avi files - ISSUES ?? Memory usage ?

[- Bobb -]

I took a trip for a few weeks and have a lot of AVI files.
I copy to pc then imported into WMM.
I add each clip onto timeline then select " Create Movie".
Whether AVI or WMV as output, why does it take SOOOOO long to create the
movie ?
If not being a wise-guy, but asking for real ...

If AVI already and creating AVI, doesn't it just have to append each file
to the previous and put a beginning and end-of file marker on all of them
to create a new file ? why does 15 minutes of camera AVI video take WMM
hours to compile into an AVI file ?
Any pointers / URL's / advice appreciated.

Another thing .. the memory resources of WMM.
While compiling that video I also started task manager and went to bed.
In the morning I saw that it had 5million+ page faults for WMM and max
memory used by it was 165k. I have a gb of memory and purposely left
nothing else running. ANY way to tell it to use more memory ? ( and
perhaps finish a little quicker)

 

[PapaJohn]

Movie Maker remakes/renders the new files from scrach... it's not a simple
matter of appending a file.

For the time to render a movie, the process is CPU intensive.... it goes as
fast as the CPU lets it. It needs memory too, but even with more, it won't
finish quicker. Double the CPU speed and it'll finish twice as fast.

 

[- Bobb -]

Movie Maker remakes/renders the new files from scratch... it's not a
simple matter of appending a file.

For the time to render a movie, the process is CPU intensive.... it goes
as fast as the CPU lets it. It needs memory too, but even with more, it
won't finish quicker.

But it wasn't 'going as fast as the CPU can".
I watched it for a while and was using about 45-50% of usage- rest was "
System Idle Process".

5million+ page faults ? And why doesn't it use 100% of CPU ??
It SEEMS to me that the app is designed to work on small chunks of data
(otherwise avg mem usage would be greater than 165k wouldn't it ? ) If it
could work on 4950k (165k*30) at a time, wouldn't it finish about 30 times
faster ?

As for appending ... how I should have phrased that:
Conceptually, my camera output is nothing but a series of pictures, right
?
Line 'em all up in a row, add some header info, then save as one file.
What if .. instead of me saving the camera output as a file first .... is
it any BETTER /faster for me to import the video right from the camera to
WMM ? What I'm usually trying to do it "put all of the movies that I just
took on my camera" into one file. So a weeks worth of travel ends up as
one file called " week1.avi ".

Double the CPU speed and it'll finish twice as fast.

I'm not arguing , but it's a 2ghz CPU with 1 gb of memory and took hours
to render the file ... just seems like it shouldn't be that big a task for
a system with that horsepower.

Thanks,
Bobb

 

[PapaJohn]

Maybe your gobs of page faults means you have a problem with your hard
drive...

Only uncompressed movie files are just a series of pictures... all cameras
record in using some compression. Maybe the keyframes (which are the full
pictures) occur every 6 seconds... the data in the other 180 frames or so
between keyframes have to be de-arranged or re-arranged on the fly, which
takes time.

 

[- Bobb -]

Maybe your gobs of page faults means you have a problem with your hard
drive...

Only uncompressed movie files are just a series of pictures... all
cameras record in using some compression. Maybe the keyframes (which are
the full pictures) occur every 6 seconds... the data in the other 180
frames or so between keyframes have to be de-arranged or re-arranged on
the fly, which takes time.
--

Ok - I thought AVI in digital camera was nothing but consecutive pictures.
If not and no way around it ... I was looking for a shortcut - that's just
the way it is.

Only that one app ever gets page faults like that - nothing in error
reports. Suspected by default it grabs small amount of memory ( to be
compatible with older PC's ??) then gets another chunk - processes it -
then page faults again - processes it, etc .

I'll have to either learn to live with it or find another app to use. Any
recommendations for simple app to use for this application ? I don't need
fancy editing - just take several avi files and string them into one file.

Thanks again.

 

[PapaJohn]

My Canon PowerShot camera records in Motion JPEG files (AVI extension)
that's a series of JPG pictures... so you would think there's a utility that
could do it. I don't know of one.

Do a search... I see something from Crystal Products called 'Video Joiner'

 

[John Inzer]

Ok - I thought AVI in digital camera was nothing but consecutive
pictures. If not and no way around it ... I was looking for a
shortcut - that's just the way it is.

Only that one app ever gets page faults like that - nothing in error
reports. Suspected by default it grabs small amount of memory ( to be
compatible with older PC's ??) then gets another chunk - processes it
- then page faults again - processes it, etc .

I'll have to either learn to live with it or find another app to
use. Any recommendations for simple app to use for this application ?
I don't need fancy editing - just take several avi files and string
them into one file.
Thanks again.

================================
Maybe this article will offer some ideas:

VirtualDub: Joining AVI files
http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/virtualdub_join_avi.cfm

Or...maybe the following freebie would be worth a try:

AviSplit
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/avisplit.html
split, clip and join AVI files

Or do a Google search for
join .avi
you can find lots more possibles.


--

John Inzer
MS Picture It! -
Digital Image MVP

Digital Image
Highlights and FAQs
http://tinyurl.com/aczzp

Notice
This is not tech support
I am a volunteer

Solutions that work for
me may not work for you

Proceed at your own risk

 

[Graham Hughes]

The issue is we don't kow what sort of avi the origianl file is, but we know
it's being converted before it leaves MM, so it is going to take ages to do.
A camera avi is different to a dv.avi which will be made from MM.

avi = audio video interleaved, but there are hundereds of codecs that can
make an avi.
AVI is just a container, like the box for a mixed centre box of chocolates.
The box of chocs may have a strawberry cream inside but unless we have the
index we don't know which one it is.
avi's can be mpeg1/2/4, mjpeg, divx, xvid, dv, uncompressed, mov and
literally hundreds of other formats.

dv.avi is the only avi that natively works properly with MM, any other one
would need converting, not just to the dv.avi file type, but maybe also from
640x480 to 720x576 (for PAL), from 15 frames per second to (25 for PAL) etc
tec.