Encore2 Preview Bad Stutter - AVIs Play in PP2 & WMP

Question

Ive encountered a problem in EncoreDVD 2 with Preview playback. Im getting a very heavy stutter in both Audio & Video. If this were a mechanical player, and not a software one, Id check that nothing was hanging up the CTI. The CTI seems to hang, lurch ahead, then come back a few frames, before repeating the process. Four frames forward, two steps back. (Note: numbers in the previous sentence are totally arbitrary and used as an example only.) All files play smoothly in PP2 and WMP.
Project: NTSC 720x480 PAR 0.9, 1 main Timeline - 15;03;02, 2 transition Timelines - 00;24;03 (identical, except for the elements that come into the frame, 1 test Timeline for calibrating the system, especially Audio volume - 00;45;15, 2 Menus - 1 with 2 Buttons: Test Timeline and 1 button to next Menu, which has sound source selection: Stereo, DD 5.1 Surround and DTS. This button goes to the main Timeline (15;03;02) w/ 3 Audio Tracks. Both Menus have Audio linked, but no Motion of any kind. All Buttons are just arrows with no thumbnails. Even the text on them is static and is not part of the Button. There are two transitions, one is Play First and leads to the Test/Sound Select Menu (basically graphics of the Buttons and the text glide into view), the other is linked to the Sound Select Button to play before the Sound Select Menu comes in. Both have Audio. Both are made from Photoshop PSDs of the respective Menus and the animation of the Buttons and text is done in PP2. Obviously, the buttons are not active, until these transitions play and the real Menu comes up.
All Video material is Exported from PP2 as DV-AVI to be transcoded in Encore2. Audio assets are mostly AC3s, Exported from PP2, and there is 1 PCMWAV (the Stereo Audio file), and one DTS, Exported from the SurCode DTS encoder. So all of these assets are elemental streams.
Everything looks good on the Timelines - Audio & Video are the same length when Zoomed in. Check Project shows no errors.
System: Intel Duo-Core 3.2GHz, 4 GB Corsair Pro RAM, 4x500GB SATAII HDDs, 1x750GB ATA-100 HDD, nVidia Quadro 4500-512MB VRAM, Realtec AC97chipSB Live! 24-bit w/ AISO4All, XP-Pro/SP-2, Adobe Production Studio CS2, dual Hitachi 21" monitors. All unnecessary processes are shut down with EndItAll2 prior to any editing and HDDs are defragged daily (as soon as this started, I did a fresh defrag, as that is what it looked like to me). Other than the Adobe products, only other SW involved has been SurCode 5.1 (PP2 plug-in) and SurCode DTS (stand-alone). This is the first DTS Project that I have done, but nearly every other one had 5.1 Surround Sound from the SurCode via AC3.
This is the first problem that I have had in Encore2. It has played nicely with every asset that I have handed it. Ive done over 100 Projects with only two tiny hiccups, and all of these Projects were much, much larger with dozens of Timelines and multiple menus, many with Motion Backgrounds and animated Buttons. Ive used transition Video assets to go to Menus that were a lot more complex than in this Project.
The stutter is with all assets. Preview for here shows this problem, regardless of where I am previewing from. Again, all Video assets are DV-AVI from PP2 and play smoothly in PP2 and WMP. All Audio assets are PCMWAV, AC3 or DTS. They play smoothly in PP2 and WMP too. It is like Encores Preview Player hangs, breaks away, then bounces back a bit, before it hangs and breaks away again.
Right now, I am burning a DVD+RW to test and will also start this Project from the ground up, to test as well. Luckily, its a simple Project.
Has anyone else had this sort of behavior? Does anybody see anything in the above specs. to indicate any sort of problem with Preview? Did I just miss something critical, because the Project seemed so simple and I could do it in my sleep? If the DVD+RW burns OK, and tests fine, and the final DVD-5 does too, then its almost moot, except that I would love to find ou

Answer 1

Joe,
I did try switching off Automatic, per manual and posts here, but it had no effect. There is/was obviously some small difference between the playback engines, but so long as it's working now... Earlier posts here indicated that the E2 and PP2 playback engines were the same, so that had me puzzled. One thing that I did check was ver. of DirectX (still 9c), because I had a program a couple of months back that wanted to install 8a. Bad coding in that installer, in my book.
Neil,
I used to upgrade and update religiously, but app. by app. I am turning more to your way of thinking. If it works, do not touch it. Main reason that I did not want to do anything with Production Studio. It was all (well, almost all) working perfectly, and even with major Registry cleaning, programs have a way of leaving little nuggets behind that foul one up later.
Normally, my video driver would have been first guess, except that every other application, even some video-intensive ones, ran perfectly. Took a while, but maybe it'll benefit someone else in the future.
And yes, I had to turn off Apple's Automatic Update feature twice already today, but it probably has already resset itself. I need a check list of things like that to look at every time I boot the machine up!
Neil,
In a few days I may have a couple more DTS/5.1 questions, that I'll post in the Audio Assets forum. Almost done, but not quite.
Thanks,
Hunt