Make movie tips

The World’s Top Tips for

Pinnacle Studio Video Editing software

(with some Avid Liquid snippets)

HOLLYWOOD FX,

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Make Movie Tips

It is important that your PC devotes all its energies to the task in hand when

making a tape - without interruption from other programs or processes. The

two tips below will help you to do that...

Make Movie tips for all systems

Closing down background programs

Give Studio priority during a Make Tape operation

CLOSING DOWN BACKGROUND PROGRAMS

It doesn't matter which Studio package you are using, more often than not, it will benefit from closing down all the programs running in the background (with the exception of Explorer and Systray) - particularly screen savers, and on some systems, CD auto-detect.

The long-winded way to close down programs is to press CTRL-ALT-DEL (the three finger salute), and from the dialog box appears, select a running program, then click on the END TASK button. It is advisable to do this for all the running programs - except Explorer and Systray. Far easier is to download 'EndItAll' - and use that to close down all unwanted background stuff in one fell swoop. (See the Download page

Another method is to select RUN from the start menu, then enter MSCONFIG.EXE in the box that appears: from the dialog that appears, select the START UP tab, and deselect all programs except Systray and possibly Scandisk: this method ensures the programs aren't automatically run when you boot up.

Yet another method is to create a new user profile - called say 'Video Editing - and to set the Start-Up options for that profile so that only the absolutely necessary background programs are started at boot-up. This way, when you boot up, you can select whether to have all the background programs you want running, or the bare minimum for video editing, by selecting the appropriate user profile.

GIVE STUDIO PRIORITY DURING A MAKE TAPE OPERATION

This tip is one of many excellent tips provided by Supertek on the Pinnacle web board, and reproduced here with his kind permission. It appeared in the Studio DV section - but I am sure the tip will apply equally to the other Studio products... so, for Studio DV, read the Studio product you use.

"Windows puts the brakes on whatever Studio is doing and anything else Windows feels is more important ... including tool tips.

So don't let it! You don't want other processes taking system resources away from Studio DV during output to tape. You can set process priorities in Windows, thereby giving a high priority to StudioDV. In Windows 98, you can run TaskInfo 2000, right click on the Studio.exe process, click on "set process priority," and set to HIGH or REAL TIME*. You can then EXIT TaskInfo, and Studio DV will maintain a high priority and will not be as easily "affected" by your mouse clickings or movements... or of course by any other task which Windows decides to do. I've used this method for output to tape several times. I have even been able to make video to the dv camcorder at the same time I'm watching another DV avi (on same video drive) with Media Player at full resolution, just to see how well it works. It handled both pretty well. This high priority process setting allows Studio DV to maintain a continuous stream of audio and video to the dv cam in situations that would normally cause audio crackling, stuttering, video or audio dropouts, 'drrrrr' etc.

You can download TaskInfo at http://www.iarsn.com/index.html#/download.html

An alternative is Process Viewer 2000 at http://www.blehq.org/

Windows 2000 users can use the built-in Task Manager.

Note that Microsoft says this can cause "system instability." I have not experienced any negative effects & have only used it for output to tape. It also works for other software such as MSP6. When you exit an application in which you have changed its priority, it defaults back to normal the next time you run it. TaskInfo 2000 supports command line instructions, so you should be able to set Studio DV to run at a higher priority process level on start-up if you so choose.

* Others have suggested that the REAL TIME setting could cause problems...