I've been using Windows movie maker and was pretty satisfied with it. But lately, it has been producing a choppy video. What do you guys use and what do you guys recommend?

 

I think Brian Z. uses Vegas Video.
I've used it too and it works great.

If you need it, let me know.

 

No problems with Movie Maker for me... however... when you're capturing your video into the program, make sure you turn off the preview screen in the program. There should be a option box to un-click. Mine will come out choppy if I don't cancel the preview screen first. Give that a try.

$.02

 

The way you ask implies it used to work fine, did it? If so, what recent changes have you made to your PC? Also, is your camera USB or firewire? Firewire works much better for not dropping frames.

 

I don't think movie maker is the issue..

Is the video you captured (raw) choppy, or does it get choppy after you try to render the video? also like kb58 said, what programs have you added? try killing any program that is working in the back ground. How much memory does your computer have? and how full is the HD ? all can be a factor. OH. i just thought of something that may help. you can make movie maker a high priority for the CPU, I had to do that on my slow laptop for watching vids..

 

I haven't had any trouble w/ movie maker either. I always use firewire to offload though. Whatever the problem is, get it sorted out quick so we can watch that WC race @ laguna!

- Scott

 

Looks like I got it working, now!!!
Ok, who can host a 250MB race video??

 

Ok,
I spoke too soon

 

I will let me know.

 

Ok, I tried everything and not successful. Anyone live in San Francisco area can help capturing the video???

 

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I also had issues with windows movie maker "dropping frames" on my computer & making my track movies very choppy....maybe the computer doesn't have enough memory avaiable, etc. I am also uploading video using firewire.

I had much better luck using the Nero movie-maker software that came with my DVD-burner. On the same exact computer that had problems with Windows Movie Maker, the videos come out perfect using the Nero software.

 

Make sure you're not opening any other applications when capturing video. I suspect if your PC gets "distracted" by the new application it'll drop frames.

 

What source format? DV I guess... First capture to a raw video file and play that back, so that you can determine if it is the capture process or encoding process which has the problem. Capturing from DV try both firewire and USB if your camera allows it (firewire works best for me).

I go through a complicated process of capturing the DV to an uncompressed avi, then using Adobe Premiere to overlay a blue screen data file, then export another uncompressed avi, then use Movie Maker to compress it. I can use xvid in Premiere but Movie Maker is just easier. The only trick I have learnt is to tell Premiere to encode as progressive, essentially deinterlacing the video. For DVDs I don't deinterlace, and get Premiere to demultiplex the stream into more uncompressed files, and then use DVDLab to make DVDs. DVDs played on TVs are cropped to around 90% size for some reason, but play full size on computers.

Try capturing the DV and saving as an uncompressed avi trimmed to the right length, then using Windows Media Encoder. It is a free download from MS (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...r/default.aspx) and essentially does the same thing as Movie Maker, but you have a lot more control on what is happening. You can use Movie Maker to do the trimming and titles and then save a DV format, which should be uncompressed, and then use Media Encoder for the final compression.

If the source is NTSC DV (720 x 480) then either keep the same resolution or change to 360 x 240. For a decent picture you need a 500 - 1000 kbps video bitrate. With MS stuff you can only use Windows Media compression codecs, which are OK, otherwise divx or xvid work well for me.



Finally I send the DVD to my nephew (3 yrs), who watches intently making engine sounds and using his hands to 'steer' the car. Best of all, he doesn't criticize my braking points or cornering lines.