AVI Video

[shannon]

I have just started using autoplay 3 and have been fairly impressed. However, I am yet to create an AVI video that is not jittery when played back from the CD. In fact it is so jittery that I am finding this aspect of the software unuseable. Could anyone give me ideas as to the 'perfect' preparation of video to ensure smoothish playback in autoplay 3?
Thanks

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[David Delaney]

Re: AVI Video

Actually I have never had this problem, but then again, I usually show video in 320X240 or 400X300 mode and not full-screen. Mark?

[gcollier]

Re: AVI Video

I'm having this problem, too. I'm starting my cd with an avi file that is 17 mb in size, with the Project Settings/Intro Video page/Display Size set to "Normal". It works beautifully on my hard drive, but jumps and skips on the cd rom. Play speed of the cd rom is 24x, and I'm running this on 500 mh, 256 mb ram pc. This RUINS my opening video and makes my product look bad. What am I doing wrong?

Originally posted by shannon:
I have just started using autoplay 3 and have been fairly impressed. However, I am yet to create an AVI video that is not jittery when played back from the CD. In fact it is so jittery that I am finding this aspect of the software unuseable. Could anyone give me ideas as to the 'perfect' preparation of video to ensure smoothish playback in autoplay 3?
Thanks

[gcollier]

Re: AVI Video

A previous support moderator addressed this in an earlier question (6-22-2000) as follows:

The problem is probably that the video is too large in deimensions or uses too many frames per second. Our Intro Video player uses the built-in MCI commands in the Windows API. It is possible that the decompression, etc. is not quite as optimized as it would be with Windows Media Player, etc. We must use the Windows API to play videos in order to maintain maximum compatibility with your user's systems.
[/B]

This was prior to AMS3 release. Further, this does not answer the question of what to do about the problem. I have followed all the help screens keeping in mind the info above. Nothing that I can find tells me the limits of "size" of appropriate files. I play the video at "normal" speed, and my AVI is in Microsoft Video 1 format, as suggested. Please help.

[Mark]

Re: AVI Video

Hi,
As far as I can tell the best codec to use, out of the available: Intel Indeo (IR31 or IR32), Supermatch Cinepak, Microsoft RLE (MS-RLE), or Microsoft Video 1 (MS-CRAM), is the Supermatch Cinepak codec, then after that probably Intel Indeo IR32. As far as data rates go that depends on what sort of CD-ROM the user is going to have, if someone has a 2X CD-ROM then the video should not have a data rate greater then the 300Kbytes/s that the drive can deliver. A 4X CD-ROM can deliver no faster then 600Kbytes per second, so if 4X was the standard you should use 600Kbytes data rate, actually you should use slightly less then that to achieve optimal performance. So lets say the average CD-ROM speed was 32X you could then use slightly less then 4200Kbytes per second as a data rate.
I'm not a Video expert so you might want to find some other sources in order to figure out which is the optimal codec/data rate; I hope that this helps.

mark.

[AVGuru1]

Re: AVI Video

I've fouind the same thing. I think it has to do with the speed of the CDROM and the MB/Sec. I designed my demo CDwith 10 video clips on a K6 AMD 350 128MB Ram system..and I was running at 15fps....with very good quality and fairly large image size. When I upgraded my comp to a PIII 800, it ran a lot smoother. I'm sure the decompression codec you use has alot to do with it to.

Im glad I do sound and NOT video

~Michael

[Jimmy Bond]

Re: AVI Video

For all you out there having the "CD ROM Dilemma"

When viewing a avi from a cd the average CD Rom pumps out 300K/Sec..... That isn't very much comparing to my hard drive.....
The key is first is to use lower quality sound, 8 bit mono MCI. Do not use a codec.

Second, if you want to make you life easier use the codec's built into Autoplay

Intel Indeo (IR31 or IR32)
Supermatch Cinepak
Microsoft RLE (MS-RLE)
Microsoft Video 1 (MS-CRAM)

Make sure that the data rate of the the audio and video combined are around 300k/sec
to do that reduce the framerate of your video to 15fps and depending on the codec use compression. Keep the file small...320X240 is the largest I would go, if it doesn't compromise the look of your video you can use zoom from Autoplay to make it look bigger. Finally use a key frame every 15 frames. That should keep your video playing smooth.

If you are familiar with Visual Basic I have a program to automatically install Indeo 5 and then register it into the registry with no user input. Hope that helped.

JiMmY