Symptoms of computer not suitable for HD?

[SoundBox]

Yesterday I made some recordings using a Nikon D90 camera. This gives out 720p images.

I took the card, plugged it into my reader and then into my computer. The results were not good. I noted (using widows media player):

On very short recordings (6 seconds) it played through ok but on longer recordings of 30 seconds or so started to stall to individual images or missing images with a buffering 'timer' appearing repeatedly on the screen. On all recordings there was a sort of 'liney interference' around objects shimmering on the screen that marred fine detail. The results were worse than my Flip Mino SD which had no interference.

Are these symptoms typical of using unsuitable formats?

 

[grahamlthompson]

Try using the free Splash Lite media player.

http://mirillis.com/en/products/splash.html

 

[SoundBox]

Cheers Graham.

Trouble is I have never heard of any of these systems and being analogue of mind I am not even sure what I need or where to look. I will download that and try again.

If it works I may even be able to play back the clips I have made with the Panasonic TM900.

 

[grahamlthompson]

Cheers Graham.

Trouble is I have never heard of any of these systems and being analogue of mind I am not even sure what I need or where to look. I will download that and try again.

If it works I may even be able to play back the clips I have made with the Panasonic TM900.

Without knowing what sort of spec your computer is no one can really tell you if it will playback HD. Splash Lite will playback HD on quite low specced hardware. If you still get choppy playback you need a more powerfull PC.

If you recorded 1080P50 on the Panny that will need a modern multicore processor and a fast graphics card to play smoothly.

 

[12harry]

If the files play OK on the camera then the most likely explanation is the PC spec is a tad low. It is generally unsatisfactory to play vid files on a modest PC and missing frames is not uncommon, along with lip-sync issues.
If you can Edit the films then burn a DVD and play that on a dedecated player (not a PC), this is the acid-test for your vids.

Expect the Rendering process to take a long time! (Typically 10x the running time, so a 4min vid will need 40mins - this varies, but be prepared!) Then the Burning will also take quite a while.
If you are buying a PC for vid editing, you need a minimum of quad-core 2.8GHz and 4G RAM (on a 32-bit version of Win7). Hope that helps.

 

[Bob++]

Of course it's unlikely that your monitor will show HD. You need to watch it on a HD TV to see if it is OK.

Graham maintains that you need a high speck computer to edit and render 1080p - I respectfully disagree. I do it perfectly well on my old banger with only 2 cores and 2 gig of RAM. It just needs the right editing software.

 

[grahamlthompson]

Of course it's unlikely that your monitor will show HD. You need to watch it on a HD TV to see if it is OK.

Graham maintains that you need a high speck computer to edit and render 1080p - I respectfully disagree. I do it perfectly well on my old banger with only 2 cores and 2 gig of RAM. It just needs the right editing software.

You missed the point,to edit 1080P50 (note the 50), on a lowly specced PC you need a editor that allows you to use lower res proxy files (not all do so).

(Trying to do so on an editor that can only use the original footage is going to be a very frustrating experience. )

You then need lots of time for the rendering.

My comments applied to editing 1080p50 in it's native format and most of all smooth playback of the original footage using a PC based media player.

Can you play back your original clips smoothly on your lowly dual core PC.

Unless you have a fast graphics card that takes over the load from your cpu I doubt it very much.

Basically 1080p50 has to handle around twice the data in the same time as 1080i50.

 

[SoundBox]

May I ask how to find out how many cores my computer has and to also know how much RAM there is? I looked in the instruction booklet but it says nothing of any use. My C drive has a total 80Gb of memory - if that is of any importance (with 50Gb left spare).

 

[Berties]

CPU-Z will be enough to get enough info, but from the sounds of it, it's a ancient computer (80GB HD) and the had drive isn't memory it's storage. The memory modules are the memory chips in your computer (RAM)

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

To playback 1080p you need something around 2.8ghz dual core. For 720p, 2ghz dual core. A P4 may handle 720p, but it'll be close to fully loaded CPU.

 

[grahamlthompson]

May I ask how to find out how many cores my computer has and to also know how much RAM there is? I looked in the instruction booklet but it says nothing of any use. My C drive has a total 80Gb of memory - if that is of any importance (with 50Gb left spare).

All Programmes/accessories/system tools/system information.

The PC uses your spare space on the hard drive as virtual memory when it runs out of phsical memory. Looking at the hard drives it must be pretty old. It's most likely an old and slow ide drive. Modern PC's use fast SATA drives 1000GB or larger is common. HD Video will eat up your 50GB space in no time.

Report for my laptop

OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name GRAHAM-PC
System Manufacturer MEDION
System Model E7214
System Type X86-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU M 350 @ 2.27GHz, 2261 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 4.6.3, 02/04/2010
SMBIOS Version 2.6
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United Kingdom
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7601.17514"
User Name Graham-PC\Graham
Time Zone GMT Standard Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 3.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 2.87 GB
Available Physical Memory 1.44 GB
Total Virtual Memory 5.73 GB
Available Virtual Memory 4.07 GB
Page File Space 2.87 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

 

[12harry]

Aren't we back to the issue that the OP's PC is a tad-low spec-wise.

He complained about playback, so that's either good, or not so. In this case, not so it appears...OP has spoken.

As far as Editing is concerned the PC doesn't matter, except as Grahamlthompson say...it will be very frustrating.

I think OP needs to spend about £500 if it's a specialist PC build, or maybe £750 from a known Multiple in the UK.
Make sure you have the option of eSATA enabled (care, sometimes they don't work, even if present on the back-panel!!!). Also Win 7 or wait a few months for win8 to settle, maybe Summer 2012.

HDDs are expensive at the moment, so a greater saving will be available late Summer 2012....and go for a quad-core with as much RAM as you can afford (2x 2G on 32-bit).

Have we touched on Edit software? Vegas Studio production suite, about £40 - will blow your mind, at least until you get through/understand the DVD-tutorial that comes in the box....

Then, there's a new camcorder . . . . . . . . Aargh!

 

[SoundBox]

Thanks Graham and Harry. I don't think my PC is up to squashing a greenfly but here goes with the report - beyond HD I expect:

OS Name Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
Version 6.0.2006 Service Pack 2 Build 6002
System Manufacturer Gateway
System Model MT6223B
System Type X86-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Celron (R) M CPU 520 @ 1.6GHz, 1596 Mhz, 1 Core(s), 4 Logica...
BIOS Version/Date Pheonix Technologies 77.09 27/11/2006
SMBIOS Version 2.4
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 2.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 1.99 GB
Available Physical Memory 1.08 GB
Total Virtual Memory 4.21 GB
Available Virtual Memory 3.30 GB
Page File Space 2.28 GB

 

[grahamlthompson]

Thanks Graham and Harry. I don't think my PC is up to squashing a greenfly but here goes with the report - beyond HD I expect:

OS Name Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
Version 6.0.2006 Service Pack 2 Build 6002
System Manufacturer Gateway
System Model MT6223B
System Type X86-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Celron (R) M CPU 520 @ 1.6GHz, 1596 Mhz, 1 Core(s), 4 Logica...
BIOS Version/Date Pheonix Technologies 77.09 27/11/2006
SMBIOS Version 2.4
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 2.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 1.99 GB
Available Physical Memory 1.08 GB
Total Virtual Memory 4.21 GB
Available Virtual Memory 3.30 GB
Page File Space 2.28 GB

I would say forget HD on a Celeron processor

Time for a new PC methinks

 

[SoundBox]

Thanks Graham.

May I ask what the system I do have would be suitable for? Could it manage 720p edit work? I have just had it fixed which cost £120 so I was hoping to get some use from it.

 

[Berties]

With a 1.6ghz CPU (and not even dual core nor a proper "full" chip) I wouldn't bother, yeah you can edit video but with 1GB of available RAM it's going to be constantly using swap file.

Buy a new computer.

 

[grahamlthompson]

Thanks Graham.

May I ask what the system I do have would be suitable for? Could it manage 720p edit work? I have just had it fixed which cost £120 so I was hoping to get some use from it.

I doubt it will even play 720p.

Download some samples and see if you can play them

H.264 Demo Clips | H264info.com

 

[DocJackal]

Much more simply, you said that you plugged the card into the card reader and tried to play it, but it was choppy... have you tried copying the files to your internal harddrive and then playing those? There's no way a USB(assuming it is) card reader can deal with reading HD video at that speed, whereas an internal SATA drive should be fine.

 

[grahamlthompson]

Much more simply, you said that you plugged the card into the card reader and tried to play it, but it was choppy... have you tried copying the files to your internal harddrive and then playing those? There's no way a USB(assuming it is) card reader can deal with reading HD video at that speed, whereas an internal SATA drive should be fine.

USB2 is fine for HD. I can play back 1920 x 1080 interlaced content (up to 35mbps) from my camcorder on a usb pen stuck in a Foxsat-hdr with no problems at all.

Of course the posters PC is so old it may only have usb1.

USB2 max speed is specified as 480Mbits/second way over that required for H264/AVC compressed content.

 

[12harry]

I have USB2 but looking at the "transfer speeds" it's not doing too well. However you are right about SATA - the speed is fab. Now I use USB only as extra back-up, but it is quite slow compared with an eSATA drive...
I may buy another eSATA case (£14 inc. PSU)......Feb. 2012 may see HDDs dropping in price, but time will tell.


However, we've now established, OP's PC isn't up to it... Nuf said.