Screen Tearing During Camera Pan, During Dvd Playback

[uttexan02]

Hi - I'm using Creator 2009 on a machine runing Vista (Ultimate). I'm trying to burn a DVD in MyDVD from source material, from a Canon Optura 20 mini-DV camcorder, in 16:9 (widescreen aspect ratio) in (.avi) format, in HQ (High quality) mode. During the preview in MyDVD, as well as the encoding preview, everything looks fine. However, when the burned DVD is played in Media Player, or any player, I see 3 horizontal screen "tearing" lines, that occur only when the camera pans. This is not seen when the camera is stationary. I have a 2nd machine running Windows XP, with EMC 9.0, I see the same issue there as well -- although this time its only 1 screen tearing line during camera pan. Previously on on the XP machine, with Easy Media Creator (EMC) 9.0, using the same camcorder in 4:3 aspect ratio, did not produce any screen tearing in the finished DVD. NOTE: the source .avi (16:9) when played in Media player or any player does not show any tearing during camera pan -- which leads me to suspect that this is an encoding issue in the Roxio software --- is there a patch/ update to fix this ? I'm really frustrated, because I don't seem to be getting anywhere with Roxio tech. support, and I've also spent money on upgrading to Creator 2009, thinking it had improved encoding over EMC 9.0, but this doesn't seem to be the case Help !!!

[Jim_Hardin]

Panning problems seem to come from Hardware Rendering… Easy enough to test!

 

MyDVD – Tools – Options – Rendering, set to Software and see what happens.

 

Updating Video card drivers may help too but the card just may not be enough to do the job.

 

[uttexan02]

Update: On the machine running Vista + Creator 2009, switching to software rendering seems to have fixed the egregious screen tearing. However, now there's a new side effect. On the right hand side of the sceen, close to the right edge, the video frames show a column of 'pixelated' video, that remains continuously during playback. It becomes quite noticeable, depending upon the background colors. This is still better than the screen tearing, but its not what I would expect from this product. Another side effect I noticed with the software rendering is that the sound tends to lag the video i.e. people's lip movements are not in sync with when you can hear them talk. Again its almost imperceptible, but its there.

As far as my Vista Machine is concerned here are the specs: Intel QX6700 (Kentsfield) Quad core processor, 4GB Mushkin DDR2-800 (4-4-4-12) memory, Vista Ultimate SP-1, mobo: Intel D975XBX2KR, 650W Antec TP-III power supply, 2x 750GB Seagate 7200.11 SATA-II drives in Raid 1, Creative X-FI Elite Pro PCI sound card, and ATI Radeon HD4870 graphics card. The Graphics card is running the latest drivers, and all system components have latest drivers, including the motherboard which has the latest BIOS. I get a graphics score of 5.9 in the Vista graphics performance score, as well as a 5.7 overall system score (5.9's on everything except memory, which is a 5.7), so I doubt my hardware is not up to the task. The HD4870 is supposed to be a top of the line graphics card (at this point in time), so why is MyDVD having issues with it ?

Anyway thanks for your help, I learnt something today about rendering.... silly me thinking that hardware rendering was always better. (I thought having a GPU do the rendering would be better than giving the job to the CPU.... in this case the quad core processor with its massive cache, eats up the encoding process like there's no tomorrow and actually finishes it faster than with hardware rendering !!) . Maybe nVIDIA and ATI do have something to worry about with Intel's x86 based Larabee after all ....

[Jim_Hardin]

Hardware is better/faster provided your Video Card & Drivers are up to snuff. (mine is not )

 

For your 'edge' problem. I could not sort out if this was on the burned disc and Player or just in preview?

 

Either way! Try a short New Project and but to quality media (Verbatim is a good choice). Try the clip you have trouble with as well as a different clip to eliminate it as the source.

 

[ggrussell]

(I thought having a GPU do the rendering would be better than giving the job to the CPU.... in this case the quad core processor with its massive cache, eats up the encoding process like there's no tomorrow and actually finishes it faster than with hardware rendering !!) . Maybe nVIDIA and ATI do have something to worry about with Intel's x86 based Larabee after all ....

The way I understand 'hardware' render as it works in Roxio, it only uses the GPU for 3D transitions. So you really won't be gaining that much speed when rendering video. Hardware rendering has been more trouble than is't worth and I had suggested years ago that they take it out.

 

There have been several users posting issues with newer 'DirectX 10' based cards and EMC 10/C2009. I'm assuming that C2009 still uses DirectX 9 APIs. I would seem to appear that DirectX 10 isn't that backward compatible with DirectX 9, but that's just my personal observation.

[sknis]

Update: On the machine running Vista + Creator 2009, switching to software rendering seems to have fixed the egregious screen tearing. However, now there's a new side effect. On the right hand side of the sceen, close to the right edge, the video frames show a column of 'pixelated' video, that remains continuously during playback. It becomes quite noticeable, depending upon the background colors. ...

 

Turn on the video safe zone display and see if the pixelation is outside that safe zone. If so, it won't show on a STD TV and may not show on a HDTV.

 

[uttexan02]

Hardware is better/faster provided your Video Card & Drivers are up to snuff. (mine is not )

 

For your 'edge' problem. I could not sort out if this was on the burned disc and Player or just in preview?

 

Either way! Try a short New Project and but to quality media (Verbatim is a good choice). Try the clip you have trouble with as well as a different clip to eliminate it as the source.

I forgot to mention that my DVD drives are Philips SATA drives. The edge pixelation is not present in the source .avi file. It is present in the finished DVD burned using software rendering, and it is also present in the DVD burned using hardware rendering, during playback (any player). I just didn't notice it before because I was distracted by the tearing. I have tried a different clip, but it does not help. On my XP machine (very similar hardware as my Vista system, but it has a GeForce 8800GTS graphics card), with EMC 9.0, it still shows the edge pixelation. Here is some background on how all this started: Up until this point I was using my camcorder to record in 4:3 aspect ratio, and did not see any issues during DVD playback (burned using EMC 9.0 on XP). I recently changed it to record in 16:9, and when I burned a DVD with it, I saw the screen tearing (edge pixelation was there, but again I was distracted by the tearing, and so I missed it). I installed EMC 9.0 on my Vista machine, to see if anything changed, the edge pixelation remained, but the tearing got worse (with ATI Radeon HD4870). Now I tried Memorex, JVC and Maxell DVD media (I'm assuming these are decent brands), but the issue(s) remain. I even reduced the burn speed from 16X to 8X, but no change. Exasperated, I decided to try Creator 2009 on my Vista machine [OK I admit it, I had a 'marketing moment' ... I fell for the "its newer, so its gotta be better" ], but no change. So here I am now, with a stack of 'failed' burned DVD's and the only thing that seemed to make a difference was switching to software rendering (apparently hardware rendering is the default setting)..... the tearing went away but the edge pixelation still remains. I'm wondering if the root cause is that the roxio software is having issues with the Camcorder recording in 16:9 format. A rather ominous quote from the camcorder's manual reads "The 16:9 mode is an electronically processed effect" ... not sure what they mean by this. I'm thinking about returning Creator 2009, but then Easy Media Creator 9.0 (supposed to be compatible with Vista, it says so on the box) has issues with Vista, so I may keep Creator 2009 anyway.

 

There have been several users posting issues with newer 'DirectX 10' based cards and EMC 10/C2009. I'm assuming that C2009 still uses DirectX 9 APIs. I would seem to appear that DirectX 10 isn't that backward compatible with DirectX 9, but that's just my personal observation.

But I'm having the same issue with Easy Media Creator 9.0 with a GeForce 8800GTS on a machine running Win XP SP3. This should be using DirectX 9.0. To me this points to an incompatibility of the camcorders 16:9 format with Roxio software (at least as far as the edge pixelation is concerned). Source material in 4:3 format does not have any issues.

 

Turn on the video safe zone display and see if the pixelation is outside that safe zone. If so, it won't show on a STD TV and may not show on a HDTV.

How/ where do you turn on the video safe zone display ? Which application are you referring to ? You are right, when I played back the DVD on a standard TV, I did not see the edge pixelation, but I'm wondering if its because the edges are just getting cropped and so are not being displayed.

[Jim_Hardin]

I forgot to mention that my DVD drives are Philips SATA drives. The edge pixelation is not present in the source .avi file. It is present in the finished DVD burned using software rendering, and it is also present in the DVD burned using hardware rendering, during playback (any player). I just didn't notice it before because I was distracted by the tearing. I have tried a different clip, but it does not help. On my XP machine (very similar hardware as my Vista system, but it has a GeForce 8800GTS graphics card), with EMC 9.0, it still shows the edge pixelation. Here is some background on how all this started: Up until this point I was using my camcorder to record in 4:3 aspect ratio, and did not see any issues during DVD playback (burned using EMC 9.0 on XP). I recently changed it to record in 16:9, and when I burned a DVD with it, I saw the screen tearing (edge pixelation was there, but again I was distracted by the tearing, and so I missed it). I installed EMC 9.0 on my Vista machine, to see if anything changed, the edge pixelation remained, but the tearing got worse (with ATI Radeon HD4870). Now I tried Memorex, JVC and Maxell DVD media (I'm assuming these are decent brands), but the issue(s) remain. I even reduced the burn speed from 16X to 8X, but no change. Exasperated, I decided to try Creator 2009 on my Vista machine [OK I admit it, I had a 'marketing moment' ... I fell for the "its newer, so its gotta be better" ], but no change. So here I am now, with a stack of 'failed' burned DVD's and the only thing that seemed to make a difference was switching to software rendering (apparently hardware rendering is the default setting)..... the tearing went away but the edge pixelation still remains. I'm wondering if the root cause is that the roxio software is having issues with the Camcorder recording in 16:9 format. A rather ominous quote from the camcorder's manual reads "The 16:9 mode is an electronically processed effect" ... not sure what they mean by this. I'm thinking about returning Creator 2009, but then Easy Media Creator 9.0 (supposed to be compatible with Vista, it says so on the box) has issues with Vista, so I may keep Creator 2009 anyway.

 

 

But I'm having the same issue with Easy Media Creator 9.0 with a GeForce 8800GTS on a machine running Win XP SP3. This should be using DirectX 9.0. To me this points to an incompatibility of the camcorders 16:9 format with Roxio software (at least as far as the edge pixelation is concerned). Source material in 4:3 format does not have any issues.

 

 

How/ where do you turn on the video safe zone display ? Which application are you referring to ? You are right, when I played back the DVD on a standard TV, I did not see the edge pixelation, but I'm wondering if its because the edges are just getting cropped and so are not being displayed.

Maybe I am not awake yet???

 

You never had this problem before until you switched to using 16:9.

 

You tried it with 2 versions of software and on 2 different PC's.

 

You tried it with 3 different brands of media.

 

But you dismiss the idea that the only common link here is YOUR SOURCE…

 

I really don't know what to say...

 

[uttexan02]

Maybe I am not awake yet???

 

You never had this problem before until you switched to using 16:9.

 

You tried it with 2 versions of software and on 2 different PC's.

 

You tried it with 3 different brands of media.

 

But you dismiss the idea that the only common link here is YOUR SOURCE…

 

I really don't know what to say...

Maybe you aren't awake.... again: the edge pixelation (or tearing) IS NOT VISIBLE IN THE SOURCE .AVI. I did not totally dismiss the source as the problem, in fact I have been consistently saying that I suspect an incompatibility between the Camcorders 16:9 mode and Roxio software. Incompatible (for the Camcorder) does not automatically mean its bad, or not doing its job correctly. As far as I'm concerned its a deficiency in the Roxio software, since it fails to correctly convert the FLAWLESS source .avi to DVD format.

[gi7omy]

It can hardly be 'flawless' when it does the same thing in two different apps.

 

The key to your problem is this: "...The 16:9 mode is an electronically processed effect..."

 

That basically means that it is NOT true 16:9 but a software generated special effect. You are trying to run software conversion on a source file twice - hence the problem

[uttexan02]

It can hardly be 'flawless' when it does the same thing in two different apps.

 

The key to your problem is this: "...The 16:9 mode is an electronically processed effect..."

 

That basically means that it is NOT true 16:9 but a software generated special effect. You are trying to run software conversion on a source file twice - hence the problem

I'm inclined to agree with your hypothesis. The bad news for me is that the event I recorded in 16:9 mode was a once in a lifetime family reunion, and now I'm stuck with a source format that can't be converted (without issues) to a DVD. It appears that the only solution for me (if I want to record in 16:9 mode) is to get a new camcorder. Maybe this is getting off topic, but how can you tell whether a camcorder is going to record in "true" 16:9, VS a software effect ? This level of detail is usually not available until you purchase it, and read the manual.

 

[sknis]

How/ where do you turn on the video safe zone display ? Which application are you referring to ? You are right, when I played back the DVD on a standard TV, I did not see the edge pixelation, but I'm wondering if its because the edges are just getting cropped and so are not being displayed.

 

In both Video Wave and My DVD, there is an icon near the top that looks like a squared off gun-sight. Click that and a grid will appear. Anything inside the grid will display on a TV when played by a DVD player. Anything outside the grid will not show up including any titles that may extend outside the area.

 

It is an artifact of TV design. STD definition TVs have about 15 % of what you see on your monitor not displayed. HDTV will have less but there will still be some.

 

Also try adding your video as an overlay to a color panel in Video Wave. You can adjust the size on the video to make sure it all shows but excludes that ragged edge.

 

Read this.. It has some great options and information.