My only problem is that I can't seem to get rid of the lag when I try to play through (and check progress/synchronization) ... does anyone know of reasons for lag (large clip size, etc.), or a better (preferably free) program?
The most common cause that I have seen for lag (and I have had this happen to me to until I figured it out) is when FRAME rates differ slightly. When they differ greatly, such as:
- You're building a project in 30 fr per sec
- You're using, say older footage at 24fps
then most programs compensate correctly. Obviously if your project framerate is THE SAME as your extracted clips there's no problem at all. The lag problems tend to crop up when you're working in 30fps and your clips are in that nasty 29.97fps. (or 24fps vs 23.96fps) Or the difference in duration between a mean solar day (24hr) and a siderial day (23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.1 seconds.) One of those stupid things like that.
Many programs fail to keep in time when the difference is negligible over the range of each clip (given that it's usually only a few seconds each clip) - BUT - the errors are CUMULATIVE, so that by the time you're 50sec or so into your AMV you may be close to ONE HALF SECOND OFF from your audio. I *hate* when that happens!
Your solution: Check your frame rates (and re-export them if necessary) and make sure they are the same frame rate as your project timeline. As for free tools, VirtualDub is getting a little long in the tooth, but it's free, and you may have BETTER luck with a newer program called AEGISUB (also free) which I heard about from one of my anime-techy friends who does fansub subtitling (timing controls there are crucial, not only for subtitles but for all the karaoke effects used in OP/EDs)
Next: Premiere crash control:
1. SAVE YOUR PROJECT OFTEN, especially before you Preview it or render/export it.
2. If your Premiere-crash causes the program to just disappear (strangely, silentlly then WINK! Its GONE!) what you need to do is WATCH IT RUNNING. Look at your frame count, then try to pinpoint what frame number causes the crash. Open Premiere again and temporarily cut that one section out. Temporarily export everything (uncompressed avi) leading up to your problem-child slice. You can also do this by sliding the work area to just before that Zone of Death.
3. Then, export another uncompressed AVI ending at the end (or as far as you've worked up to) your project, but starting a few clips AFTER the problem area.
4. Keep adjusting the end of the first AVI later and later until you get the crash. Only keep the last GOOD, sucessfully completed output file. Start your second clip earlier and earlier until you hit the crashspot, and again, only keep the last GOOD one.
5. Save your project to a new name, and blow away ALL clips except the problem areas. Drop in your one MONGO start clip and your MONGO end clip onto your sound file, (in their appropriate time positions, of course) and work to recreate the footage in the gap. You may need to re-rip that one problem scene if its corrupted.
6. Often, it's just ONE frame which is corrupted. If that's the case, do a static, one-frame export as BMP of the frame BEFORE the problem point, and another of the next frame AFTER the problem. Cut the bad frame out of the timeline. Open Photoshop or GIMP or whatever, and superimpose one frame at 50% opacity over the other, merge/flatten layers and save as a new BMP file. Go back to Premiere, import this new BMP file and drop it in place where the bad frame was. You should now be able to process right on over the "bump in the road..."
Hope this helps...
