xVideo problems

[Ron Akkerman]

Although I’m very pleased with SCS10, really an outstanding product, but I’m facing some problems when I want to fade in/out video’s.
I shoot my video’s using the Sony HDV 1080i Z5 camera and edit in Adobe Premiere Pro and for more effects I use Adobe After Effects. I also make video’s from scratch using After Effects.
Render settings in After Effects are Lossless with frame size 1920x1080. Then I convert the AVI-video using NCH Prism Video Converter (thanks for the tip!) with the AVI-H264(native)-codec which gives me very good results; no quality loss whatsoever.
Footage I render in mpg. I found out that xVideo in SCS10 can’t fade in/out interlaced video’s (upper/lower fields first) so I render them Progressive. You also have to make sure that you’ve got the frame size correct (ratio 4:3/16:9). 1024x576 will play, 1023x576 will not play in SCS10, although the video will play problem less in Windows Media Player. So keep your eye on the numbers.
On my studio-computer (Windows7) I have no problems with mpeg- or AVI(H264(native)- files. But when I transfer them to our new Laptop (Intel I5, 4Gb memory; windows7) the video’s will not fade in/out (problem of the shrinking video during the fade). Installing the K-Lite codec pack did not bring the solution. Neither did installing the Haali Matroska Splitter.
On our old laptop everything worked fine. I only needed a codec to play MPEG-video’s so I installed the K-Lite codec pack with the result that I could play MPEG-files, but no more fade in/outs in SCS10!
Uninstalling the K-Lite codec pack gave me back the fade possibility.
What does the K-Lite codec pack changes? What checkbox do I need to tick or untick? Any glues?
But still no fade possibilities on my new laptop. Converting everything into wmv-files solves the problem, but I can’t use wmv because of the dramatic loss in picture quality. So for me that’s not a satisfying solution.
In the SCS10-helpfile it is said that working with AVI or wmv should do the trick. What it doesn’t say is which codec the AVI-files should be. In NCH Prism Video Converter you can choose a number (DVPal (directshow) will not work).
Where I’m I going wrong? Why won’t it work on my laptop? Is my workflow not in order? I sincerely hope that you or whoever could help me out here.
We have a big production coming up and the only thing I can do now is unmount our big studio-computer and take that under me arm to the theatre….
Keep up the good work!
Ron Akkerman; RRA Productions, The Netherlands

[Mike Daniell]

There are some useful tips in your posting, Ron, so many thanks for the information, but I'll need to do more research into the issues you have encountered. I can't offer any short-term solution regarding what needs to be done to get videos to fade correctly on your new laptop, but if the video cues are always played through completely then can you implement fades using your video editing program, so that the fades are effectively pre-recorded?

Suggestions from other users also welcome.