Audio Bleeps at Transitions

[Guest]

I'm having the same problem described in the audio section of the papajohn website:
- Music imported to mm2 from media player cuts out randomly at transitions on the finished movie saved as an .avi file and "back to dv camera".

Someone described a successful technique of changing the transitions so that they did not interfere with the sound in the finished movie. I did not understand the transition method. Could you walk me through the process?

Also, could you explain the easiest way to access my question/answer thread in the Windows XP Newsgroup. I'm having a heck of a time finding my question a day or two later.

 

[PapaJohn]

The Problem Solving.... Audio Issues page is a pretty busy one. Would you
tell us the post date of the one you are referring to, so we can try to help
you interpret it?

What software are you using to read the newsgroup posts. In Outlook Express
there's a setting telling it to delete the posts after a certain number of
days... which can be changed to suit you.
--
PapaJohn
www.papajohn.org

I'm having the same problem described in the audio section of the papajohn website:
- Music imported to mm2 from media player cuts out randomly at

transitions on the finished movie saved as an .avi file and "back to dv
camera".

Someone described a successful technique of changing the transitions so

that they did not interfere with the sound in the finished movie. I did not
understand the transition method. Could you walk me through the process?

Also, could you explain the easiest way to access my question/answer

thread in the Windows XP Newsgroup. I'm having a heck of a time finding my
question a day or two later.

 

[Guest]

Where is this Papajohn page? I'm having the same problem with audio and would love to know the answer!

 

[Phil Kopp]

I'm not "Movie Mom", but I can guess which sections she is referring to.

BTW, these are from the 'Posts' section of the 'Audio issues' page in the
'Problem Solving' section of papajohn.org for those of you just tuning in.

The first:
---
10/28/03 - ...Sony Vaio w/ 1gb ram. When I add transitions to my videos
there is a hiss between the video transitions. The pattern is random. I will
have some video clips clean and crisp while other have this problem. > this
happens to me too. I wondered what it was - almost as if a flash frame
appears for no apparent reason. I've taken to stepping frame by frame at the
transition point and resetting the in point to get rid of the extra frame.
Works every time.
---
specifically, the last two sentences. I wonder if the poster is actually
talking about MM2? How do you step 'frame by frame' in a transition?
'resetting the in point' doesn't make any sense either. I don't know what an
'in point' is, but you have this phrase highlighted on the web page, so I
assume it has some importance you are trying to convey. Be blunt, tell us!


And finally, what extra frame? How could you see an extra frame in MM2? I
have audio problems when doing a fade transition between two still images,
so the idea of an extra frame makes no sense at all. Of course, the 'Works
every time' is what we are all hoping for.

Here's another from your Posts section:
---
9/16/03 -

.... snippage for clarity ...

... With no real reason, it occurred to me that it might be something to

do with the keys in the file.... so what I did was to cut off the smallest
possible bit from the beginning of the second file... saved it back to the
hard drive... re-imported it and I got rid of the glitch... maybe it was
coincidence, maybe not, and I certainly have no technical reason for
suspecting it was the keys... it just worked....

....snippage...

I'm having the same problem... but I don't understand your response. what

is a key? and the key to what file? how would I at least try to recreate
your inadvertant fix.
---
Just like the second poster above, I ask 'what is a key'? I assume you
choose which postings to include in your webpage, so you must have had a
reason to include this. Please enlighten us.

Again, the phrase 'it was the keys... it just worked....' is highlighted on
your page. You must feel there is some signifigance to this so please
explain it for us.

I am having audio problems as well. It seems to occur only in the DV-AVI
files. Inside MM2, all is well. If I generate a wmv file, it is perfect. The
problem is definitly related to transitions, though I am not sure if all of
them do it. Not all the audio 'glitches' occur at transition points for me.
Many do, but often there is a click or some other event between transition
points. Often throughout the clip there is a high pitched squeal that has a
'breathing' characteristic - most annoying.

I have one short clip with no transitions other than having each clip fade
to/from black at each clip edge and it has no audio issues in the DV-AVI
file.

Some posters have commented that they have issues with mp3 files. The sound
track I am using started as a mp3 file. I have since converted it to a wav
file (48K) and a MM2 generated wma file and they all are corrupted in the
DV-AVI output.

I have this problem on two different PCs. One is a Dell Optiplex GX260. 2G
P4, 512M ram, 40G disk. This PC is barely adaquate for MM2 IMO. It works,
but you need patience. The other is a scratch-built machine based on a Asus
P4T533c motherboard. 2.4G P4, 1G ram, 640G RAID0 drive array. It is a joy to
use in MM2. The only common feature they have is that both have 'audio on
the motherboard'. They are not the same chipset however, or I would have
looked into it further.
Both machines run XP, both are uptodate on patches and service packs. Both
have the latest BIOS updates. The Dell has MS Office installed, the other
not.

So, what would you do if you owned these PCs and were having this issue???

Thanks! And a Merry Christmas to all!!

 

[Phil Kopp]

www.papajohn.org/

Unfortunately, there isn't 'an answer' to this issue, but you will find
things to look at and try.

--
Phil

Where is this Papajohn page? I'm having the same problem with audio and

would love to know the answer!

 

[PapaJohn \(MVP\)]

Phil,

What I've started to do with the highligting (bold) is to point out what the
posters found that resolved the issues to make the page a bit easier to
visually scan.

PapaJohn

 

[Phil Kopp]

It's not clear to me that that particular poster is even referring to MM2.
The word 'keys' isn't listed in the MM2 Help index. How does highlighting a
post unrelated to MM2 help us?

I ask again: What would you do if your PC was doing what mine (and many
others) is doing?

Thanks,
Phil

 

[PapaJohn \(MVP\)]

Phil,

Thanks for the notes. Here's how I interpret those posts:

On the 10/28/03 post - The 'in-point' referred to would be the clip trim
in-point, the one you set via the pull down menu > Clip > Set Start Trim
Point. And stepping frame by frame would be via the Nudge Left and Right
options in the same menu... Nudging lets you move one frame at a time (in
the 15 fps editing environment of MM2). So moving over one frame would drop
out a frame that has the audio glitch. Zooming all the way into the timeline
and maximizing the audio track view lets you see frame by frame what is
happening with the audio.

About the 9/16/03 post - I'd read the keys as being an interpretation
similar to the 10/28 post, with the keys or index points being points in a
file that the software uses. You control or set them by telling the project
where to start and stop a clip.

About the website page overall, I tend to include too many posts... and
don't interpret them. I include those that express audio issues,
work-arounds or solutions. I don't make judgments about the validity of the
issues or the resolutions... I leave that for others with the same
problems - to verify the issue or resolution. As the issues and resolutions
start to gel into general info that might help, I summarize the info in the
upper parts of the page.

I assume that too much info is better than too little. The reader can skip
over what isn't of interest.

If I was working on a computer and getting audio issues, I'd use all the
tools that I have in my toolbox... MM2 and others... to work them out. Or
I'd try on another computer. I use 5 networked computers and the issues on
each are different. I usually start with the final product... what I want...
and then work as needed to get it. Because each of our computers are
different, and our toolboxes have different things in them, and we have
different skills, it's hard to be prescriptive. If making movies stopped
being fun and exciting, I'd do something else.


PapaJohn
www.papajohn.org

 

[Phil Kopp]

The problem I'm having is that there isn't any audio glitch until _after_
I've built the DV-AVI file. No amount of nudging and trimming in the
timeline will remove something _that isn't there yet_. Is that not clear?

What you seem to be suggesting is that after having built the DV-AVI file, I
should import it into my collections and then attempt to edit out the
glitches. You might in fact be able to find a specific 'glitch' point, but
at 15fps, you are working with a pretty crude edit tool. I suspect you could
hear a .07 second discontinuity even without the glitch.

Of course, this doesn't (and can't) address the other audio issues, like the
high pitched 'breathing' or 'pumping' effect that is added throughout the
clip.

You seem reluctant to offer any specific suggestions for troubleshooting, so
I'll let you enjoy your holiday season without further interruption.

Thanks,

 

[Phil Kopp]

Hi Movie Mom,

As you have no doubt read, I'm having audio issues as well. Isn't technology
fun! Maybe we can find something in common between our systems that will
shed some light on the problem.

What PC and sound card are you using? Any particular kind of transition you
are using that causes more problems than others? Are there any that don't
cause any problems?

I have a simple test clip I built out of two still images that I use to see
if there are problems. All of the source files are small enough that I can
put them on a CD and take it with me to others that have MM2 installed on
their PCs. I will compile some results and post it on the web soon.

Thanks for any input.
--
Phil

I'm having the same problem described in the audio section of the papajohn website:
- Music imported to mm2 from media player cuts out randomly at

transitions on the finished movie saved as an .avi file and "back to dv
camera".

Someone described a successful technique of changing the transitions so

that they did not interfere with the sound in the finished movie. I did not
understand the transition method. Could you walk me through the process?

Also, could you explain the easiest way to access my question/answer

thread in the Windows XP Newsgroup. I'm having a heck of a time finding my
question a day or two later.

 

[PapaJohn \(MVP\)]

Phil,

The responses are not mine, they come from other posters.

I don't have audio issues, so all I can do is share the notes from others.

I'm not at all reluctant to offer suggestions. The web page includes any
suggestions I have, but most of the audio issues are not yet understood
enough to be covered by something prescriptive.

Have a great holiday. I'm not interrupted by any and all posts/emails... But
I might not respond as quickly as usual.

PapaJohn

 

[Guest]

Phil,
Interesting reading... you seem quite literate, your responses are well researched, direct and to the point. It seems to me that this audio issue is so common when the finished movie is saved to a DV-AVI file that there aught to be an easy answer by now. (Although I fear the easy answer might be: find another program to edit your video.) I love most things about MM2, especially it's ease of use and transition options. I've found a few deficiencies, this sound problem is foremost, I would like to be able to control the placement of titles on the screen a little better, and in order to burn a VCD so that others might view my creations on their DVD player, I need a third party software.

I'm using an HP Pavilion zt1170 notebook computer: P3, 512K Ram, 30GB hard drive. I tend to keep my edited video under 15 minutes, and yes saving my project to DV-AVI or "back to camera" does take "forever", but it would be worth it if the end result was good quality video. I'm not sure of the name of the sound card. In my Device Manager, under "Sound, video and game controllers", it lists Legacy Audio Drivers, Unimodem Half-Duplex Audio Device, and VIA AC'97 Audio Controller (WDM).

I've been using the fade transition. The audio bleep occurs intermittantly, not at every transition, sometimes the bleeps are faint and barely noticable, and sometimes the bleeps are wide gaps in the music. The music was originally copied into Media Player from a CD, and then clipped into MM2. I find the audio problem also occurs when I save the movie "back to camera".

I'm very interested in your research, and of course a possible solution. Would you mind emailing your results to me directly, so that I can be sure to read them: (e-mail address removed)

Thanks for your persistence.

----- Phil Kopp wrote: -----

Hi Movie Mom,

As you have no doubt read, I'm having audio issues as well. Isn't technology
fun! Maybe we can find something in common between our systems that will
shed some light on the problem.

What PC and sound card are you using? Any particular kind of transition you
are using that causes more problems than others? Are there any that don't
cause any problems?

I have a simple test clip I built out of two still images that I use to see
if there are problems. All of the source files are small enough that I can
put them on a CD and take it with me to others that have MM2 installed on
their PCs. I will compile some results and post it on the web soon.

Thanks for any input.
--
Phil

I'm having the same problem described in the audio section of the papajohn website:
- Music imported to mm2 from media player cuts out randomly at

transitions on the finished movie saved as an .avi file and "back to dv
camera".that they did not interfere with the sound in the finished movie. I did not
understand the transition method. Could you walk me through the process?thread in the Windows XP Newsgroup. I'm having a heck of a time finding my
question a day or two later.

 

[Phil Kopp]

Hi Movie Mom - Merry Christmas!

Thanks for your comments. I spend a part of my professional life writing
instructions for an audience with wildly varying technical backgrounds.

MM2 is definitly the 'ease of use' champ, no doubt. I have sampled a couple
of other video editors and though they are far more capable in many ways,
they have a correspondingly more complex user interface and it takes some
doing to do what sometimes is so simple in MM2. Free is a nice feature too!

On the other hand, Movie Studio 3 at $99, the less expensive version of the
professional Video Vegas 4 at $600, is capable of creating an equivelant
DV-AVI file with no extra audio 'features' at all. The audio is excellent
and it comes with DVD software. As far as I can tell, there are no new audio
codecs installed with that program, so I think it is safe to say we are
looking at a software deficiency in MM2 somewhere.

You probably have noticed the new thread called ' Solved? Audio @ Trans
Problem'. The poster has an excellent suggestion and I tried it with the
same results he got. Not perfect, but a lot better than we're getting now.
Basically, he suggests creating a separate 'movie file' from both the audio
and the video portions of your project, then recombine for the final cut.
With the video 'prerendered' there aren't any transitions (as far as MM2 is
concerned) and so the audio problem is drastically lessened. As I said, it
seems to work, if not exactly perfectly.

Thanks for the info on your machine. I would suggest, and you probably
realize, it may be near the low end for serious editing, especially the
disk. Laptop disk drives aren't really known for their performance, so be
sure to keep your disk defragged with plenty of free space. My really good
video editing PC has a ton of very fast disk space and it has fewer audio
problems than my lesser, more normal PC does, which has less space and
slower drives. Both are way above the minimum, but there you go. BTW, in the
manual for Movie Studio 3, they say the first three rules of video editing
are defrag, defrag, defrag.

I haven't tried writing back to the camera yet, but since it is writing the
DV-AVI file, problems in one are sure to be problems in the other.

One thing I am going to try is another sound card. Maybe I'll brave the
after-Christmas crowd and go shopping tomorrow. Both my PCs have built-in
audio, as does your laptop, but sound cards are pretty cheap so I'm going to
try a new one. I'll keep you posted. I also have a friend or two at
Microsoft that I will talk with after the holidays.

If anyone else has an audio problem or even better, a specific solution
strategy, we'd love to hear it!

Thanks!
--
Phil

Phil,
Interesting reading... you seem quite literate, your responses are well

researched, direct and to the point. It seems to me that this audio issue
is so common when the finished movie is saved to a DV-AVI file that there
aught to be an easy answer by now. (Although I fear the easy answer might
be: find another program to edit your video.) I love most things about
MM2, especially it's ease of use and transition options. I've found a few
deficiencies, this sound problem is foremost, I would like to be able to
control the placement of titles on the screen a little better, and in order
to burn a VCD so that others might view my creations on their DVD player, I
need a third party software.

I'm using an HP Pavilion zt1170 notebook computer: P3, 512K Ram, 30GB

hard drive. I tend to keep my edited video under 15 minutes, and yes saving
my project to DV-AVI or "back to camera" does take "forever", but it would
be worth it if the end result was good quality video. I'm not sure of the
name of the sound card. In my Device Manager, under "Sound, video and game
controllers", it lists Legacy Audio Drivers, Unimodem Half-Duplex Audio
Device, and VIA AC'97 Audio Controller (WDM).

I've been using the fade transition. The audio bleep occurs

intermittantly, not at every transition, sometimes the bleeps are faint and
barely noticable, and sometimes the bleeps are wide gaps in the music. The
music was originally copied into Media Player from a CD, and then clipped
into MM2. I find the audio problem also occurs when I save the movie "back
to camera".

I'm very interested in your research, and of course a possible solution.

Would you mind emailing your results to me directly, so that I can be sure
to read them: (e-mail address removed)

 

[PapaJohn]

To Anthony and Phil,

I've used the info in your posts over the past few days, to add to the info
on the Problem Solving... Audio Issues page of my website.

I'm editing it and trying to distill it a bit... any and all comments about
how I've got it written so far is appreciated... from you and Movie Mom, who
is following it all.

Posts come and go, so I want to be sure the essence of what you are finding
lingers on for others.

 

[Graeme Davidson]

GX260.

Phil,

This is a little Off Topic for this thread but I'm very interested that you
mention that you have a Optiplex GX260 with fully updated OS and Bios and
are having problems. I have two Dell GX260s of similar spec to yours and
cannot get MM2 to behave on either of them and they're straight out of the
box + taken to windows update site. Do you have random freezing issues of
your GX260 which are somewhat lessened if you wait for all HD activity to
die down between mouse clicks on the timeframe?

 

[Phil Kopp]

Hi,

I have all kinds of trouble with my Optiplex in MM2. So much so that I only
use it for quick tests of various sorts. I'm fortunate enough to have a
really good PC that works well, so I use that one for anything serious.

The Optiplex series from Dell is pretty narrowly focused to standard desktop
office use. It is inexpensive but with plenty of performance for most garden
variety office apps - like MS Office, e-mail and the sort. All the
interfaces you need are built in, so organizations who buy them only need to
add a monitor and network cable and it's ready to use.

Probably the single greatest 'compromise' is the video system. These PCs use
an Intel Graphics chipset on the motherboard. It is built into the basic
chipset of the PC and so is inexpensive to build. Also, and it's real
achilles heel IMO, is that it uses system memory for its display rather than
seperate and dedicated video memory like you would find on a normal graphics
card. Again inexpensive, but way slower for video intensive apps like video
editing and games. I repeat, this is no disadvantage for normal office-type
use, but becomes virtually unusable in video intensive use. Most modern
games simply won't function on it.

I have a friend with one and he has added an aftermarket AGP video card to
his and he says it makes all the difference! Unfortunately, he is not a XP
user, so I can't run over there with a DVD full of video clips to test. He
is quite technically savvy tho, so if he says it makes a difference, I
believe him.

Depending on the particular model of Optiplex you have, upgrading can be
easy or a pain. Those with 'slim' for 'compact' chassis will have to look
carefully for a low-profile AGP card. The regular large desktop style can
take any normal AGP card. Don't add a PCI card and use that as your basic
video dispaly - it's a step in the wrong direction. A decent AGP card is
well under $100, probably half that. A PCI video card can be used for a
second display, however. Works well. One more caveat is the power supply in
the Optiplex. Not a heavy duty model for sure, probably rated around 180
watts. Don't go looking for the latest, fastest and biggest 3D video card
available. Your power supply won't like it.

So with MM2 and an Optiplex patience is the key. Save often, mouse
deliberately and keep the disk defragged.

Oh yeah, apart from the instability, do you have the audio problems
mentioned above?

Thanks,

 

[Graeme Davidson]

Hi,

I have all kinds of trouble with my Optiplex in MM2. So much so that I only
use it for quick tests of various sorts. I'm fortunate enough to have a
really good PC that works well, so I use that one for anything serious.

The Optiplex series from Dell is pretty narrowly focused to standard desktop
office use. It is inexpensive but with plenty of performance for most garden
variety office apps - like MS Office, e-mail and the sort. All the
interfaces you need are built in, so organizations who buy them only need to
add a monitor and network cable and it's ready to use.

Probably the single greatest 'compromise' is the video system. These PCs use
an Intel Graphics chipset on the motherboard. It is built into the basic
chipset of the PC and so is inexpensive to build. Also, and it's real
achilles heel IMO, is that it uses system memory for its display rather than
seperate and dedicated video memory like you would find on a normal graphics
card. Again inexpensive, but way slower for video intensive apps like video
editing and games. I repeat, this is no disadvantage for normal office-type
use, but becomes virtually unusable in video intensive use. Most modern
games simply won't function on it.

I have a friend with one and he has added an aftermarket AGP video card to
his and he says it makes all the difference! Unfortunately, he is not a XP
user, so I can't run over there with a DVD full of video clips to test. He
is quite technically savvy tho, so if he says it makes a difference, I
believe him.

Depending on the particular model of Optiplex you have, upgrading can be
easy or a pain. Those with 'slim' for 'compact' chassis will have to look
carefully for a low-profile AGP card. The regular large desktop style can
take any normal AGP card. Don't add a PCI card and use that as your basic
video dispaly - it's a step in the wrong direction. A decent AGP card is
well under $100, probably half that. A PCI video card can be used for a
second display, however. Works well. One more caveat is the power supply in
the Optiplex. Not a heavy duty model for sure, probably rated around 180
watts. Don't go looking for the latest, fastest and biggest 3D video card
available. Your power supply won't like it.

So with MM2 and an Optiplex patience is the key. Save often, mouse
deliberately and keep the disk defragged.

Oh yeah, apart from the instability, do you have the audio problems
mentioned above?

Thanks,

Thanks Phil,

You've confirmed my suspicions about the Optiplex, especially the integrated
graphics controller sharing system RAM. If MM2 relies on the parallel
processing that having separate video ram allows, perhaps this is why it
freezes so often on systems without it.

We've got about 180 of these GX240's/GX260s (I just want two to work with
MM2 though!) and it looks like we'll need to consider trying a low profile
AGP card first, bought direct from Dell to avoid any PSU issues
(hopefully!). Is your really-good PC also a Dell ? - I'm just wondering if
there is something amiss with Dells and Moviemaker outside the Optiplex
range.

I agree with your patience and deliberate mouse action policy, furious
clicking often prompts a freeze up in MM2.

At home I've got a Dual Xeon Precision 650 so no trouble there )

I am not aware of the Audio problems on the Optiplex but the trouble is we
can't get them to stay up long enough in MM2 to really find out!

 

[Paul Thompson]

I had this same problem. I noticed that the audio would
skip during transistions into some video clips after the
movie was saved to my camcorder.

I noticed that it happened at the same spots everytime I
saved to dv. I eventually noticed that these clips DID
NOT have any video effects on them. Once I added the
video effect to the clip the problem disappeared.

Hope this helps.

-----Original Message-----
I'm having the same problem described in the audio

section of the papajohn website:

- Music imported to mm2 from media player cuts out

randomly at transitions on the finished movie saved as
an .avi file and "back to dv camera".

Someone described a successful technique of changing the

transitions so that they did not interfere with the sound
in the finished movie. I did not understand the
transition method. Could you walk me through the process?

Also, could you explain the easiest way to access my

question/answer thread in the Windows XP Newsgroup. I'm
having a heck of a time finding my question a day or two
later.