My static titles are getting shortened!

[digitaltoast]

I made an AVI in Premiere Elements. I ran it through AutoGK (as this is the easiest way I know of converting an AVI to an xvid) and usually things turn out right.

Except I now find that where static titles were 5 seconds in the original movie, they're barely onscreen for more than a second. Yet the rest of the video is OK. I also noticed that it's only were there is silence. But it's not to any pattern - the first title is 5 seconds, then it changes to another title of 5 seconds. But once converted, the first title is still 5 seconds, but the second is 1 second. Weiiird!

I've looked in advanced options - nothing odd happening there either. Version 2.48Bb, winxp home.

I'm cursing myself for not checking the whole video before deleting the original source AVI. That'll teach me!

[digitaltoast]

I'm trying to track down a problem here - I'm making videos, and some have static titles. The exported uncompressed AVI looks alright and plays fine.
But when I use any third party tool to convert to different formats (for example, AutoGK or Riva FLV encoder) it "skips" the still frames!
It's absolutely doing my head in, I just can't understand why.

Here's a demo:
A 12 second 12Mb "raw" avi file: 3 seconds each of 3 images, 2 static, one moving.
http://www.digitaltoast.co.uk/avitrouble/9%20second%20test_nostillopt.avi

Now if I try and convert this video, this is what happens in mpeg4 xvid:
http://www.digitaltoast.co.uk/avitrouble/9%20second%20test_agk.xvid.avi

And this is what happens when I convert it to Flash:
http://www.digitaltoast.co.uk/avitrouble/9%20second%20test_encoded%20from%20avi%20by%20riva%20flv%20encoder.flv

BUT, if I export via, say, h264 from Premiere Elements, THEN run it through a converter, it's fine:
Here's the exported file:
http://www.digitaltoast.co.uk/avitrouble/9%20second%20test2.h264.mov
And here's the file converted from that:
http://www.digitaltoast.co.uk/avitrouble/9%20second%20test%20encoded%20from%20Premierer%20El%202%20h264%20output.flv

But I don't want the time or quality degradation of "double converting".
If anyone's interested, here's the autogk log, if it gives any clues:
http://www.digitaltoast.co.uk/avitrouble/9%20second%20test_agk_agk.log.txt

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[digitaltoast]

I've done some more tests - I opened and saved the file in Windows Movie Maker as AVI (it grew to 30Mb), but the compression in AutoGK and Riva had the same effect. But when I saved it as a raw avi from VirtualDub (which was 275Mb!), it converted OK.

The strangest thing is...I'm sure it never used to do this!

[digitaltoast]

Is there any place I can get help with this? The adobe forums and adobe themselves aren't any help. Thanks

[manono]

Hi-

Strange indeed. What happens when you open the source AVI in VDub and go to the place that gets shortened by AutoGK (the second static scene) and step through it frame by frame? Is the entire 5 seconds there, or is only the shortened 1 second there? I'm thinking that the entire 5 seconds wasn't encoded, but only one second with some sort of command to output a bunch of duplicated frames to fill in the rest of the time. AutoGK would know nothing about that and thus only reencodes what was actually encoded originally. Just a guess.

The log says 9 seconds and 225 frames. Are you not getting back 9 seconds and 225 frames of video? I didn't bother downloading any of the samples.

[digitaltoast]

Hi-

Strange indeed. What happens when you open the source AVI in VDub and go to the place that gets shortened by AutoGK (the second static scene) and step through it frame by frame? Is the entire 5 seconds there, or is only the shortened 1 second there? I'm thinking that the entire 5 seconds wasn't encoded, but only one second with some sort of command to output a bunch of duplicated frames to fill in the rest of the time. AutoGK would know nothing about that and thus only reencodes what was actually encoded originally. Just a guess.

The log says 9 seconds and 225 frames. Are you not getting back 9 seconds and 225 frames of video? I didn't bother downloading any of the samples.

Thanks for your reply - thanks to your thinking, things have got even stranger (that's a compliment!).

OK, if I open the original 12Mb avi stream, I can see that the frames are correctly playing back. As I step through, I see ONE keyframe for each of the static titles with the rest being D frames, and then every frame in the moving title is a keyframe.
BUT, when I go analyse the mpeg4 xvid, I get a couple of keyframes right at the beginning, then the scrolling title repeated over and over again, with just a blank in the box for D or K frames.

The source avi is 12Mb and the demo xvid is only 360k, so not much to download, and I'd be really interested to hear and expert view on this.

What gets me is that this isn't just an AutoGk problem, it happens with SUPER, Riva FLV encoder etc.

Thanks for the info so far!

[manono]

Hi-
I'd be really interested to hear and expert view on this.
I'm not an expert (even with AutoGK), but just an experienced user. Actually, I'm a fraud. :) There are some things I am an expert on, but this ain't it. I've never used Premiere and have no idea what, if anything, it has produced that's throwing AutoGK off.

But you didn't answer my questions, I don't think. 9 seconds x 25fps = 225 frames. That's what AutoGK sees, and what it produces for you, I think. Is the length supposed to be greater? Is the framecount supposed to be greater?

The log says it's DV. OK, isn't every DV frame supposed to be an I-Frame (keyframe)? So that it's easier to edit or transcode? I've never worked with DV either. But if it's usually all I-Frames, can't you recreate it in Premiere Elements so that all the frames are I-Frames? I have no idea what P or K frames are. MPEG-4 (XviD, DivX, etc.) uses I, P, and B frames. My guess is that's the source of your problem.

See, I told you I didn't know anything. Maybe there's someone around that will read this and be able to provide some reasonably intelligent advice.