Please help a newbie with video editing - picture resolution problem

[pigseye]

Hi,
Sorry for needing fast help but I'm desperate.

Equipment/SW
Matrox marvel G200
Ulead video editor 5.2.
Celeron 950 with 128MB 7200 rpm 20g hdd

I have videotaped several short scenes and captured them as avi files using the Matrox PC-VCR. When I replay the avi files individually they look pretty good on my monitor.

However, when I combine several scenes using Ulead 5.2 video editor and Create an avi video, the resolution is very poor.

I need to make a movie for a sick friend and was hping to get better resolution. I certainly do not want to edit this using the vid camera and a VCR.

Your help is greatly appreciated and my apologies for being such a newbie at this.

Thanks
Pigseye

[smitty]

Hi In ms5.2 go to file , create ,video file , options , pick compression tab , are you using Matrox MJPEG??
if not use it
if you are check configure , set compression to max and compression to quality.
hope this helps

[pigseye]

Hi Smitty,
I'm a real newbie, what is MS 5.2?

In ulead video editor 5.2, there is no matrox MJPEG option. Only Mpeg

Thanks,
Pigseye

[This message has been edited by pigseye (edited 07 April 2001).]

[pigseye]

Hey Smitty!
I figured out what you meant.

Thanks for all the help! I'm editing right now.

Only problem I ahve now is frequent lockups in video editor. Not sure what's going on with that.

any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks,
pigseye

[smitty]

HI pigseye can you describe when lockups occur? Do you get lockups only in Media Studio?
smitty

[Dr Mordrid]

How much free space is there on your boot drive? If not much (<2 gigs) then make a folder named "TEMP" on your video drive. Now go to MSPro's File/Preferences menu.

In this menu set up all your temporary and preview files to go to the new TEMP folder and the disk usage to the video drive. Otherwise they'll fill your boot drive and cause out of memory errors when the swapfile has no room to grow.

Dr. Mordrid

[pigseye]

SMitty and Dr Modrid,
just want to say thanks. I have a small boot drive so I did what you suggested Dr. Modrid and everything is working great. no lock ups.

One More question.

I've created a 23 minute, 25 scene video with transition effects between each scene and titles at the beggining and end of the video. I wanted to save this in avi mode and then play it back and record it on VHS.

However, I run out of disk space to save the movie as an avi file. I have almost 6GB of free space on my video drive.

Am I doing something wrong?

I want to retain the highest resolution possible. Do either of you have any suggestions?

Thanks Again,
Pigseye

[smitty]

Hi pigseye
sounds like you are running into the windows 2gb limit 23 min at 3 mb/sec= about 5gb
you could lower resolution to reduce file to under 2gb or try avi_io which would break your video into smaller sizes and seamlessly fit them together again

I think you can find it here
http://www.nct.ch/multimedia/avi_io/index.htm
l
Ihave not tried this myself but many posts here indicate it's great.
smitty

[pigseye]

Smitty,
I truly appreciate your help. I'm not sure what you mean. My file is still a dvp file in MS 5.2 video editor. I can't turn it into an avi file at the resolution quality I would like.

Does avi-io break up a dvp file?

Are there other options? Do you have any suggestions on screen size and compression I should use?

thanks again,
Pigseye

[smitty]

Pigseye I have not used avi_io maybe someone who has can answer.
I have broken up the project into smaller parts by setting preview range to end before 2g ( if audio isnt semless) then creating 3 files.play them out to tape , reset vtr , play next file etc or
I wonder if you can preview out to tape the whole thing?
I don't have the best answer to this , maybe someone with more experience has a solution.I would be interested myself
smitty

[This message has been edited by smitty (edited 10 April 2001).]

[hippie91]

actually, i think you can do it from msp. (i'm not 100% on this since i use premiere vs msp) i've read many a time in posts here that to get around the bs windows 2 gig limit, you can print to video directly from the timeline. that way you don't need to render it out seperatly to a file. i know you can do this in premiere, as i did it last night, so i would assume that msp would have some klind of similar option. could any msp vereran here correct me if i'm horrably wrong?

[pigseye]

Hi Hippie,
I'm not sure if MS 5.2 can do that. I'll look into it. IN the meantime I went out and got a 40 GB 7200rpm Maxtor drive (8.7mS access time.)

I'm goiong to see how much of the movie I can build. I may just create the movie in smaller sections and then see if I can reassemble as suggested by Smitty.

thanks,
Steve