Stringing a bunch of files together to output to tape...

[JavaMan]

Hello folks,

I'm just finishing up work on a short film, shot on video. I'm using the Marvel G200 and Premiere. It's about 40 minutes long, but I've broken it up into "reels" of about 8 minutes apiece.

Is MSP the only solution (besides rendering a gargantuan file) for playing these files in sequence? The files, of course, don't play smoothly from the Premiere timeline. It seems like a program with fairly low overhead could simply play the files in sequence, but maybe that's too simple. I find MSP completely unintuitive, but I'm willing to use it if that's the only solution.

One of the problems I have with MSP is that it seems bent on 'rendering a preview wave file,' which, considering I'm making no changes to the audio, seems superfluous.

Anyway, if you have any tips or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks!

JavaMan

[This_Idiot]

JavaMan,

Markus is busy working on a capture/playback version of AV_IO (I'm sposed to be beta'ing a copy at the moment - sorry Markus I've been totally tied up this week). I don't know whether the playlist will play as seamlessly as AV_IO's capture facility, but if so then it would be one way of dumping large projects back to tape.

Hopefully the workload drops tomorrow so I may get a chance to play with it.

[JavaMan]

Thanks...please let me know about that. I'm a bit disappointed at the moment--now that I've strung all my files together in MSP, I'm having some rather irksome problems when trying to preview from the timeline (in "best" mode). When a file change approaches, approximately the last 15 frames of audio is replaced by the beginning 15 frames of audio from the next file. The next file's video then begins to play, and the audio restarts. In other words, I lose a small bit of audio, and there is a stutter (the video seems to be fine). My current workaround is just to add 15 frames of still, silent video to the beginning and end of each file. Of course, this results in a half-second pause between scenes. Can anyone suggest any solutions for this problem, short of my wacky solution, or fading in and out of every scene? Your help would be immensely appreciated, as I'm screening this movie on Saturday, blips or no blips.

Also, I've thought of buying a new hard drive for the sole purpose of rendering one huge file, but it would be nearly 6 gigs, and I assume it would broken up into 2 gig files anyway--would that result in the same problem?

Sorry for the rambling, but I'm really happy with my work on each of my 10 minute "reels," it's a shame that 3 or 4 of the transitions have to look so schlocky.

JavaMan

[Markus Zingg]

We just right now released AVI_IO D 02.22 which aside from captureing (now with software compression if you want) offers seamless playback of up to 100 avi files in a row (full version) or 3 files (the trial). AVI_IO's homepage is at:
http://www.nct.ch/multimedia/avi_io/

HTH

Markus

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[JavaMan]

Aaarg. I need this program NOW! If there is any way I could buy it and get it immediately, please email me. Unfortunately, I'm showing this presentation in less than 48 hours. I would be eternally grateful if we could arrange something a little speedier.

Mark Monroy
javaman@infosite.com

[miker]

I got my copy in less than 24hrs after registering. It's about 80K in your email.

Quite looking forward to playing with the latest version myself...