AVI movie very jerky

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Coffee999
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Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2011 9:53 am

AVI movie very jerky

Post by Coffee999 »

Hi everyone. New here, love FM so far.

When I trialed FM, I created a quick project and saved it to avi and it ran as the project ran in the software. I then bought FM, created a fast project, saved it to an avi movie, but it's very jerky, runs 10 times slower than the movie duration should be. Basically unusable. I'm assuming it's a settings issue. I updated the codecs just to get the registered version to play a saved avi so I should be good there. Any suggestions? Thanks for any help.

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fantam
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Re: AVI movie very jerky

Post by fantam »

Which codec do you use? DivX? Please visit the tutorial How to Export Compressed AVI.
I guess you set a very large movie size, so the playback is very slow due to the CPU performance. Please set the movie size smaller than 720 x 480 and try again.

Coffee999
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2011 9:53 am

Re: AVI movie very jerky

Post by Coffee999 »

Thank you for the replay fantam, and you were correct. Apparently it was to big to play smoothly. But I would like to add a few questions if I could.

1. When I started a new morph, that will eventually have many sequences, when the file was new and small I never noticed this. But now that it has grown to over 20 sequences, I noticed the small spinning circle, that usually indicates a program thinking, come up about every minute that hangs the program while it's thinking. Is this an indication that Fantamorph is auto saving? This is very annoying because it thinks and hangs for about 5-10 seconds and I have to wait it out. Can this be disabled?

2. Concerning my original question about jerky playback of an avi file because it's too big: I have a new very powerful computer. My hope way to save the final product in the largest size I can, "AVI" so I can archive it and reduce it down depending on what I want to do with it. Now that this file is getting bigger, I seem to have to save it smaller and smaller just to get WMP to play it. I notice a message PM brings up that says this file will be bigger than 2 gigs and will be too big for most players to play. This is right because if I do save it larger than 2 gigs, it won't playback on WMP. Is WMP restricted to playing files only bigger than 2 gigs? This is a problem because I want to save my files as big as I can get them for the best quality because I want to play them on big screen tv's at times. And the larger the file gets, I have to keep reducing the size just to play it back. Any help on this issue would be great. Like is there a workaround for this?

3. I save to avi intermittently to see would the movie looks as the work continues. There have been several occasions when part of the movie will repeat a sequence during the movie. If I save the exact same file with no changes, it will eventually save it without this repeat that seems random. Is this a bug that has been reported?

I really like this program. It seems like the best out there right now. Thank you for any help regarding my questions.

Joseph

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fantam
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Re: AVI movie very jerky

Post by fantam »

To answer your questions...
1. Yes, this is definitely an autosave problem. It should be fixed very soon with the coming update version 5.2.5.
2. You do can export large AVIs like 1920 x 1080 pixels, but you should export them as compressed AVI. Please visit the tutorial How to Export Compressed AVI. You'll find that you can get much smaller result files and smooth playback if you export as compressed AVI.
3. I'm not sure I fully understand this "bug". Maybe your project is too big... Please try to export as compressed AVI and see what happens.

Coffee999
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Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2011 9:53 am

Re: AVI movie very jerky

Post by Coffee999 »

Thank you for the help fantam. Saving compressed worked great and with good quality.

Something happened again the first time I saved it as a compressed avi. This has happened a handful of time. What it is is the movie wont export properly. One time the movie played well time about half way, then there was just a big black box that covered the frame that involves the last 6 sequences. Then one time two sequence played twice in a row before moving to the next. Other times there were strange random anomalies. Re-exporting the movie a second time usually made it through ok. Why might this be happening randomly.

This may be my imagination, but I think I've noticed some dots have moved on their own. Might sound strange, but going back and re-working some previous sequences, and after saving the project and opening it up, I noticed dots not lining up where I think they were at one time. Can this happen?

What other project can be created with PM? Is there a list or examples of other things that can be done using PM other than faces? Thank you once again for your help fantam. Are you the producer of PM?

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fantam
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Re: AVI movie very jerky

Post by fantam »

This has happened a handful of time. What it is is the movie wont export properly.
If the preview works properly but the export doesn't, that maybe a problem caused by your outdated display driver.
1. Update your display driver right now. For example, if you are using a NVIDIA card, please download the latest driver from NVIDIA site at http://www.nvidia.com, install it, restart Windows, and then try out FantaMorph again. In most cases, export problems can be resolved after this update.
2. If the problem is still not resolved, on the Export window, turn off the Use Hardware Acceleration switch, restart FantaMorph and try again.
This may be my imagination, but I think I've noticed some dots have moved on their own. Might sound strange, but going back and re-working some previous sequences, and after saving the project and opening it up, I noticed dots not lining up where I think they were at one time. Can this happen?
Indeed, this sounds strange. It would helpful if you can tell us the details to reproduce this problem step by step.
What other project can be created with PM? Is there a list or examples of other things that can be done using PM other than faces?
In fact, FantaMorph can morph anything other than faces. You can find a lot of examples from Sample page and the Morph Gallery in this forum.

Coffee999
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Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2011 9:53 am

Re: AVI movie very jerky

Post by Coffee999 »

Thank you again for the continued support fantam. Things are starting to get dialed in here. With your advice on saving a movie, I have altered it a bit and can now save the movie size I need and it looks great. :)

I was wondering if you knew when the next update was coming out that will fix the auto save feature? The constant lock up while it saves so often is getting increasingly troublesome as the file grows.

I did notice that when I added a sequence, The program did not bring all the dots from the 2nd image to the new layer. All the chin dots were gone. I deleted the sequence, and repeated the add sequence. This time it did bring all the dots in.

There was also this problem that is repeatable. When I export a movie, and the last sequence is hidden, it will export the last sequence twice. So the end of the movie will have the last sequence repeat itself. This happens every time the last sequence is hidden.

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fantam
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Re: AVI movie very jerky

Post by fantam »

I was wondering if you knew when the next update was coming out that will fix the auto save feature? The constant lock up while it saves so often is getting increasingly troublesome as the file grows.
We have fixed this bug, and the update version will be released before the Thanksgiving Day.
I did notice that when I added a sequence, The program did not bring all the dots from the 2nd image to the new layer. All the chin dots were gone. I deleted the sequence, and repeated the add sequence. This time it did bring all the dots in.
We can't reproduce this problem. Can you please give us a step-by-step instruction to reproduce this problem? If it only happens on a particular project, please send us the project also.
There was also this problem that is repeatable. When I export a movie, and the last sequence is hidden, it will export the last sequence twice. So the end of the movie will have the last sequence repeat itself. This happens every time the last sequence is hidden.
Yes, we can reproduce this problem! Thank you! It has been fixed.

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