Reference Guide

241

Video playback, import, and export

Controlling playback

2. Use the File > Export Video command.

The Export Video dialog box appears.

3. In the File Name field, type a name for your new video.

4. In the Files of Type field, choose the kind of video file you want the exported file to be.

5. Click the Encoding Options button to open a dialog box of encoding options for the kind of file

you’re creating. Some codecs do not work: click the Help button in the dialog box for help

choosing options.

6. Click the Audio Mixdown Options button to open a dialog box of audio mixdown options. Click

the Help button in the dialog box for help choosing options.

7. Click Save to export your video.

Optimizing video performance

Here are a few tips to optimize video performance:

• Viewing your video in on an external DV device will significantly decrease the processor load on

your computer if the video stream is a DV AVI file. See “Video playback on a FireWire DV device”

on page 244 for more information.

• If you intend to do a lot of seeking around or looping and editing while a video file is loaded, make

sure that your video file has sufficient keyframes. Since each frame has to be computed from the

last keyframe encountered, if you have very few keyframes in the video, performance may be

slow. To change the number of keyframes, you may recompress the file using the File > Export

Video command and specify more frequent keyframes. Choose a suitable video compressor

such as Cinepak and change the KeyFrame Rate parameter to a number between 1-5. A value of

1 makes every frame a keyframe, and higher numbers insert a keyframe after that many frames.

• Changing the video properties of an AVI file, such as Trim and Start time, can make realtime

performance slightly slower. You can make these changes permanent (and thereby reduce the

load on your CPU) by using the File > Export Video command, and then re-importing the file.

• Playing videos at a resolution (video size) of 320x240 is usually a high enough resolution to

monitor the video while you’re composing a soundtrack. You can still choose to stretch the video

to full screen at this resolution. You set the video size on the Render Quality tab of the Video

Properties dialog box. Using a higher resolution can bog down your computer if you’re

processing audio tracks at the same time.