Help with Showbiz editor

[MAXIMUS01CAN]

Howdy all,

I've been working on our wedding video for a anniversary give to the wife and I've ran into the following problem?? I can get the files and make a DVD no problem using Sonic MyDVD v4.0 that came with my Sony DRU-510A burner and in about an hour or so the whole thing is done with menu's and works great. The problem is when I edit the clips in ShowBiz, adding some text, transitions and effects and click the "make DVD" or even "MyDVD Project" to save it and import it later, it took like 3hrs to produce the completed version and then it hung the program on me right at the end when it was finished. Is there any freeware editing packages that are bulletproof.......lol. Just hate doing all that work and waiting that long just to have the whole thing lost cause it hangs at the end of the job. I'm running a Dell P4/1.8Ghz/256DDR/40/120G hard drives and the processor is pretty much pinned at 100% during the whole "Producing Video" operation of ShowBiz. Any ideas??

Thanks in Advance,
Max

[dsf]

I have both Showbiz and MyDVD. Got them with my Memorex DVD burner. The long wait is transcoding the AVI files from your camera to MPG. It takes a long time, you can watch the progress frame by agonizing frame. Nothing to be done about that. Your problem is that it "hung the program." Try breaking the project into smaller sections. I think you will have to spring for a decent video editing program. Showbiz is fine for converting AVI files to MPG to make DVDs with MyDVD (No animated menus and background music on the menus but it works fine by me.) I recommend Sonic Foundry Video Factory. Avoid anything by PInnacle: doesn't render reliably.

[MAXIMUS01CAN]

dsf

As far as I know the video I've captured from my Sony DCRPC9 is already in MPEG format so I don't think there's an issue with coverting MPEG to AVI, but there could be something in the fact that the clips may be a little too long, but I'm hoping that it shouldn't matter. I know everythinig works fine using MyDVD to make a DVD without any editing, it's just when I use showbiz that there's a problem. I've heard that there is an upgrade for MyDVD that allows editing within that program without having to fire up ShowBiz, but when I checked it out it is avaiable by moving up to version 5, but it costs about $60 US for the upgrade. Was hoping the software I had would do it without spending the extra $$$ maybe unavoidable, but what's the sense of including a useless piece of software with the bundle unless I'm just doing something wrong. Anyways' thanks for the info.

Max