Editing problems with Ulead MediaStudio Pro

[KSJ]

I really like using Ulead's timeline/frame-by-frame editor in filmstrip and waveform view. But when I try to edit an MPEG1 with Ulead, I come up against a couple problems:

1) The audio drops out of sync. The capture is synchronized just fine, and the sync seems fine while I'm actually making my mark-in and mark-out points and moving it back onto the timeline, but when I go to render to play in the preview menu, then the sound gets out of sync. Since the audio and video tracks appear to be "locked" together, the only way I can attempt to sync up the sound is by making a copy of both tracks, putting them in another track of the timeline, moving them around, then disable the audio of the first copy and the video of the second copy, if that makes sense. Even then, though I appear to have it synched properly, when I render again, it will drop out of sync once more.

2) About a minute into the clip (my test piece was a 3:30 minute sample) the motion pretty much grinds to a halt. The soundtrack still plays, but the video becomes halting and jerky, like stop-motion animation, as though I were only seeing 1 frame per second or something. Again, it's fine up until I render, but after rendering is when it becomes a problem.

Barring any possibility of correcting these issues, what other programs can people recommend that will give me the timeline/filmstrip/waveform view of my file for editing? I've tried Video Factory, but it seemed very slow. I have a Athlon 1.4 Ghz with 512MB of RAM and there's no reason why, when I click on an icon, the computer should halt for 5 or 10 seconds before executing my command, but that's just what it did when using Video Factory.

KSJ

[Gary]

If it makes you feel better, I've had exactle the same two issues when trying to edit mpeg files using MSP. I was never able to get around these problems other than trying to manually synch the tracks (but it was never in synch during the entire movie), and would then frequently run into the rendering issue you spoke about.

I finally gave up and converted to avi files for editing and then re-render. I probably lost a little in quality, but I was able to get the project done.

[KSJ]

If it makes you feel better, I've had exactle the same two issues when trying to edit mpeg files using MSP. I was never able to get around these problems other than trying to manually synch the tracks (but it was never in synch during the entire movie), and would then frequently run into the rendering issue you spoke about.

I finally gave up and converted to avi files for editing and then re-render. I probably lost a little in quality, but I was able to get the project done.

For my part, I've simply gone with another MPEG cutter/joiner (for now, MyFlix 3.0--I tried using the editing in TMPGenc and PowerVCR but it didn't seem exact enough--cuts happened a second or two after I wanted them to.) The problem is that 1) it's hard to find one with the interface I like (filmstrip/waveform) and 2) I liked having some of the more sophisticated options for transitions, etc. I'm not up to using them yet but I would like to have them there when/if the day should come when I feel I need them.

I would prefer not to convert to .avi because I haven't been able to get a good picture quality converting from .avi to .mpg. I tried for months capping in Vdub using HuffyUV. The only way I have been able to produce a satisfactory VCD is by capping in MPEG1 at a data rate of 7000 (352x240--oh, is that a pretty video!) editing in MPEG format, then cropping and applying noise reduction/sharpening, and converting to VCD standard bitrate in TMPGenc. Even then, while satisfactory, the picture quality is still a tiny bit hazy--almost as if the sharpening isn't *quite* sharp enough. Wondering what settings to tweak or other filters to apply to get it a little crisper. But that's a topic for another folder.

KSJ

[Andy Haase]

I had the same problem but was making SVCD from high bit rate I only source files...
In my case the problem was eliminated when I corrected the "NTSC-SVCD" default settings... the bit rate was 2550 + 224 making the resulting file just over spec...
I have now made several SVCD that do not have the video freeze and audio sync problems and play well on computer and apex DVD