AVI problem in Windows XP

[Jeff Klein]

Hi all, I need your help before I SCREAM! (whoops, too late),

I've finally gotten around to figuring out our church video computer for editing. We've had it for almost a year but our video lady hasn't had much time to figure it out and was comfortable mixing live to VCR and DV Recorder (BTW, the Panasonic AG-DV2000 we recently got is really cool), so it's really only been used for making titles and such to record onto the beginnings of our 'record live' tapes, mostly just full-screening the stills and recording onto one of our Canon GL-1's.
After completing our 40 Days of Purpose in-house skit productions we wanted to record them to DVD for distribution and archiving. I had originally produced the videos using Premiere 6.0 on my home computer for convenience but I don't have a DVD recorder so I had recorded them back to our Canon GL-1 for viewing. To get them to DVD I decided to bring the church video computer home, hook it into my home network, and transfer the files through the network, and then use the church computer's DVD burner.
Well, surprise, surprise; all the footage is jerky and unusable, almost to the point of being comical if it wasn't so irritating (think 286 computer with 4 MB RAM trying to run XP). This went for both trying to view the final video timeline and also individual AVI files. I thought it might be Premiere, but it does the same thing trying to play the AVI clips in Windows Media Player (ver 9). Then I thought, maybe something got corrupted when I transferred the files over the network so I transferred a couple back to my personal computer and they worked fine. MPEG video (downloaded from internet) doesn't seem to be as affected, but admittedly I haven't specifically compared them closely.
Has anyone run into this problem before? Below are the computers I used and their accessories. I even reformatted the entire hard drive, partitioned it (60 GB C and D drive for starters), and reinstalled everything clean: no difference at all. I tried a couple of speed and performance tweaks I found on the internet for XP, but they were a flop (I think I may have to reinstall now as well, since the registry edits didn't pan out...even after re-copying my backup registry file back into place).

My computer that the videos were originally made on:
Gateway Essential 500C
Windows 2000 Professional with current Service Packs and Updates
Bryant Intel Celeron/Pentium R3 motherboard (based on Intel 810L chipset, supporting 60/100 MHz FSB, SDRAM memory)
800 MHz Pentium III, 133 MHz FSB
192 MB RAM, mixture of Gateway and aftermarket
Western Digital 40 GB 5400 RPM Hard Drive, 2 MB cache, partitioned to 10 MB C drive and 30 MB D drive
Quantum 15 GB Hard Drive (original stock HDD, not sure of cache or RPM)
ATI All-In-Wonder Pro 128, 8 MB video RAM
On board Audio
Generic Compaq VIA OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Firewire capture card
Adobe Premiere 6.0 (with 6.0.1 update)

The church's video computer:
ABS Computers' Awesome 3500 (Digital 3)
Windows XP Professional with current Service Packs and updates
MSI MS-6585 Motherboard (based on SiS®'s new 648 chipset, supporting 533MHz FSB, DDR333 memory and AGP 8x)
2.4GHz Pentium 4 512K Socket 478 533MHz Processor
Crucial 512MB PC2100 DDR RAM
Western Digital 120GB 7200RPM Hard Drive - 8MB Cache Special Edition, separate partition for video files.
ATI OEM RADEON 8500 LE 128MB DDR DVI/CRT/TV
Sound Blaster Audigy Sound Card w/1394 Firewire Port
Pinnacle DV500 DVD Capture Card running Pinnacle Software version 4.5
Adobe Premiere 6.0 (with both 6.0.1 and 6.0.2 updates: only added 6.0.2 after jerky video)

Thanks for any help,
Jeff Klein


__________________
Jeff K
(If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it.)

[Ed Smith]

Jeff,

I have seen jerky playback of clips, via the timeline (can't remember if it did the same in WM) but mine was routed back to an underperforming hardrive even though it was 7200RPM... I found out that the drive (seagate) could not write /read the data faster enough for playback of Avi DV footage.

Is your problem to do with MPEG or AVI footage?

I see that your computer has a 5400RPM drive - was this used to create the video? If so this could be your problem. You need at least 7200RPM.

I know with DV500 you get a program called DV expert this can test the performance of your hardrives. If you run this program and then report back your findings.

Hope this helps a little,

Ed

[Jeff Klein]

Ed,
It seems to be just with avi files. I did the video capture via firewire from a Canon GL-1 using my home computer (the Pentium III with the 5400 RPM drive). The computer with the problem has the DV500 card and 7200 RPM drive (Pentium 4, 2.4 GHz). I could see if I recorded the video on a 7200 RPM drive and was trying to play it back on a 5400 RPM drive, but my situation is the opposite. The avi video plays fine on my 5400 RPM drive. It's weird, my home computer is like bare minimum to even think about DV video, but does fine; the XP computer that's supposedly set up for DV video can't play it....

One of the other posts I noticed yesterday suggested a possible codec problem, which WMP apparently uses for playback, so that may be a possibility. I'll also try to find that DV Expert program; it's possible there's a performance problem that may be found by that program.

Thanks,
Jeff

[Rob Lohman]

You've already found the other thread, so I'm gonna try and
explain this as good as I can to you. I think the problem might
be either of the following:

1) DMA is not enabled

2) slow IDE device in the system

Option 1 is easy to check. Go to your Control Panel and then
into System -> Hardware -> Device Manager. Drill down to
IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and then do the following for both
the Primary & Secondary IDE Channel:

Right-click and choose properties -> Advanced Settings. Make
sure that both devices have "DMA if available" set under Transfer
Mode.

Option 2 is a bit harder. How many devices do you have on that
PC? (harddisks, burners, DVD players etc.). Normally you have two
IDE channels that can both have two devices on the ONE channel.
HOWEVER, the slowest device will determine what the speed on
that channel will be. Now if you have an old CD player for example
connected besides your fast harddisk your harddisk will run slow
as well.

Check option 1 and if that isn't the case then we can move on
and see if the other thing is a problem.

Also is that PC running any anti virus software by any chance?
You might try disabling that for testing as well.