Problem editing AVI files

[pstrommen]

Okay, i have been trying for the last week or so to put together a video of my last vacation. Its a couple of hundred clips, and they're all in .avi.

They play smoothly and with no problems in VLC, however the problem is when i put them into the editing program. The first few seconds plays normal, then the picture starts chopping more and more until i get one frame every few seconds. also, if i skip into say 15 seconds of the clip and press play, the same happens. the first few seconds are fine, then it gets worse and worse, so it's not that the files are damaged. It is seriously frustrating, and i have no clue to fix it. i've tried to download some different .avi codecs but with no luck.

The program i use is Pinnacle Studio Ultimate, version 12. I also tried windows movie maker just to see if it handled it better, but it did not. basically the same problem there. I have an AMD 3800+ dual core 2,2 ghz cpu, 2gb of ram and a 8800gt graphics card, so i was hoping it's not about my hardware. Also, since the clips run smoothly in VLC, i suspect its something about the editing programs

Any ideas would be highly appretiated, as it feels like ive been banging my head against a very real wall for the last couple of days.

PS: not sure if this was the right section of the forum to post in, i just took a shot

[guns1inger]

AVI doesn't tell us a lot, as the AVI container can hold many different types of video, and some edit far more easily than others. You can determine what type of video you have in the AVI files by using media info.

The problem may only be with the preview in Ultimate, which while annoying, may not affect the rendered video when you finish the editing.

Neither editor is what I would consider robust or particularly great.

[pstrommen]

thanks for quick reply!

as far as i can tell, it is MPEG-4.

also, could you recommend another editor?

[guns1inger]

Use media info to find out exactly what type of mpeg-4, and how it is encoded. Mpeg-4 is not edit friendly.

[pstrommen]

blah, sorry for being slow :P

MediaInfo tells me
1 video streams: S-Mpeg 4 v2
1 audio streams: WMA2

*EDIT: it also says Writing application: Lavf51.15.0 if that is relevant..

[guns1inger]

What type of camera does these come from ?

[pstrommen]

it comes from a Panasonic HDC-SD9, originally comes as .mts (.h264 if im not mistaking, i find it hard to talk about these things, as i'm not quite sure how it works yet) , but its been converted.. and i don't have the original files anymore. they're on a friends external drive, and it's gonna be a while until i could get those files from him again if i wanted

[edDV]

The Panasonic HDC-SD9 recods in AVCHD format which is an implementation of h.264. Search "AVCHD" for many threads about edit options.

Pinnacle Studio Plus version 12 will import AVCHD.
Sytem Requirement -Intel® Core™2 Duo 2.4 GHz or higher required for 1440x1080 AVCHD editing
http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/Products/Consumer+Products/Home+Video/Studio+...tudio+Plus.htm

[tofuguy]

I think you should google or find the program automencoder 5.0 and convert the avi with that program, it helped me with my choppy avi files. But I'm not sure if it'll help you.

[pstrommen]

The Panasonic HDC-SD9 recods in AVCHD format which is an implementation of h.264. Search "AVCHD" for many threads about edit options.

Pinnacle Studio Plus version 12 will import AVCHD.
Sytem Requirement -Intel® Core™2 Duo 2.4 GHz or higher required for 1440x1080 AVCHD editing
http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/Products/Consumer+Products/Home+Video/Studio+...tudio+Plus.htm

argh... this means i would have to upgrade my cpu... cause pinnacle did play the original AVCHD files, they just ran very very choppy. the files were 1920*1080 too.. okay, time to speed up my plans to get a new computer

[guns1inger]

Go quad-core, 2GB ram minimum, and get XP Pro if you still can.

[pstrommen]

well, for now i'd still like to find some way of editing these files.. could anyone suggest a converter to get them into .wmv or something easier to edit? a reduction of the resolution to say 1280x1024 would even be nice.. this video im trying to get together is gonna end up on youtube anyway, so i dont really need the picture quality i have at the moment

[edDV]

The Panasonic HDC-SD9 recods in AVCHD format which is an implementation of h.264. Search "AVCHD" for many threads about edit options.

Pinnacle Studio Plus version 12 will import AVCHD.
Sytem Requirement -Intel® Core™2 Duo 2.4 GHz or higher required for 1440x1080 AVCHD editing
http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/Products/Consumer+Products/Home+Video/Studio+...tudio+Plus.htm

argh... this means i would have to upgrade my cpu... cause pinnacle did play the original AVCHD files, they just ran very very choppy. the files were 1920*1080 too.. okay, time to speed up my plans to get a new computer

OK then Pinnacle says

- Intel® Core™2 Quad 2.66 GHz or higher required for 1920x1080 AVCHD editing