Very choppy playback on DVD RW

[Dear Prudence]

Hi

I have saved avi files to a Sony DW RW so that I can check out the output quality.

It appalling!

It is very choppy (video & audio).

It is not the RW drive or the media because I have copied files that I have downloaded in avi format - these play with no problems.

So it is something I'm doing.

On Premiere pro 1.5 I am selecting Video for Windows (I'm working with old VHS).

I have tried Cinepack - and also no compression.

The files play back with no problem off the hard drive.

But when they are transferred to RW they become choppy.

Any ideas?

Thanks - Stephen

[Nelson37]

You state that you have saved AVI files to an RW that do not play very well.

You also state that you have saved AVI files to an RW that do play correctly.

You do NOT state which of the multiple possible AVI compression schemes were used on each of these presumably different files, and therefore have supplied no useful information whatsoever.

Most likely, the files which play jerkily are less compressed and/or use a more CPU-intensive compression method, which due to the lesser throughput of a DVD drive compared to a hard drive would be a normal condition, not indicative of any "problem" at all.

[Dear Prudence]

I have used Cinepak, which is PP default. I new to video compression so I thought the default would be OK.

What I am trying to do is save avi files on to RW so that I can edit them in the future.

Since my original post - I have imported the avi file back FROM the RW into PP.

The Choppy playback remains.

Can you suggest a codec that would be suitable?

Thanks.

[Nelson37]

Do you mean that you copied from the RW to the Hard Drive, then loaded this file into Premiere, and it was still choppy? When the SAME FILE, before copying to the RW, played correctly? And NO MODIFICATIONS were made to the file between initial play test, copy to RW, then copy back to the Hard drive? This would be highly unusual. Operations as I have described should not alter file in any way, and playback from hard drive would not change.

Note that if you import a file, play in premiere, then save with Premiere, THE FILE HAS BEEN CHANGED. Play the saved file from the Hard drive, after saving with premiere, then save to RW, play from RW, then copy back to hard drive, then test play again.

Recommendations - use Vdub for playback test. Alternately, use multiple players to test playback. Different programs will react differently to various compression schemes, resulting in an inaccurate evaluation of the video. Do NOT rely on one program to determine video quality.

IMO, best intermediate codec for temporary AVI compression is Huffy. Cinepak is ancient, crappy technology. And no, the defaults are often wrong.

[edDV]

What is the source video? Are we talking about a MiniDV camcorder?

What is your project format? Are we talking about DV format (720x576 48KHz)?

Are you trying to preserve quality?

To save in DV quality you need to break clips into 20min (max) segments. Output in DV-AVI standard and then copy the file to DVD-RW.

DV-AVI will not play back from a DVD. The DVD is about 3x slow to play the file. It needs to be copied back to the HDD to play.

For this reason and to save time and effort, I recommend you store DV-AV intermediate material back to DV tape (1hr.) using the Premiere "print to tape" function. Of course the tapes can be played in realtime to preview. There is no loss printing to tape and recapturing.

BTW, Cinepack is for high compression streaming and will destroy the quality of your video.