[cdn1972]

Hi All
Doing my first true test with movie maker, took a 4 min AVI video clip and added about 50 Jpegs to the end of it with fade transitions between each one. I rendered it fine and its a 14 min film. In view mode with windows viewer the video was jerky and hard to watch. The jpegs are fine and the fades work. The AVI clip is smooth when a Windows movie maker film was made with it, but the quality once burned to DVD was poor.
Once burned to DVD will it be smooth? Its a 862Mb file, not really that big. I don't want to burn it and waste a DVD.
Any ideas of things to check?
Thanks in adavance

Kevin

[cdn1972]

Viewing it in the movie maker preview its smooth, is it just my video card with windows?

[ml]

cdn1972, on Nov 6 2006, 08:22 PM, said:

Hi All
Doing my first true test with movie maker, took a 4 min AVI video clip and added about 50 Jpegs to the end of it with fade transitions between each one. I rendered it fine and its a 14 min film. In view mode with windows viewer the video was jerky and hard to watch. The jpegs are fine and the fades work. The AVI clip is smooth when a Windows movie maker film was made with it, but the quality once burned to DVD was poor.
Once burned to DVD will it be smooth? Its a 862Mb file, not really that big. I don't want to burn it and waste a DVD.
Any ideas of things to check?
Thanks in adavance
Kevin

Are you using Movie Creator or Windows Movie Maker?

Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to tell without burning it to a DVD. Frankly, the preview screen in the program is terrible. Luckily, the price of DVDs is down to around 25 cents each if you buy them on sale.

I always disconnect from the internet and turn off all virus programs, firewalls, and any other program that might try to access the computer's CPU while I'm rendering and burning the DVD. I also sweep for spyware and defragment the hard drive.

Rendering and burning are both CPU intensive processes, so anything you can do to make certain that the files are not fragmented and that other programs are not competing for CPU time will increase the chances of success.

[cdn1972]

mlpasley, on Nov 6 2006, 06:55 PM, said:

Are you using Movie Creator or Windows Movie Maker?

Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to tell without burning it to a DVD. Frankly, the preview screen in the program is terrible. Luckily, the price of DVDs is down to around 25 cents each if you buy them on sale.

I always disconnect from the internet and turn off all virus programs, firewalls, and any other program that might try to access the computer's CPU while I'm rendering and burning the DVD. I also sweep for spyware and defragment the hard drive.

Rendering and burning are both CPU intensive processes, so anything you can do to make certain that the files are not fragmented and that other programs are not competing for CPU time will increase the chances of success.

I am using Movie Creator but its a direct copy of a previos project made with windows. The windows movie was poor quality. I know DVD's are getting cheaper now but just didn't want to waste one as I have not purchased any in bulk yet. I have only purchased a 6pk and burned 2. I will burn then and hope the preview screen is the poor display culprit.
Thanks

[ml]

cdn1972, on Nov 7 2006, 08:35 AM, said:

I am using Movie Creator but its a direct copy of a previos project made with windows. The windows movie was poor quality. I know DVD's are getting cheaper now but just didn't want to waste one as I have not purchased any in bulk yet. I have only purchased a 6pk and burned 2. I will burn then and hope the preview screen is the poor display culprit.
Thanks

How did you make that Windows Movie?

The problem is that if the original movie was of poor quality, Movie Creator won't improve the quality.

[cdn1972]

mlpasley, on Nov 7 2006, 07:40 AM, said:

How did you make that Windows Movie?

The problem is that if the original movie was of poor quality, Movie Creator won't improve the quality.

It was captured via USB DVC80 from VHS (the tape shows perfectly in player) It's produced in MPEG, would MPEG 2 create a better quality?

[ml]

cdn1972, on Nov 7 2006, 10:50 AM, said:

would MPEG 2 create a better quality?

DEFINITELY. Mpeg1 is very poor quality when played on a TV. MPEG2 is the DVD standard.

So if you import in mpeg1, the program will reencode it to mpeg2 so that it can be played on a DVD player, but it will be encoding poor quality video.

[cdn1972]

mlpasley, on Nov 7 2006, 03:32 PM, said:

DEFINITELY. Mpeg1 is very poor quality when played on a TV. MPEG2 is the DVD standard.

So if you import in mpeg1, the program will reencode it to mpeg2 so that it can be played on a DVD player, but it will be encoding poor quality video.

Ok great, if I use the S-Video cable on the USB capture devise and replay the VCR tape into it directly into Movie Creator capture mode will I be able to set the custom settings at MPEG2 for better import quality?

[ml]

cdn1972, on Nov 7 2006, 08:40 PM, said:

Ok great, if I use the S-Video cable on the USB capture devise and replay the VCR tape into it directly into Movie Creator capture mode will I be able to set the custom settings at MPEG2 for better import quality?

I'm afraid that I don't know.

It depends on your capture device and if it's compatable with Movie Creator. Some capture devices come with software that will capture the best quality video from the device.

[cdn1972]

mlpasley, on Nov 7 2006, 08:28 PM, said:

I'm afraid that I don't know.

It depends on your capture device and if it's compatable with Movie Creator. Some capture devices come with software that will capture the best quality video from the device.

Well the devise has the software loaded and is recognised in the capture area of Movie Creator. I will have to hook the VCR to it so it senses a electrical load and see if it works I guess. Will I need any extra programs to use MPEG 2?

[ml]

You may have a problem. I looked up the capture capabilities of that DVC 80 and it showed Maximum resolution: 320 x 240 <LI>Maximum frame rate: 30 frames per second

That's medium quality video (mpeg1) and you cannot improve that to the 720x480 which is high quality.

I'm not sure where you go from here. The problem isn't Movie Creator which can handle importing high quality video and burn it to a DVD.

Without further information about your computer, I'd be reluctant to tell you that replacing the DVC will solve the problem.

[cdn1972]

mlpasley, on Nov 7 2006, 09:55 PM, said:

You may have a problem. I looked up the capture capabilities of that DVC 80 and it showed Maximum resolution: 320 x 240 <LI>Maximum frame rate: 30 frames per second

That's medium quality video (mpeg1) and you cannot improve that to the 720x480 which is high quality.

I'm not sure where you go from here. The problem isn't Movie Creator which can handle importing high quality video and burn it to a DVD.

Without further information about your computer, I'd be reluctant to tell you that replacing the DVC will solve the problem.

Yeah, I found the specs on my DVC80 and looked onto the specs sheet in the instructions with Movie Creator. Your right. I have to purchase an onboard card with better specs for sure. This process started two years ago when I wanted to simply copy 25 or so VHS tapes to disc and not worry about losing them to degrading. The studio 9 never worked so I upgraded twice on the PC and studio was unstable and crashed without warning. This frustraition LED TO ME PUTTING THE PROJECT AWAY! Now finding Movie Creator that actually works I just need to get a better capture card and continue.
Thanks for helping us Newbies out!

[ml]

If you're going to be burning DVDs, you'll need a P4 or higher chip, lots of RAM, a fast hard drive, and a video card that exceeds the minimum specifications of the program. In fact, you might want to make certain that your computer exceeds the minimum specifications on the side of the box.

If your computer isn't up to the task and you just want to preserve the tapes, there are DVD recorders that will copy VHS tapes to DVDs. I don't know what the quality is, but it's better than having the tapes fade to black. A friend of mine got one from Radio Shack where you pop in the VHS tape, pop in the DVD and it automatically copies it.

Movie Creator is great if you want to make custom movies, but if all you want to do is preserve those tapes, you might want to consider just a straight copy of the tapes. ( As you can tell, I don't work for Roxio.)

[cdn1972]

Here is a card my local computer store carries, this should be better.

Features:

• A High-Quality 10-bit NTSC/PAL/SECAM composite and s-video decoder
• Automatic NTSC/PAL detection
• Capture Video Source from VHS, VB, Hi8, and etc.
• Video Resolution:
NTSC: 720x480 @ 30FPS
PAL: 720x576 @ 25 FPS
• External Video Input: Composite and S-Video
• Capture Video as MPEG 4/2/1 Format
• Capture Still Image (BMP, JPEG)
• Edit the Video or Still Image in MPEG 4/2/1 Format
• Burn the Video to DVD/VCD/SVCD

[cdn1972]

If your computer isn't up to the task and you just want to preserve the tapes, there are DVD recorders that will copy VHS tapes to DVDs. I don't know what the quality is, but it's better than having the tapes fade to black. A friend of mine got one from Radio Shack where you pop in the VHS tape, pop in the DVD and it automatically copies it.

Movie Creator is great if you want to make custom movies, but if all you want to do is preserve those tapes, you might want to consider just a straight copy of the tapes. ( As you can tell, I don't work for Roxio.)


I was going to buy one of those this boxing day but since finding movie maker I like the idea of doing minor editing and titles and such. I also have a new S-VHS-C that the kids are going to be using for school etc so that may fit in for those as well.

[cdn1972]

If you're going to be burning DVDs, you'll need a P4 or higher chip, lots of RAM, a fast hard drive, and a video card that exceeds the minimum specifications of the program. In fact, you might want to make certain that your computer exceeds the minimum specifications on the side of the box

Im building a new system for this, here is what it will be IBM 2.4, radon 7000, twin 40GIGs, Lite-on Dual layer burner, Xp home Sp2. I need to purchase additional ram for it yet.
This should work with the card above for capture.

[ml]

cdn1972, on Nov 14 2006, 09:46 AM, said:

If you're going to be burning DVDs, you'll need a P4 or higher chip, lots of RAM, a fast hard drive, and a video card that exceeds the minimum specifications of the program. In fact, you might want to make certain that your computer exceeds the minimum specifications on the side of the box

Im building a new system for this, here is what it will be IBM 2.4, radon 7000, twin 40GIGs, Lite-on Dual layer burner, Xp home Sp2. I need to purchase additional ram for it yet.
This should work with the card above for capture.

I don't want to discourage you, but the program might not be able to recognize that DVD burner. There's no way to tell until you get it installed. Movie Creator needed software updates to recognize newer burners and it's no longer being updated by Roxio. (They're on version 9 and this is version 5)

However, if your DVD burner came with a burning program, you might be able to make the movie in Movie Creator and use that program to actually burn the DVD.

Also, check to be certain if that video card needs a compatable sound card. ( I've been through this and finding compatable sound and video cards was a challenge.)

Once you get everything working, you're going to have fun editing those movies. I find it addicting.