Hello,

I captured old VHS-C video to MPEGs with no problems. Using Studio 9 USB Moviebox, there were no dropped frames, and the MPEGs play fine in Windows Media Player.

My problem is after converting the MPEGs, there’s hesitation/jerks/stuttering in the audio and video in certain spots in longer videos (always the same spots). At first I thought it was my burner, but I figured out how to save the DVD files to disc and then play back the files using PowerDVD, and I’m having the same problem on the video saved to the hard drive.

FWIW, most of my converted movies will be about 30 minutes in length. If I shorten the length of the videos, they play just fine. So far I’ve tried trimming a 25-minute MPEG to 1,5, and 10 minutes, and it plays fine at these lengths.

I’ve been using Pinnacle Studio 9 and Roxio Easy Media Creator 7 Basic to edit/author the movies, and I have this problem with both. Do I need to use a more serious authoring program? If so, are there any free or evaluation versions that work decent? Or, is my problem more sinister?

My system is as follows:

ibuypower brand PC
AMD Athlon XP 3000+
Asus A7N8X-X motherboard
1024 MB RAM
Nvidia nForce2 chipset (secondary dual channel IDE drivers rolled back to generic MS)
Nvidia GeForce FX5500 256MB video
160GB hard drive
160 GB Maxtor external firewire hard drive
Win XP SP2
Pioneer DVF-A08X burner
Generic DVD-ROM

When I thought the problem was with my burner, here’s a list of things I tried to correct the situation:

- disable screen saver
- disable antivirus software
- set power options to “Presentation” mode
- using MSCONFIG, disable all items in startup tab
- defrag hard drives
- using task manager, I terminate the programs I know are safe to end
- save an image to disc and then burn from the saved image
- tried various burn speeds
- tried different types of media:
- Maxell
- Memorex
- Khypermdia
- Optodisc
- Taiyo Yuden (TYG02 purchased from rima.com)
- Updated burner firmware
- Updated drivers
- Set the burner as master and DVD-ROM as slave
- Ensured DMA mode was on
- Went into My Computer, burner drive, and made sure "Enable CD
recording" was NOT checked on recording tab.
- Tried various burning programs, but I have the same problems w/ each
- Nero Express
- Roxio Easy Media Creator
- Pinnacle Studio
(I have not had Nero and Roxio installed at the same time, and I always
ensure the other two programs are NOT running at the same time.)

Any and all help is greatly appreciated. I’ve got about 8 hours of captured video, and I don’t want to have to put them on 15-minute discs.

Thanks.

Greg