AVI Playback problem

[James Rulison]

I am running a Single Proc P4 1.5 Ghz, I have 768 MB RAM, and a 7200 Ultra DMA 133 60 GB Hard drive.

I am using a Pinnacle DV 200 firewire board, with Windows XP, and Adobe Premiere 6.01.

I use to put things together on a PIII 600 Dell machine with Windows 2000 and had no problems. I recently moved all of my editing to the configuration above, thinking boy this should scream now.

What I ran into is bad AVI Playback. I thought at first it might be the DV200 board well I remove it and I have the same problem. I spent several hours troubleshooting this problem. I finally decided to just start with a free install of Windows XP with nothing added. I copied back across my AVI file and tried playing it again jerky playback. I watch my CPU hit 100% durning playback everytime. Anyone have any ideas on how to fix this problem?

[James Rulison]

Quick update:

I use a Canon XL1s. I read on another thread that Video from the Canon XL1s doesn't capture or playback well in Adobe is this true?

[Bill Ravens]

My personal experience is that WMP 7 has a few problems from time to time. Try a different media player like ZoomPlayer.

Windows XP continues to be pretty raw. I wouldn't expect it to be useful until the first service pack release. W2000 is faster with video files, anyway.

[James Rulison]

The jittery problems happen in Premiere while capturing and playing.

[James Rulison]

Latest update:

I switched to a JVC Digital Cybercam recording on a blank Mini DV Tape still didn't help. Does anyone have any ideas. I switched to RAM for preview and that helped, but I still get the fame pause problem. I also noted a few dropped frames. I can't figure this out. A friend of mine has a very similar setup including XP and has NO PROBLEMS. Next step is to remove the DV 200 Firewire card and purchase a different card.

Best,
James

[Rob Lohman]

James,

I think the problem you are reporting in premiere is playback
through the camera. If you have the camera connected through
firewire and it is switched on, premiere will output its monitor
to the camera. If you'd hook up a TV/monitor to the XL1S you'd
see the picture. This, however, slows down the footage on your
PC to a couple of frames per second (very noticibly).

If you are having playback problems using the Mediaplayer
here are the things I suggest you take a look at:

- Harddisk. The mostly seems to be the problem. Is it running
at full speed?
- Do you have IRQ conflicts? XP sometimes seems to be very
stubborn as to where to put devices. If you have some in
your system (audio, raid controller, firewire card etc.) Information
about this is lurking around somewhere in XP, but I am currently
at work with only Windows 2000 available. Try removing all
devices beginning with only one and then adding gradually
from there if this is the problem
- Are you sure your video card is using full hardware acceleration?
- Did you install any other DV codec than the microsoft one?
- Any exotic hardware?

And last but not least, are you running a virus checker or
something like that. It might be that you have this configured
to scan every file instead of only executables. This can also
slow down your system to a crawl.

Hope this gives you some ideas

[Adrian Douglas]

The first thing to do is to ensure that you have the driver for Windows XP. The Win2k driver dosen't support the XL1s or XP.

I tried to check Pinnacles site for you but there was some problem. Pinnacle make great hardware but their software support is somewhat lacking.

[James Rulison]

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Lohman : James,

I think the problem you are reporting in premiere is playback
through the camera. If you have the camera connected through
firewire and it is switched on, premiere will output its monitor
to the camera. If you'd hook up a TV/monitor to the XL1S you'd
see the picture. This, however, slows down the footage on your
PC to a couple of frames per second (very noticibly).

Rob,

Switched that off already that helps but still doesn't fix it. Ok not that I want to admit this, but I ripped a DVD to my HD to see if it was the drive and played them directly from the hard disk. Guess what....it played without a problem. I can play MOV, RM, WMV, all no problems I grabed a AVI file from something I recorded on my old setup and it plays fine as well.

*** This got me really stumped.

I did get a idea that I will check tonight if that fixes it I will let you know.

[James Rulison]

<<<-- Originally posted by Adrian Douglas : The first thing to do is to ensure that you have the driver for Windows XP. The Win2k driver dosen't support the XL1s or XP.

I tried to check Pinnacles site for you but there was some problem. Pinnacle make great hardware but their software support is somewhat lacking. -->>>

Adrian,

I am capturing it from the JVC Cybercam and still having the same problem. I want to save my XL1s heads so I use the cheap JVC to get the video into the Computer. That's why in my update I thought maybe the JVC processes the video from the XL1s in a different format causing the problem. So I did some recording with the JVC and then tried to import that, which still had the same problem. Thanks for the input.

Best,
James

[James Rulison]

** I FIXED IT!!!!!!!! **

Let this be a lesson always talk to a hardware expert. After talking it out with a friend of mine I remembered that IDE bus speed is based on the slowest device on the chain much like SCSI. So I got home tonight and cracked the case to see how my DVD drive and CDR were configured. Low and behold my CDR was on the same chain as my hard drive. Once I switched that around I did some capture and playback all problems were resolved.

thanks again for everyones input. I hope this helps someone else out who might be having the same problem.

Thanks,
James Rulison

[Rob Lohman]

Good news!

I forgot to include that one indeed. Stupid me. To everyone
that is reading, this indeed holds true. If you have a ultra
new fast UDMA 133 harddisk on your IDE channel 0 and you
put an old PIO MODE harddisk in there your blazingly new
fast harddisk will run slow. Best to put one device on each
channel. If this leaves you with not enough IDE channels
you might get one of the excellent Promise Ultra cards to
get the latest fastest IDE channels.

[Jeff Klein]

Okay, could someone explain this fix to me in plain language? I just ran across this thread during a search for AVI playback problems that I'm experiencing. Click here for my thread