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  1. Member yoda313's Avatar
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    Ok I am working on editing h264 hd in pinnacle studio 12 plus in vista premium 32bit. I have a amd 2.7ghz dual core processor. I have 2 gb ram. I have a 512mb ATI All in wonder HD pci-e video card.

    I can play avchd and bluray just fine. However it is frustrating trying to edit in pinnacle plus. I am not getting smooth playback in the preview window.

    Also I do not have any sound playing back during the editing process. I do have the audio scrubbing enabled. Am I missing something else?

    I have 2gb ram would 3gb ram help smooth things out? What I don't understand is if I can playback avchd without issues why can't I play avchd in pinnacle studio 12? I am having stuttering issues and it won't play sound back.

    Also I know a 32bit os can't handle 4gb or more. Or is it that it can handle 4 but not 5 and up? If I were to get more ram (I think I only have two slots) would I be ok with 3? A 1gb stick and a 2gb stick? Is that doable?

    I know that cpu power dictates encoding speed and all that. However I am not sure why if I can play hd video smoothly why an editor would not allow good playback with the same specs.

    Oh fyi this was from a captured hd h264 file with a hauppauge hd pvr in a ts file. I then converted that to a avchd folder with arcsoft total extreme that came with the hd pvr. In pinnacle I opened the stream folder and selected the m2ts file that it produced and that is what I am working with. FYI too it is a 1280x720p file with 5.1 audio.
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  2. Mod Neophyte Super Moderator redwudz's Avatar
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    If you are running 2GB with Vista, that's minimal, IMO. I'm not sure what affect it would have with your editing programs to increase the RAM size. 32 bit OS's can use a bit less than 4GB, usually about 3.7GB. Most times it's easier to use 4GB and not worry about the small amount lost. I'd probably up it to 4GB and see if there are some improvements.

    But with inadequate RAM, you should be seeing a lot of HDD access and use of the page file. Check your HDD activity LED during editing. You could also have a bottleneck between two hard drives than could cause some slowdowns. Highly fragmented, or HDDs low on free space could also cause problems. I'd also check that too.
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  3. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by redwudz View Post
    ...
    But with inadequate RAM, you should be seeing a lot of HDD access and use of the page file. Check your HDD activity LED during editing. You could also have a bottleneck between two hard drives than could cause some slowdowns. Highly fragmented, or HDDs low on free space could also cause problems. I'd also check that too.
    Agreed.

    I don't have Pinnacle Studio 12 but another test I'd try is check CPU activity with straight playback vs. playback within Studio. If the CPU is pegged, that is your problem. My guess is Studio isn't using the AIW and is trying to do it in software only. Preview windows are usually much lower resolution than HD but the CPU still needs to decode the h.264.

    So check whether the RAM is overflowing to the disk page files (I doubt it) or if the CPU is pegging (my guess).

    Pinnacle system requirements show 2GB RAM required for AVCHD but CPU spec is "Intel Core™ 2 or i7 2.4 GHz required for AVCHD* (2.66 GHz for AVCHD* 1920)" Your AMD 5200 X2 2.7 is not that.
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  4. Member yoda313's Avatar
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    @redwudz and eddv - thanks.

    I do hear a lot of drive access while trying to edit the files.

    I have the program on the c drive and the assets on the e drive. Both are internal sata however.

    I don't how much higher I can go on a processor on my motherboard. I think it would be easier to try doubling the ram than getting a new chip. My dual core is an upgrade from the stock single core that I did a few years ago.

    Is the dual core I am using significantly underpowered compared to the intel requirement or just slightly so?

    I think I'll pop open the case and write down what type of ram I'm using.

    What places would you suggest for inexpensive ram that is reliable? I prefer to buy in person at a Best Buy or Office Max but I could go online if its significant savings or if its older ram that isn't as available these days.


    Edit - oh by the way on the edit drive I have 300gb free so that shouldn't be an issue. I don't know about fragmenting however. Also these are 200mb to 500mb files that I'm working on - about 2-5 minute clips at the moment. I am pretty sure I set the temp file to the larger drive. The os drive is a 60gb with about 14gb free right now.


    Edit 2 - Ok I opened up the case and checked the ram. I do only have 2 slots for ram. It is using DDR2 PC5300 ram. One stick says 1gx16. Is that important when shopping for ram? Is it ok if I just get any 5300 ram as long as it is ddr2? I don't want to overbuy but I also don't want to get something that won't fit.

    So to get to 4gb physically I'll need two 2gb sticks. Suggestions?

    Also on the stick it says 667(5) - does that mean it is running at 667mhz? I'm not sure if it is the peak spead or if its going down to 533 or whatever the next lowest setting is. Does that matter as much?

    _------ also I'll start a defrag on my large e drive. I have been doing a lot of bluray ripping and encoding to dvd. SO that may have impacted the drives health even though I have just over 300gb free on that drive.
    Last edited by yoda313; 6th Jun 2010 at 10:27.
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  5. Yes, get two 2 GB sticks of PC5300 DDR2 DRAM. If you find faster DDR2 DRAM cheaper for some reason (say, PC6400 DDR2) it won't hurt to use that. I wouldn't bother paying much extra for low latency or higher speed DRAM. It won't make much difference in video encoding and decoding.
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  6. Member yoda313's Avatar
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    Thanks jagabo.

    Will pc2 5300 work on slots currently using pc 5300? I think mine are 240 pin because the pics at newegg show long and narrow ram for the 240 pin which mine are long and narrow:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148236&cm_re=pc5300_ram-_-20-...-236-_-Product

    Would two of those work to hit 4gb?

    Also is there something cheaper than 80.00 for two 2gb sticks?
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  7. As I understand it the "2" in "PC2-5300" indicates it is DDR2 memory. PC3-xxxx would be DDR3 memory. I don't think there ever was such a thing as DDR1 5300 memory so you should be safe.
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  8. Member yoda313's Avatar
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    Thanks jagabo.

    Since you indicated 6400 would work in 5300 I assume 5400 would work in 5300. Tigerdirect has a lot of 5400 for sale. I don't know if they are better deals than that newegg 5300 but it might be.

    I might also try out ubid. I've never bought from them but if it says new how can you go wrong?
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  9. Problems from bad memory can be very hard to track down. I would stick with known products and distributors.
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  10. DVD Ninja budz's Avatar
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    Corsair 4gb, DDR2-667, 94.99
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145195

    Kingston Value Ram 4gb, DDR2-667, $99.99
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134193

    Corsair 2gb, DDR2-667 ram, $49.99
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145180

    Kingston Value Ram, 2gb, DDR2-667 ram, $53.99
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134192

    It maybe a good idea to see what brand/model mobo you have as well to match up the ram. I believe you Vista pc is a prebuilt pc so go to the manufacturer to check out the specs for the ram to use. I know that some prebuild pc's will only use certain model/brand of ram.

    IMHO better to use good known brands of ram instead of no namer ones.
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  11. Member yoda313's Avatar
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    Thanks budz and jagabo. I'll check these out.

    I'm thinking of maybe only buying 1 2gb stick at present - personal reasons.

    Also side note - my drive is still defragging after more than a few hours. Its a 500gb drive with 300gb free. Is this normal on the larger drives to take this long?
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  12. Originally Posted by yoda313 View Post
    I'm thinking of maybe only buying 1 2gb stick at present - personal reasons.
    The two memory banks are interleaved for higher throughput. Having only one bank filled will slow the computer down.

    After putting 4 GB into the computer you will be able to access somewhere between 3 and 3.75 GB (depending on the graphics card) with a 32 bit OS.
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  13. DVD Ninja budz's Avatar
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    Large capacity hard drives take longer to defrag. BTW how many ram slots do you have available? 2 or 4?
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  14. Member edDV's Avatar
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    I still doubt more RAM will help. The issue is CPU.

    Overclocking might help close the gap but better to try and return the memory if you see no improvement.
    Last edited by edDV; 7th Jun 2010 at 00:38.
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  15. Member Backpain's Avatar
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    I agree with edDV. CPU speed is very important when using Pinnacle Studio 12. I have been using Pinnacle from version 8. With all the new version upgrades it seem that my pc got slower and slower. I am now using version 14 and having a very hearty CPU, it is still slow. Check out what others state about Pinnacle and how poorly the software really is. Make sure you have all the upgrades for your version. It might help. Maybe you should look for a different program that your pc can handle.
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  16. I had a 250M ATI HD Radeon PCI-E video card and had a lot of problems. I upgraded my video card to 1G ATI HD Radeon PCI-E and I can render smoothly in HD without the video or audio lagging behind.

    Quad core cpu
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  17. Member yoda313's Avatar
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    Thanks for all the advice everyone.

    Maybe I'll hold off on the ram purchase for right now.

    Actually I didn't remove anything. I have two 1 gig sticks in my 2 slots right now. What I was gonna do short term was by 1 2 gig stick to hit 3gigs. However if that wouldn't necessarily see any improvements than I may just save my money on the ram issue.

    I am not currently in a position to buy a new computer. I have a socket am2 mother board so I think the processor I have right now is the fastest I can get or thereabouts for this generation of motherboard that I have.

    It sounds like the nle's are more power hungry than simply playing hd video which my current rig can do nicely. If that is the case I will modify my expectations for this project.

    I think i can live with simply butting up the trimmed clips. I was hoping to use this suite that I bought awhile ago for hd editing. It is capable of it but it seems my pc is a step out of time for this application.

    Thanks for everyones inputs. I still have yet to check on the defrag. I am typing on a different computer.

    @diablo - thanks but i do have a 512mb pci-e card. Also please note you have a quad core cpu to begin with while I'm running a dual core.
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  18. Whether 2+1 will run faster than 1+1 will depend on whether the system+applications need more than the physical memory available. If you don't have enough memory to hold everything in DRAM a virtual memory (VM) OS will start using hard drive space as if it was additional DRAM (in a very simplified sense). Hard drive access is several orders of magnitude slower than DRAM access so you can get a huge drop in performance (a 90%, or worse, drop isn't unusual). Having mismatched memory modules means the computer won't be able to use interleaving to access memory. That will cause a small (~5%) drop in performance).

    So if you are in a position where the program has resorted to using hard drive space as VM then adding a GB with a mismatched stick will still get you a big performance increase. But if your application is not using VM you will see a small drop in performance.
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  19. Member edDV's Avatar
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    The workarounds for slow CPU HD editing involves format conversion to something your CPU can handle. You can try

    HUFFyuv @ 1920x1080 or 1440x1080 (match camcorder resolution) at ~60 Mb/s.

    HDV Mpeg2 @ 1440x1080 25 Mb/s (directly supproted by Studio 12)

    MPeg2 at higher than 25Mb/s bit rate. The higher you go, the easier the decode lode on the CPU. The limit is the sustained transfer rate of your video drive.

    This will take some experimentation.
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  20. Member yoda313's Avatar
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    @jagabo - thanks for the insight. I think I may hold off on ram purchases right now. I did finally get the defrag finished. I have yet to run the program after the defrag. Who knows that may spur on a little increased performance there.

    I had started at 311gb free before the defrag and ended up with something over 340 free afterwards! Like I said I've been doing a lot of bluray ripping and encoding said bluray to dvd. That involves a lot of 30-40 gig rips and subsequent deletions. Those probably crowded the drive even though they were deleted.

    Originally Posted by eddv
    MPeg2 at higher than 25Mb/s bit rate. The higher you go, the easier the decode lode on the CPU. The limit is the sustained transfer rate of your video drive.
    I think I like that idea the best. So how should I go about converting ts h264 1280x720 to mpeg2 1280x720?

    I have tmpgenc 2.5 plus but I can't imagine there are any plugins to allow it to import hd h264 video.

    Are there any variants of vdub that can open ts h264 video? I could frameserve to a mpeg encoder right? Though I guess tmpgenc 2.5 plus is so old it can't output high def mpeg2 right?

    Are there any freeware encoders that do mpeg2 high def? I am aware of hcenc and quenc. Are there any high def front ends for them to do output other than dvd format like avstodvd does?
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  21. HcEnc can do high def. Use constant quality encoding, short GOPs (6?), no B frames, or even all I frames.

    What container is your source file? Try DirectShowSource() in AviSynth.
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  22. Member yoda313's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by jagabo View Post
    HcEnc can do high def. Use constant quality encoding, short GOPs (6?), no B frames, or even all I frames.

    What container is your source file? Try DirectShowSource() in AviSynth.
    Thanks.

    They are TS files recorded with my hauppauge hd pvr.

    So what front end can I use for hcenc? I know about avstodvd but that is for dvd output.

    Does hcenc have its own user interface or is it command line only and supported with other gui's?
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  23. I usually use HcGUI as a front end for HcEnc. It still requires an AviSynth script as input. It can be as simple as:

    DirectShowSource("filename.ts")

    But you must have a Directshow TS file reader/splitter (Haali will work) and DirectShow video and audio decoders installed (ffdshow will work for the HD PVR's h.264 and AC3/AAC audio).
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  24. Member yoda313's Avatar
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    Thanks.

    I'm sure I have haali installed already on my editing rig. I think I have ffdshow also. Oh and its ac3 audio for the files also.

    I hate to admit this being a videohelp veteran and all but I am not versed in AVISYNTH. I am not sure if I have ever used it.

    Is there a "for dummies" guide for avisynth?
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  25. http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Main_Page#New_to_AviSynth_-_start_here

    If you have VirtualDubMod installed you can use it to generate an AviSynth script with the selected filename. Start VirtualDubMod, go to File -> Open Video File..., navigate to the file in question, highlight it, use the pulldown at the bottom of the dialog to select DirectShowSource as the template. That will automatically create a simple AviSynth script (.AVS file) in the same folder as the file. Or you can use Notepad to created and edit scripts.
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  26. Member yoda313's Avatar
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    .


    Thanks.

    I have some reading to do for the weekend
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  27. In case you didn't notice, I added a bit to my last post.
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  28. Another option is to use DgAvcIndex to build and index and AvcSource("filename.dga") in an AviSynth script. That is usually more reliable than DirectShowSource().
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  29. Member yoda313's Avatar
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    @jagabo - thanks.

    I'm on my editing rig now. I'll try some of this out.

    Edit - sorry it doesn't recognize the ts file. I'm using vdubmod 1.5.10.2

    I'll try it the other way.

    Edit 2 - sorry I didn't do the drop down menu. It worked! I'll try to load the avs file when I find it.

    Edit 3 - Great! HCgui .23 has now loaded the avs file for the clip I want to test. I'm in the menu now and I'll fiddle around with the settings to work on a 1280x720 mpeg2 output.

    Thanks jagabo - I appreciate the extra options you gave


    Edit 4

    hcenc25kencode.jpg

    Are these good settings to use to get a 25mb mpeg2 high def output file? I notice it is outputting an m2v. So that means I'll have to demux the audio each time I do this?

    Is there a batch way to do this hcenc? I have 36 clips to do (well I have other background videos as well but there are only a handful of those and not a hard thing to do individually, but 36 will be).

    Edit 5 - SUCCESS!

    I loaded the m2v video file into pinnacle studio 12 plus and it played it back flawlessly! It was at 25mb as EDDV suggested to start at. THANKS EDDV!

    I loaded the ac3 file I demuxed as the background music track and it played well!

    It turns out the audio issue was with my bluetooth headphones. For some reason it would not output over the bluetooth adapter to my bluetooth headphones. I know they work because I can listen to music over them just fine. So I bit the bullet and got some wired headphones and connected them to my creative xfi gamer edition sound card and TADA! SOUND! So now I can edit the file just fine.

    Thanks everyone I really appreciate the assistance. You saved me money and hassle by not getting more ram or fooling around with other programs or whatever.

    Now the only thing I think I'll do is mux the audio back with the m2v file. That way I'll have an easier time of editing the file and maintaining whatever synch I can with this project.

    THANKS JAGABO AND EDDV and to the others who have contributed in this post. I'll keep updating this as I go along.

    Any suggestions on avchd output settings with pinnacle studio 12 plus? I guess I'll have to toy around with that as well. Maybe keep it at 7mb which is what the original video was capped at? My destination is either single or dual layer dvd for avchd playback on my ps3.

    Edit 6 -

    I am encoding an edit of my converted file in pinnacle studio 12 plus now. I did a simple cut of the beginning of the file. I have also done a fade out at the end of the clip. Unfortunately I'd like a bigger fade but I'll probably figure out how to make the fade more pronounced as I use the program more.

    Right now I'm outputting a test folder. It had a 13k output as the minimum rate to choose. However that was using a dl disc as a target output. Perhaps if I choose single layer next time it will offer lower bitrates.

    This is still a learning process but this is going to be fun.

    I can even do menus for avchd apparently. It has menus but I don't know if it will work in the avchd world or not. I had a separate thread going on and I"ve been informed multiavchd can do motion menus. Then in that case I can modify my clips in pinnacle and then import into multiavchd for my final project if the menus in pinnacle don't work in the avchd model.

    Edit 7

    Well my first edit worked out great.

    I burnt the avchd folder to dvd and popped it in my ps3. It started right away and played beautifully. One thing I had not anticapated was that the output from pinnacle would be 1920x1080. There must be an output setting somewhere in Pinnacle studio 12 plus to designate the resolution output in avchd mode. Though the video still looked great. Even with conversion to m2v and then back to avchd it looked really good.

    I'm not 100% certain the audio stayed in synch but its darn close if it isn't. I would still like to be able to remux the m2v from hcenc with the ac3 before proceeding. Hopefully that would ensure synch success. I had downloaded imagompegmuxer that was supposed to be able to handle high def m2v video. It did open the file and the ac3 as well but promptly did nothing. It may be the high def audio. Its actually 640kpbs ac3 that I capped from the ps3 with the hauppauge hd pvr.

    Is there something that can mux high def m2v and high def ac3? I'd like to be able to edit the single video file in pinnacle. For some reason since I added the ac3 audio file as background music I couldn't seem to trim the video clip while moving the audio at the same time. I tried locking both tracks and one at a time but no go. I ended up just doing a straight cut. But I'd like to be able to pull both the audio and video together at the same time while trimming. That's where muxing comes in. I want it to be the same file so when I put it in the timeline pinnacle sees it as one entity.
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    Last edited by yoda313; 12th Jun 2010 at 02:03.
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