Video fine in viewer, choppy in canvas

[spacecamp]

Hey guys,

I'm editing some vacation footage together on my Macbook (1.83 ghz, 512 mb memory- not exactly an ideal editing computer haha) with Final Cut Express, my problem is as follows:

The video clips (.AVI) play fine in VLC, and in the viewer, but once I put them on the timeline and render them, they have black splotches and go all jittery on the canvas, as well as when exported. When I tried opening the files in iMovie they worked perfectly...

I think there is a problem with the rendering as I've edited HD footage on this ol' thing before without any problems, but this footage ain't HD. Any help would be hugely appreciated.

Thanks!!

SOLVED!!

 

[David Saraceno]

Convert the AVIs to an editing codec using MPEG Streamclip.

And your computer is underpowered and with very little RAM

Remember that iMovie is also converting them, mostly likely to AIC

 

[spacecamp]

Thanks for the quick response, I'll give it a shot.

And yeah, this ol' thing needs an upgrade quite badly.

EDIT: Boy is my face red. Easy as that, thank you sir!