Saving to DV-AVI loses 6 seconds of movie length

[Guest]

Hi there.

I am trying to overcome a bug in WMM2 with audio popping when saving to
DV-AVI so please someone tell me if I am going about it the wrong way. (The
popping apparently comes from the transitions and the audio being saved at
the same time; so first I save the slideshow with no audio as an AVI. Then
in a second project I use the first silent AVI as the video, add my WMA
soundtrack, save as AVI again and voila, no skipping in the final AVI--but it
loses 6 seconds).

My main goal is to output 12 separate slideshows (with transitions and
audio) as separate movies and then burn to DVD using MyDVD. But I do not get
that far.

An example project has 86 stills and 3 title/overlays with fade transitions
in between. I have a WMA file that is 04:41 (4 mins 41 secs) long and I time
the transitions using a trick I got from Rehan (thanks by the way) to synch
perfectly. In the preview it is great and the audio stops on a dime.

However, when I produce any AVI (either the 1st silent or through the 2 pass
method) I end up with a shorter movie, namely 4:35 or 6 seconds shorter even
though it shows 4:41 in the timeline. It is most obvious when I import the
silent AVI into the timeline and it is noticeably shorter. I would not be so
picky but the slides are supposed to sync with the music just so and If I
just "fade out" early the effect is just not as clean.

I use AVIs because of earlier problems I had with WMVs and MyDVD. And to
make this more interesting, I do not lose 6 seconds if I save to WMV.

Help, please if you can!

 

[Rehan]

All your observations are valid and have been previously reported by others.
Microsoft have not fixed these bugs and dont think they plan to. So you have
to work witht he work arounds I am afraid.

However the severe shortening of DV AVI file as reported by you has not been
observed before. According to previous reports for each clip in the movie it
would skip frame no 27. Do you have alot of clips/stills ?

My solution was to use custom profiles that saves WMVs in uncompressed mode
thus retaining maximum resolution while avoiding the pitfalls associated
with DV AVI.

You may be interested to use my custom profiles
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rehanahmad/uncompressed.zip or tweak them
yourself using Windows Media Profile Editor.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Rehan, I will give it a go and post back. Your transition and picture
duration workarounds have been very helpful, so thanks again for those.

I did not come across the dropped still issue in any of my searches online.
I will check it out to see if that is the source of my problem.

Each of my 12 mini movies of stills (family photos) contains 50-130 stills,
so I could easily lose one and not notice; I will check into it. I feel like
I learn one workaround after another to compensate for a litany of bugs in
WMM. Oh well, it is free after all.

Thanks again.

 

[PapaJohn \(MVP\)]

The dropped 27th frame isn't related to still pictures... none of those
should be missing. It's the frame of a video clip when rendered to a DV-AVI
file.
--
PapaJohn

Movie Maker 2 and Photo Story 3 - www.papajohn.org
Photo Story 2 - www.photostory.papajohn.org
..

 

[PapaJohn \(MVP\)]

A couple thoughts...

Could your use of Rehan's transition and picture durations be working for
WMV files but not DV-AVI?

Sometimes I run into an issue which I classify as related to "... short term
memory...". A movie saved once as 4:34 but then changed to 4:31 might be
stuck in memory as a 4:34 one... Try changing the name of the project file
and the name of movie file it is being saved to... to jog it out of its
thinking.
--
PapaJohn

Movie Maker 2 and Photo Story 3 - www.papajohn.org
Photo Story 2 - www.photostory.papajohn.org
..

 

[Guest]

Hi Rehan,

I'm still saving the 12 movies--they each save to 4-5GB so it takes awhile
(glad I bought a 2nd hard drive recently). I assume that you meant that I
should then save them to AVIs and import into MyDVD to burn.

Would you recommend doing that in WMM or Windows Media Encoder?

Thanks again,
FJK

 

[Rehan]

I am not aware how you can do that in WME?

Doesnt your version of MyDVD accept WMV files to burn a DVD/CD?
--
Rehan
www.rehanfx.org - get more effects and transitions for Windows Movie Maker