Video "stutters" after saving to DV-AVI

[Adam Melendez]

Here's what I'm doing: Capturing DV, editing with MovieMaker 2,
exporting to DV-AVI, and using Sonic MyDVD to burn to DVD. The
video is sports/high-action. Everything is fine while capturing
and editing. Playback is smooth (or as smooth as can be expected
with fast motion). After editing, when I save as DV-AVI, there is
some visible "stutter". It occurs only during fast motion. It's
somewhat visible played back in MovieMaker or Windows Media
Player, somewhat more visible played back in Apple's Quicktime
player, and when I burn to DVD and play back on a 29" monitor it's
very visible.

Viewing the video frame-by-frame (either the DV-AVI file or DVD),
I see, for example, an athlete's arm moving. At one point during
the series of frames the arm jumps back slightly, then a takes
slightly larger jump forward and continues over the next frames as
normal. Played back at full speed, it gives the "stutter" effect.
I'm not sure about audio, since there isn't much sound on this
video.

To determine where in the process this was being introduced, I
compared the captured, unedited video with the version I edited
and saved with MovieMaker. There was no stutter in the original,
there was in the saved version - MovieMaker is introducing this
stutter.

The computer should be fine - 2.2GHz Pentium 4, 512MB RAM, Radeon
7000 video card, two 80GB hard drives, DMA enabled, no
applications running other than MovieMaker, screensaver disabled.
The only flaw I see in the way this computer is set up is that
both hard drives are on the same cable, as master/slave. Windows
and Movie Maker are on c:\ and data - source files and final
versions - on d:\

Any suggestions?

 

[Adam Melendez]

You want both hard drives on the same cable. Are they both 7200 RPM
ATA 100 drives or higher?
Yes.

Do you have your bios setup for DMA 5?
Yes.

Are
you using 80 pin cables for both drives?
Yes.

When you say capturing with DV you mean Firewire right? From a digital
video camera?

Yes. That part seems to go OK - there's no problem with
the unedited video. The problem appears after editing
with MovieMaker2 and saving as DV-AVI.

If you go into properties, check if you are dropping frames. (On the
saved file)

I didn't see any place that would indicate dropped
frames.

You also might want to try Vegas Video. You can try a demo here to see
if it fixes the problem.

Unfortunately, at $500 that's not an option for me.