Paging Mr. Bastiaan

[gerax]

This is directed to you, but everybody with some PC/video applications knowledge is wellcome.

I'm in the first stage of the post production for the movie I recorded dialog and sound effects for, and I followed your suggestion to run the video on a separate PC and let PT handle all of the audio chores on its personal daw: the two are synced via MTC and Spdif clock, and so far they are working well. My only hassle is that my "video" PC is a little outdated and slow, it's a PII 350 MHz, that I overclocked to 450 to get some more power out of it, but still it seems to be not enough: the .avi file that I'm locking to isn't playing really smooth, and sometimes I fear of being not in sync, plus to make it run without glitches I have to keep the preview window really small, and this prevents me from spotting the exact cue for some dead-on effects.
I have tried to optimize the system as I would do for audio, but I'm not sure if the tweaks I made are effective for video too (or if they are detrimental to it), so are there any kind of "video dedicated" settings to do on the PC to make the .avi run a little smoother, or I'm just out of luck and my CPU is really too slow for such a thing (and in this case what else could you suggest )?
The PC is configured as follows: PII 350MHz (overclocked to 450) Chaintek CT-6BTS mobo, 256 Mb ram (100MHz), 6Gb system drive, 20Gb "audio" drive (7200rpm ata 100), SB Live! for MTC and SPdif clock. The Video app I'm using is Vegas Video 3.0

Thanx for your help

L.G.

[Bastiaan]

i think optimizing a pc for audio will also be ok for video. Audio and video need a pc that is capable of handling large files, and can play back streaming files without hickups.

When you try to spot an effect on the right location, go to the video-pc, and pinpoint the exact location you want the effect to be on. I mean clicking it frame by frame to find the exact loaction. Then it isnt that hard to calculate the exact position with a calculater. With the p[al-system (25 frames/second) one frame has a dureation of 40 ms. so 1 minute 2 second 8 frames will be 1:02:320.

I dont know if the avi you have running on the video-pc has some scratch audio with it. If it has, you can use that to pinpoint the location of your effect.

I am afraid this isnt the answer you are looking for, but i still hope this was some help for you. I did audio on 2 movies without ever seeing the video, until the audio was finished....but the director was there to help me identify some sounds....

[gerax]

Thank you for the quick reply Bastiaan

I'll try to use that calculations to find the right spots; in the meantime I'll also try to beef the ram up a little and see if this improves the flow of the avi.

If everything comes up to your mind don't wait to post it.

Thanx again

L.G.

[Bastiaan]

3 things pop to mind:

1) I am not really sure that more RAM will improve your playback.

2) make sure you defragged your drive, as this is essential for streaming applications.

3) Don't spend any money on this system. If you want to improve.....get a better/faster system....

[Bastiaan]

I think we got taken by technology catching up....

The newly announced ptle 5.3.1 will have video-support....

have a look here:

http://www.helios.nl/productinfo/pro...1/PT%20531.pdf

[gerax]

Thanx bro

It seems that I have managed to make the video run smoother: I changed the video playback app, going from Vegas Video 3.0 to Vegas Audio 2.0 and it seems it's a little easier un the CPU, and I can run the preview at good quality instead of "preview" quality without losing sync and with smooth flow. I also made sure that the additional drive I'm steraming the .avi from is DMA enabled, I had to force it from bios since it didn't allow me to enable it from windows.
Anyway, the final check will be with the director who'll be here to check the work in progress and spot any missed sync.
Meanwhile, I'm having a lot of fun with this post production [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] .

Thanx for your feedback.

L.G.

[Bastiaan]

Maybe its an idea to do an audio-layback for the director/producer, so you dont have to worry about your systems being in sync. Just bounce the audio to disk, burn a data-cd with the .wav, and use vegas or any other video-editing application to add the audio....then look at the video-pc, instead of the 2 linked together.