Help save a video Christmas project

In My Humble Opinion
1

I dug up a video editing discussion in this forum from March, so I hope there’s precedent for this.

I’m working on a video project as a Christmas present. I’m having problems, and have written to the software manufacturer, but I wanted to try something proactive while waiting the requisite 5 days for an answer.

I’m on a PC. All superior Mac users, feel free to leave.

I’ve been editing with MGI VideoWave III, which came with… well, either my firewire, or the DV card, or my Sony DV camera. It doesn’t do much (it can’t create slo-mo, for example), but it’s produced results for me, like my actor reel, and a video calling card for my comedy troupe. Any problems that have come up, I’ve somehow solved.

I’m putting together a lot of silly films my friends and I made in high school into a watchable “best of” video. The finished project is about 18 minutes, and about 1.3 gigs, the biggest video I’ve ever produced.

The problem? The audio is out-of-sync. This has never been a problem before, and yes, the source material is in sync. The individual scenes are in sync. Smaller productions with the same source material is in sync. The size of the video is somehow affecting the audio.

MGI (now owned by Roxio) says as much on their website help page. But all it suggests is freeing up more drive space, increasing virtual memory, and defragmenting the hard drive. I’ve done all these things, and nothing works.

I even thought – hey, why not cut the big thing in half and make two smaller videos, which I can easily stick together when I output to DV and VHS? But the smaller video has the same problem: the audio is about a second behind.

It works fine as an MPEG for CD-ROM purposes. It works fine when I use the same scenes for smaller projects (like a montage of funny lines). What is it about the 18-minute version that is screwing up the audio? Does MGI VideoWave just suck? Does “MGI sucks” = “There is NO reason, and no solution”?

Christmas is approaching. I’m getting desperate. Does anyone have any ideas?

Rendering and re-rendering and re-re-rendering,

JasonG
2

You’re screwed. This is a low end editor, not meant for things large than a couple of minutes.

I used to use software that was similarly low end, and it had limits that drove me crazy if I wanted to do anything longer than five minutes - which considering I was planning on doing 90 minute videos sometime in my future, made it completely useless.

Sound problems (just like yours), transition problems, and this weird thing that would cause entire sections to vanish until I reloaded.

Horrible software, but it was cheap, so I my complaints went unheeded.

3

Thanks, GuanoLad, though I think this is the first time I’ve ever thanked anyone for telling me I’m screwed.

One question, though:

This video project is 18 minutes.

I’ve successfully made video projects that are 12 and 15 minutes.

If I only render half the project, making a 9-minute video… shouldn’t it come out okay?

Because it doesn’t.

JasonG

4

It might work if you redid it all and ended at 9 minutes. (then did the second half).

But if all you’re doing is trying to render half of an 18 minute project, then that’s likely going to fail.