Hi all!
First, my equipment:
AMD AthlonXP 2600+
A7N8X-E Deluxe s,A nForce2,Ultra,DDR400 DCh,6ch,LAN,SATA,1394,8x
GV-R925128VH VIVO using as a capture card, complex video-in
Samsung DDR 256 MB 400Mhz
Seagate 160 GB 7200 rpm, ATA V, 8 MB cache

Software for capturing:
Ulead Video Studio 8

Camcorder:
Sony, analog

I have been trying all possible bitrates, resolutions, MPEG and AVI and so on and always (more or less) I get on the preview "stuttering" picture from time to time, especially when the camera moves, even not so quickly. I only get a bit of improvement when setting the quality v/s speed slider to 0.1% compared to the 100% one...
Any comment or advice will be highly appreciated!

I've never used Ulead so I am not speaking from experience here, but is the preview displaying the effects in realtime as opposed to rendering first. If that's the case it might be possible that your system is not able to keep up with the pace of the RT effects.

What happens when you render your project/export it? Does the resulting video play smoothly?

__________________
Lloyd

That's my opinion. If you don't like it I have others

System: Apple Macbook Pro 17, and an external Freecom 500GB eSATA drive.
Software: Final Cut Studio 2 (FCP 6, Motion 3, Soundtrack Pro 2, Color, DVD Studio Pro 4, Compressor 3), Sonicfire Pro 4.5
Favourite Resources: Findsounds.com, Free DVD menus, Ken Stone's FCP Page, Wikivid

When you say "preview", do you mean the capture preview, or the render preview? I notice you're using an analogue source...

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When the signal comming from the camcorder is just "displayed" on the Ulead preview screen without actual capturing, the footage is as smooth as on the e.g. tv screen! It's the rendered/compressed/not-compressed e.g AVI uncompressed, preview that stutters. When played on other players MS Media Pl or whatever plays the avi, mpg2 etc., the result is the same - "stuttered" from time to time when the camera is stady, but the objects move relatively fast, and always when the camera moves!

An update...
Tried capturing with other software - VirtualDub, VirtualVCR - still no luck. The CPU usage doesn't go over 60%...

Now that you have two hard drives to use you should capture all video, and set any programme temporary space, to the second hard drive. Before doing this you should defragment both hard drives.

1. Open ULead Video Studio

2. From the File menu select Preferences

3. On the General tab set the Working folder: to a folder on your second hard disk

4. Click the Preview tab

5. Uncheck Box number 1

6. Check box number 2 and set the folder to a folder on your second hard drive.

7. Set the Hard Disk: drop down box to your second hard drive

8. Uncheck (if necessary) the Limit hard disk usage to: check box.

9. Click OK

10. Continue your projects as normal and when you create any movies create them on your second hard disk.

11. Enjoy


Hope that helps. Please post back and let us know.

__________________
IBM A51p with 160Gb Boot Disk, 160Gb external Firewire Disk, 2Gb Memory and a super duper sound card, 17\" TFT Monitor etc etc etc
Sony TRV33e : Sony TRV310e : Canon XM2
ULead products mostly including Mediastudio Pro (V8.0), Video Studio 8, Movie Factory 2.0, Premiere Elements

Remember, there is always more to learn than there is to teach.

Thanx for the tips! Unfortunately, I was wrong about the second drive... Since I borrowed it I didn't know it was 5400 RPM ATA 66 one, and the results are even worse! I am going to get a 7200RPM one and hope that could solve the problem!
Best regards,
jolobg