don't have a bad memory chip
somewhere. There are a bunch of utilities out on the Internet that will do a
memory check or you can use the Microsoft one which you can download from
the following web page.

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp