Output from Movie Maker unpleasantly jerky when camera pans across scene

[prepbgg]

Whenever I edit a movie clip which includes panning movement in Movie
Maker the resulting movie is unpleasantly jerky.

I don't think there is anything wrong with my source movies or with the
processing capacity of my computer because I've done numerous
experiments, loading a source movie into Movie Maker then saving
(without any edits) and comparing the output with the result of saving
in wmv format from Windows Media Encoder. Whichever output settings in
Movie Maker I choose, even the theoretically highest quality, the
output from Movie Maker is equally jerky, whereas the output from Media
Encoder is not.

I have seen references on the web to there being trade-offs between
"sharpness" and "smoothness" when compressing a movie. Is it possibe to
adjust the settings in Movie Maker to force it to go for greater
smoothness?

 

[PapaJohn]

you can create custom profiles and change the smoothness setting... see my
Save Movie > Custom WMV Profile page.

 

[prepbgg]

you can create custom profiles and change the smoothness setting... see my
Save Movie > Custom WMV Profile page.

Thanks very much for your reply, PapaJohn, and for referring me to your
wonderfully informative website..

I've tried following your advice, but I'm afraid I've not yet succeeded
in producing non-jerky output from WMM. I've created custom profiles
with different smoothness settings, but I can see no difference in the
jerkiness of the output. In fact, every single version of the movie
that I have created from WMM (including a DV-AVI version, which should
presumably be the highest quality) has appeared to be equally jerky.

I hope it might help if I describe in more detail what I have done:-

I started by finding settings that produced acceptably smooth results
when compressing a specimen movie in WME (Media Encoder). I chose "DVD
quality video (2 Mbps CBR)" because this incorporated a smoothness
parameter.

Next, I tried to emulate these settings in a new profile for WMM by
copying the settings from the Session Properties -> Compression -> Edit
window in WME into the Profile Editor.

Then I loaded the same source movie into WMM and, without any edits,
produced an output file using the custom profile. Unfortunately, the
output from WMM was as jerky as all previous versions of this movie
output from WMM, and was much jerkier than the equivalent output from
WME.

Interestingly, the file output from WME was larger than the output from
WMM (10,225KB compared with 8,928KB, from a DVI source file of
60,449KB) and WME took much longer to produce the output (about 305
seconds compared with about 60 seconds). WME made 2 passes. In WMM
there was no indication whether there were one or two passes.

The settings I used in WME and in the profile I created for WMM were as
follows:
Audio format: 64kbps, 44kHz, stereo CBR
Video size: 640 x 480
Frame rate: 29.97 fps
Video bit rate: 2000K bps
Buffer size: 20 seconds
Video smoothness: 85
Decoder complexity: Auto

I then created another profile with the same settings except that I set
Video smoothness set to 15. Again, the output from WMM seemed to be as
jerky as every other version I have produced from WMM.

I'm mystified by all this. In particular, why is the output from WMM
equally jerky regardless of the profile? And why does WMM produce
results so different from WME when, so far as I know, it is using the
same codec with the same settings?

I hope you can help!

Hugh

 

[PapaJohn]

I started to respond a few times, but there are too many unknowns at my
end... I seldom use the encoder, preferring to tweak my profiles and use
Movie Maker.

 

[prepbgg]

there are too many unknowns at my end ...

Can I supply more information to reduce the number of unknowns?

I seldom use the encoder, ...

I only used WME as a means of trying out codec settings before
converting them into a Profile for WMM. However, it seems I must have
misunderstood something important. I had assumed that both programs
would simply hand over the encoding process to the codec and therefore
produce identical results, but the fact that WME takes 5 times as long
to encode the same movie and produces a larger file and a smoother
movie suggests that the situation must be more complicated than I had
thought.

... preferring to tweak my profiles and use Movie Maker.

.... but none of the tweaks I've tried seem to make any difference to
the smoothness of my WMM movie. I guess I may have to give up hoping to
eliminate jerkiness (and to avoid panning when we take movies in
future!).

Hugh

 

[PapaJohn]

what codec are you using.. WMV 9? what audio codec... WMA 9.2?

 

[PapaJohn]

and are you NTSC or PAL? maybe email a copy of a profile so I can see the
settings and do some checking here.

 

[prepbgg]

Thanks, PapaJohn, for taking an interest in my problem.

Since I posted yesterday I have tried using WMM on 2 other computers to
compress my specimen movie, but seem to get equally jerky results on
all 3 computers whichever profile I try.

I wonder whether the answer to your first question might hold a clue as
to the cause of my problem:

what codec are you using.. WMV 9? what audio codec... WMA 9.2?

You mention a WMA 9.2 audio codec. I haven't seen any reference to that
on my computer.

The Properties reported by Windows Media Player are as follows:

Version produced by WME (10225KB):
Bit rate: 2.06 Mbps
Audio codec: Windows Media Audio 9.1 - 64 kbps, 44 kHz, stereo (A/V)
2-pass CBR
Video codec: Windows Media Video 9 Professional

Version produced by WMM (8928KB):
Audio codec: Windows Media Audio 9.1 64 kbps, 44 kHz, stereo (A/V)
1-pass CBR
otherwise, exactly the same

and are you NTSC or PAL?

The Profile Editor shows NTSC for the WMM profile. The Custom Encoding
Settings window in WME also shows NTSC. Since I don't want to display
the movie on a TV I don't know what difference PAL/NTSC would make
other than a small difference in frame rate.

maybe email a copy of a profile so I can see the settings and do some checking here

I shall email to the address given on your website a copy of the prx
file referred to below



It is interesting that WME and WMM seem to have used different audio
codec settings. Is it possible that the audio settings affect the video
quality!?

I opened the Profile Editor hoping to create a revised profile for WMM
with 2-pass audio, but I can't see any reference there to 1-pass or
2-pass.

I have noticed that in WME in the Compression tab of the Session
Properties window there is a check-box for "two-pass encoding". This is
checked. I have never noticed an equivalent option in WMM.

I have realised that it is possible to "export" a profile from WME. So,
to make doubly sure that I am emulating the WME settings which produce
an acceptably smooth result as closely as possible in the profile which
I use in WMM, I have just been through the following process:
1. Open specimen movie in WME
2. Select compression settings (two-pass encoding, DVD quality video
(2Mbps CBR), CD quality audio (CBR))
3. Compress the movie (this took about 5 minutes, with 2 passes)
4. Export the settings as a prx file
5. Copy this new prx file to the WMM Profiles folder
6. Run WMM and use the new Custom profile when saving the compressed
movie (took about 1 minute)

The result is exactly as before: the file produced by WME is acceptably
smooth while the file produced by WMM is as jerky as all other output
from WMM.

I had hoped that the "two-pass encoding" setting would be incorporated
in the profile, but there was no indication from WMM as to whether it
was doing one pass or two, except that the very much shorter processing
time suggests that it only does one pass.


I hope you can help make some sense of all this!

Hugh

 

[PapaJohn]

I received your profile... thanks a lot...

You're doing some interesting work. You may be on the right track in
assessing the encoding being done by the Encoder can be more sophisticated
than that done by Movie Maker... for example, the Encoder can support
mulitple audio tracks while MM2 is limited to two channel stereo.

 

[prepbgg]

assessing the encoding being done by the Encoder can be more sophisticated

than that done by Movie Maker...

Do you have any contacts in the programming team at Microsoft,
PapaJohn? Hopefully, they can point us in the right direction to get
the same quality video output from WMM as from WME. However, if they
confirm that the differences in behaviour I have found between WME and
WMM are to be expected, and that there is no way of getting WMM to do
2-pass processing, then I would know that I don't need to try any
further tweaking.

The question then would be where should I turn next. Should I expect
Adobe Premiere Elements to solve my problem, perhaps?

Hugh

 

[PapaJohn]

have you tried bumping up the bitrate in a custom profile to align with high
quality DVDs... up about the 6,000 kbps level? that's what I do to make WMVs
for editing purposes or when heading to DVD, when I want to same some space
or have issues with a DV-AVI file?

yes I have some contacts... but being under an NDA agreement with
Microsoft, I can't openly share all the info I know...

 

[prepbgg]

have you tried bumping up the bitrate in a custom profile to align with high
quality DVDs... up about the 6,000 kbps level?

OK. I've done what you suggested and the results are the same as
before, except that the files are (obviously) bigger with this profile
and the 2-pass compression time in WME was now nearly 6 times as long
as the time taken by WMM. Again, the result from WMM was jerky.

I feel I'm on a wild goose chase with WMM.

yes I have some contacts... but being under an NDA agreement with
Microsoft, I can't openly share all the info I know...
--

Would you not even be allowed to tell me if you knew that I was wasting
my time? All I was effectively suggesting you ask them was whether I am
wasting my time or not in hoping to get the same video quality from WMM
as from WME.

Hugh

 

[prepbgg]

Since I last wrote I've discovered that Microsoft makes available for
download a version of the Windows Media v9 codec which works with
VirtualDub, and that VirtualDub seems to have the same degree of
control over, and to be able to produce the same quality output from,
the codec as WME.

The upshot seems to be that I can use VirtualDub to trim movies, to
divide them into clips and to append clips together. There is a plug-in
that allows fading in from black and fading out to black at the
beginnings and ends of clips. Unfortunately, that seems to be all that
is on offer by way of transitions, and the user interface is fairly
cumbersome, but at least I can hope to get away from jerky movies.

I guess this is what I shall have to use for the time being.

It seems ironic that a non-Microsoft open-source program can produce
better output from the Microsoft codec than Microsoft's own video
editing program!

Thanks for all your help, PapaJohn

Hugh

 

[PapaJohn]

in addition to my two books about Movie Maker, I wrote the opening chapter
of 'Learning VirtualDub'...