Studio 9 - WHY ME?

[Bigdaddybrat]

Hey Guys,

Again, I just have to say this is an amazing site... I tell everyone I know about this site and how much information there is to learn here.

Anyways, I am having a real hell of a time with Pinnacle's Studio 9.

I have been playing with this piece of crap for a while, since I got it free with my ATI AW card (Studio 8 and upgraded to 9... Don' t ask me why)... But I am about to throw in the towel.

I have been trying to make a TV compilation DVD for my kids and have put in a little bit of time on the project. But even if I lock the Audio and Video together, the Audio always comes out of sink... and ends up playing catch up to the video .

I thought it was because I had cut out some of the comercials and that may have screwed things up... so I used another program to cut out the comercials and the files play fine as an MPG2... it isnt until I put them into Studio 9 that they run out of sink. I have the most up-to-date download for studio 9 (since I thought that may help the problem) to no avail .

Has anyone had this problem with the program? I have read alot comments regarding the program crashing and stuff, but have not had this happen to me... just the damn audio running out of sink.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[jtoolman2000]

It's got to be your sources. Pinnacle if a real pain in the ass when it comes to what it will accept. If You hook up a Mini DV cam and your HD is fast enough you will transfer perfectly, ALl will be fine. If I try to import something that I converted or got from my tV or whatever, it always gives me problems.

VD files will edit perfectly and the final project I render to MPG2 DVD which I then load to Encore to author. I do not like Studios Meny authoring and disk burner.

So you can assume that if you feed it what it wants it will be happy. Only standard captured videos files seem to work flawlessly for me. Nothing that I either get from a non camera source such as a DL as practically nothing encoded /comverted from another format will work well. You might want to DL a demo of another editor and see whether that helps. Ulead has 30 day trials of their progs.

Good luck

[donpedro]

If there is an problem with MPEG file that you have it will probably appear in any DVD authoring software. Try some of the competition and see if it can handle it.

[northcat_8]

are they out of sink when you play them in studio 9 or after authoring?

Pinnacle Studio is rather buggy and it is your own fault for upgrading from 8 to 9 <I have S8 and understand completely>

Are you "background rendering"?
Are your audio settings set properly? Meaning, you aren't having studio re-sample the audio are you?

[presto]

I have cursed Pinnacle many times myself. At one point I thought they had it working reliably and recommended it to a friend. Guess what? I asked him a while later if he had made any DVD's and he said he had but the sound was out of sync. Shameful.

They do have a good forum though. I think you are more likely to find your answer there. Vent your frustration at the product but don't take it out on the guys who help out on the forum (not that you did that, I'm just refering to what often happens when we get frustrated).

[pepegot1]

Use Video Studio 9.0. Pinnacle is too picky.

[lordsmurf]

Easy method:

1. ATI MMC to capture
2. Womble MPEG VCR to edit
3. TMPG DVD Author (TDA) to author DVD

Easy, cost-effective, easy.

[mpiper]

I have Studio 9.3.5. Do NOT use 9.4, even the Pinnacle fan club hates it and says it is buggy.

I use Pinnacle as my analog capture program, because I started in the Multimedia world in 1996 with the old DC30+ capture card and loved it. Pinnacle is a leftover from the old days when only very special computers could do video editing, and their philosophy is to have very tight controls, expectations and very little flexibility. In the old days of 200-400 Mhz PCs, those tight controls were needed to be able to capture video in real time.

Today, any PC on the market can capture, but Pinnacle has never changed their philosophy.

The best way to use Pinnacle, since you already paid for it, is to use it to do the original capture (in the Pinnacle preferred format), edit it within Pinnacle and then publish from pinnacle. The minute you leave puinnacle and use something else, pinnacle will start acting up.

Another option: Capture the video in AVI/mJpeg format with audio as uncompressed PCM wave. this format interleaves the audio with the video on a frame by frame basis and doesn't go out of sync as easy. If you can capture mjpeg with PCM audio, and it is in sync when the captured file is played back before you edit, then all the editing in the world will never make it go out of sync. (This is tough to capture IN sync, though)

Only once you have finished editing and making all your changes, then publish the videos as finished AVIs, then author your DVD and let the author program (Pinnacle) do the conversion. This should keep the audio in sync, since the Studio is getting a finished product to convert.

Mike

[presto]

I have never had trouble with mpgs captured by Pinnacle. It works fine for me as step 1 in Lordsmurfs Easy Method.


It's creating DVD's that Pinnacle chokes on.

[dun4cheap]

Well many of you who frequent the Pinnacle Forums probably know me already. I usually am always giving the pinnacle staff a hard time about stuff not working. (I have sent Mike Iampietro many emails on various problems) I have also learned to keep all my original sources in AVI until its time to render the DVD. I have created projects that required a couple hundred dvds to be replicated. If you can work around the quarks it works well. Here are a couple of things I recommend:

#1 No onboard audio cards
#2 Intel Chipset (preferred)
#3 Good memory (Use the windows memory tester to check yours)
#4 Fast hard drives (Render to a seperate drive)
#5 Defrag your drives occassionally
#6 Disable your NIC Card (I don't do this)
#7 Turn Off your Anti Virus (I don't do this but remember to turn it back on)


For the record, I have also done a couple of 1 hour jobs with Studio 9 plus 9.4.3 beta using mpg2 and it has been a while since I have seen OOS. I have also tried the other products and for the most part they all come with there own bugs.

[Tom Saurus]

Bigdaddybrat: I think lordsmurf gave you some great advice. I recommend you get a S-Video Cable to give you the best resolution you can get. I am assuming you are recording in some TV Shows that your children enjoy.

I recommend you pick up a hard drive, just for recording your video too. This alone will be a great help, because I have found I can let the ATI Card record away, and surf the internet, work with my Picture Programs, ect and not drop a frame.

Definetly allow MMC to record, your video for you. It is very efficient at doing so. Read about how to set your settings for MMC from Lord Smurf's website; you will see he has a link to digitalfaq.

Tmpgenc DVD Author 1.6 is really a great program for compiling your DVD. It is easy to work with, well worth the money it costs.

Womble Mpeg Video Wizard will just blow your socks off. You will be astounded at how well it can cut out commercials. There are other tools built in, that are useful as well. A really neat thing about it, is it will not re-ecode your video, which will save you alot of time. Along with a GOP fixer, if you should ever need it. There is also a tool built in that allows you to fix your audio synch problems. I haven't tried it, but if it is anything like the rest of Womble Mpeg Video Wizard, it should work fine.

The version of Pinnacle you got from ATI when you got your video capture card, has some uses though. There is a very good quality title maker in it. Actually I really enjoy that title editor in Pinnacle, you can really make your letters stand out well, and you can put your own custom backgrounds behind the words. Also there is the Real Video and Windows Movie Video Output options, which might come handy.

The drawbacks to Pinncacle is that it is a resource hog. It isn't very easy to edit video with it. You already know the drawbacks.

Please atleast try the trial versions of TDA 1.6 and Womble Mpeg Video Wizard. TDA 1.6 is quite flexable, and as I said as far as I know nothing exists that can do a better job at editing video than Womble Mpeg Video Wizard.

Most important, keep asking questions. There are alot of kind people on this forum that will try to guide you to improving your DVD projects. Another little thing to think about, you know the fancy transitions that are Pinacle that you can place in between scenes, Womble has a bunch of 2D and 3D transitions built right in that you use. Well worth the money and perhaps you can get a $50.00 coupon to reduce the price as well.

[northcat_8]

Being a Studio 8 user, I would like to echo what a few others have told you.

I capture to DV-AVI, I edit and output from Pinnacle as DV-AVI.

I then use TMPGenc Plus 2.5 to encode to MPEG-2 and TDA to author.

I have not had problems with Pinnacle accepting files from Premiere or after effects.

I have never gotten S8 to author a DVD, it always hangs.

S8 also takes for-freakin-ever to convert DV-AVI to MPEG-2.

The only other things I would add to dun4cheap's list would be to increase your page file and shutdown all non-essential background programs.

[lordsmurf]

Wanted to expand a bit more....

Almost all of the time, software that comes free with hardware is free for a reason -- it's crap. Pretend they are coasters to hold your beer or other desired beverage while you install the hardware.

ATI gives out 4-5 pieces of junk. MyDVD, Studio, Roxio, and a couple other things.

It's a shame you spend money to update to v9 of Studio, but just accept it as a mistake and move in. Don't punish yourself any further.

[dun4cheap]

Lordsmurf,

Isn't ATI MMC free

The point is MMC has come from many versions as well. I used to get so frustrated with it that I swore my head would explode. I now use the EZ look features on my multi media center. It has come a long way and OOS is a thing of the past for me with it as well.