Jitter/Stutter in PP and AE CS3 (effects both preview and encoded product)

Hey all,

First post here. I do video as a hobby and make movies/videos for friends, vhs conversion, and film races at the dirt track I race at home in FL. I am also in the USAF and am currently deployed in Iraq. To pass a bit of the time here, I've been making some videos of our EOD operations and some funny videos in our spare time. I've been using PP 2.0 until earlier this year when I updraded all my adobe products to CS3. I've made a few videos already with CS3, but some of my final exports experience some jitter. It's odd because it happens in preview, encoded (compressed) and encoded (lossles).

I thought it was a encoder issue at first, but went back and tried lossles and still same. I understand previews can be jerky, so not a big issue.

The videos I made were shot from my sony digi-cam 640x480 30fps. I have an HD camcorder, but it is not practical to carry outside the wire.

I have virus checked, defragged, etc as suggested in other posts. Adobe CS3 is fully updated. Vista's perf monitor doesn't show any adverse disk usage patterns to suggest storage issues.

One odd thing however is I can shoot a shot, copy it to my hdd from the cam and play it back in WMP with no problems, but if I preview it in PP or AE it stutters, then if I simply drop it into a comp and render it, it will stutter whether it is lossless or compressed. None of the shots I am using are fast action, but even some I have with large fast explosions play fine in WMP.

I am running a laptop, C2D T5450, 4GB ram, 200GB 7200rpm OS and 250GB 5400rpm scratch, and FW400 1TB external. Vista 32bit, SP1, Avira AV.


It doesn't matter where the files are stored they still stutter in AE and PP. I also installed FRAPS and in the preview window it is steady at 30fps even though it is stuttering...

Another odd thing is that it seems if I open PP or AE and finish the project and export without closing the app it doesn't seem to stutter, but if I save, then close and reopen it will start stuttering and get worse with each reopening of PP or AE. I first noticed it when I finished and AE project and it exporte fine except one of my mask keyframes was off a bit, so I reopened and fixed the frame and on the new lossless render it introduced a stutter in the video.

I didn't have any issues with PP 2.0 and am thinking about going back although I just have just wasted alot of money to do that.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I am out of things to try.

Thanks in advance,

Jeremy

PS: Is there any way to view threads in a linear or hybrid mode? This old-style threaded view is a pain due to my slow internet connection over here.