-
Media Player plays file, Premiere won’t import it!!?
Doing cross platform work, rendered project looked kinda iffy in Media Player and Windows Quicktime; transferred rendered-to-mov and avi attempts over to Mac. AVI looks good; rendered MOV looks great on Mac! Why does rendered avi attempt look sizzly on XP Pro box, with surging color pixels on my stills, but look OK running on my Mac/Quicktime??? And look GREAT when XP Premiere-generated .mov runs on Mac/Quicktime!
Also: tried to transfer Mac generated .mov to XP Pro box; won’t import into Premiere, “file format not supported.” However MEDIA PLAYER WILL PLAY THE FILE!!! How can Media Player play the file, but Premiere can’t read it???
Hoping for help!
John
Houston TX -
16 Replies
-
That’s a complicated question..
You said:
“However MEDIA PLAYER WILL PLAY THE FILE!!! How can Media Player play the file, but Premiere can’t read it???”It’s probably a compressed MOV file.
Premiere is ideally suited for files that utilize editing codecs such as DV, HD, or uncompressed. You can even edit MPEG files, although I don’t recommend it.
Media Player is made to handle editing and delivery codecs such as MPEG, WMV, DivX, etc.Are you recompressing compressed files?
It would be helpful for us to know what your output specs are and what codecs you are using.
Are you making a web video, or a DVD or something?For editing on Mac or PC, QuickTime uncompressed is usually a good bet. If you’re on a PC, editing with AVI uncompressed is also good.
Vince
-
Vince, thank you for your help!
I try to learn as much as I can about the software, but I’ve never seen this sort of info, didn’t know that Premiere prefers uncompressed files. I tried importing an MPEG4 last night, but Premiere spat it out.
The file I mentioned in my post, was indeed an MOV, it did get recompressed, but I was ripping my hair out trying to figure out why Premiere STOPPED reading an MOV it had previously read! A tutorial on optimizing files and quality—boy that would be nice.
I have a pastiche project using digitized old VHS tapes and internet stills. I don’t mind the native mediocre quality of the VHS, what chaps me is the intolerable degradation upon rendering. I started in iMovie then switched and imported all my DV and MOV from the Mac onto the XP/Premiere box. Things looked good in the Premiere project window, but when I rendered and viewed them in viewers like MediaPlayer or QT, I’ve been noticing quality loss, horrible pixellations, sizzly stills, surge-y colors, on the rendered files —didn’t matter whether I rendered to AVI, MOV, or other formats; some were worse than others, but none was acceptable.
I had to transfer files back to the Mac for an independent viewing test. I’ve found that rendering to MOV from Premiere seems to produce the best results. (By the way, Windows QT displayed the MOV’s horribly, but in Mac QT they look fine! How is this possible?)
My intended final format is dvd video discs to use along with live music. The final dvd-video discs look fine on my Sony TV. But it’s tough to have confidence because NONE of my rendered attempts have looked very good on the computer screen when I view them in WMP/Quicktime/Nero, etc. I’ve had to burn various dvd-video attempts and use trial and error to find good results. I guess once I render I’ll just view the rendered file as new source in Premiere and test with that, now that I know I can get decent results using MOV renders.
Again, thanks for your insight. I’d be grateful if you could direct me to any general guidelines/tutorials on file optimization, optimizing quality, &c.
John Doba
Houston
PS I’m using a Sharp monitor that has multi-inputs. I’m using its VGA, but maybe if I use one of my dvi outs from my GEForce display card, I could go into a TV input and view that way as well? Isn’t there a way to do this or something like this? Thanks again! -
If you use a lot of random sourced video I’d recommend you get GSpot Codec Information Appliance, it’s a great tool that tells you a lot about the clips you’re working with – especially the codec.
If you digitized your old VHS stuff to DV just know that is exactly what DV was created for. It was introduced as a kind-of intermediary format to bridge the analog age to the digital.
With captured VHS material, I get the best picture by deinterlacing in After Effects with FieldsKit Deinterlacer. I’ll usually apply an S-Curve to enrich the color (not available in PP 1.5). Than, if there’s junk at the top &/or bottom of the frame I will vertically center the frame (in increments of 2-pixels) than mask the junk. I will also horizontally center if necessary.I’m not sure why you’d get different results viewing in QT, between a Mac & a PC. What codec are you using?
As far as DVD Video, DVD quality should be pretty close to what you see while editing. You shouldn’t re-render. Your export from Premiere should be your final file. Whether you use Adobe Media Encoder or Main Concept MPEG Pro, start with the presets than boost encoding quality to maximum.
Your authoring software should never transcode your MPEG file, as long as it’s encoding meets the specifications of your authoring software.Basically, maybe you need to do two renders. One for DVD Video, than another desktop video.
I’d keep working on making a good DVD render. It does take a bit of experimentation to find the right settings for your needs.
Regarding the use of square-pixel stills, you should resample them to match the aspect ratio of your project. Here’s a link to some template files.
Here
At the bottom of the page there are two files that will help you to correctly resample stills to 4:3 and 16:9. Also, there is a vignette file that you could use to mask the signal noise on analog captures, you would just layer the vignette on top of the captured VHS and apply the Multiply Key (I think).Maybe take a look at this thread…
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/205/871306#871306
It covers a good bit of DVD quality issues.Vince
-
Re: Media Player plays file, Premiere won’t import it!!?
by Vincent Rosati on Jun 2, 2008 at 6:55:44 pm
“It would be helpful for us to know what your output specs are and what codecs you are using.
Are you making a web video, or a DVD or something?”I produce cable TV shows for public cable broadcast. I downloaded a mp4 file from https://www.communityproducers.com. Making a DVD for ingesting to TV station server for later broadcast. Can also ingest using other formats. Not sure where to answer question about codecs I’m using.
Use Windows XP Prof on HP desktop. 3.0gHz chip speed, 4gb RAM.
On https://www.communityproducers.com., selected show in Community called “LEAP Law Enforcement Against Prohibition” that’s actually stored on Vimeo at https://www.vimeo.com/12803441.
It’s a mp4 file and I downloaded it.
Couldn’t figure out how to use mp4 in Premiere Pro CS3 until I found a converter called MPEG StreamClip (https://www.squared5.com/) that claimed to convert mp4 files to avi files. I used it and it worked fine in terms of seeing it play in Windows Media Player. But when importing the converted file into PPCS3 bin, there’s has no audio. Same too with Adobe Soundbooth. Hope this provides helpful detail. Thanx. George
Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Vimeo framework” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.
-
Opening the file in gspot will tell you what codecs are being used in the source file.
I’ve tested a number of video converters. On PC the most reliable one that I’ve found is AVS Video Converter.
But before looking into a different converter, check your conversion setting to ensure the you are also ‘decompressing’ your audio, converting it to PCM WAV. Either 48Hz or 44.1Hz, whichever is appropriate for your workflow.Yay LEAP!
Vince
*Please remember to Rate our replies or check Solution if solved. If you get a good idea from the post, consider clicking the Kudos option.
-
Thanks for such a quick response.
“Opening the file in gspot…”
sorry, don’t know the jargon… where is gspot?“…check your conversion setting to ensure the you are also ‘decompressing’ your audio, converting it to PCM WAV. Either 48Hz or 44.1Hz, whichever is appropriate for your workflow.”
MPEG Streamclip – AVI/DivX Exporter says nothing about “decompressing”.
Under “sound” it has drop down window with these choices:
Uncompressed
IMA 4.1
MPEG-4AAC
AMR Narrow
MPEG Layer 2
MPEG Layer 3
No SoundIf I select any choice above with “MPEG” in it, a drop box appears offering 16 to 256 kbps. This choice goes away with any other choices above.
Nothing mentions 48 or 44.1 Hz.
Maybe I need to get AVS Video Converter. Google shows a bunch of them. Any one in particular? Thanks, George
-
Gspot is a free application available here…
https://www.headbands.com/gspot/
If you will regularly be using non-standard video sources it’s a great tool to have. It gives you a ton of important info about your A/V files.I’d try the ‘Uncompressed’ selection, that sounds like that would be the ‘decompressed’ format I mentioned earlier. These aren’t standardized terms, just general descriptions.
You could probably also use MP3, but it would be a lossy conversion. You would want to use the highest bitrate available, 256 kbps referencing your description.
It seems like it should work, but if you get stuck, AVS Video Converter is available here…
https://www.avs4you.com/AVS-Video-Converter.aspxVince
*Please remember to Rate our replies or check Solution if solved. If you get a good idea from the post, consider clicking the Kudos option.
-
Again, such a quick reply. This is great!
Sorry I’m so dense on jargon…
“also use MP3”
Is MP3 same as MPEG3?The choice offered in the list displayed in earlier note is mutually exclusive. Can’t use “Uncompressed” with any other choice. I can use MPEG3 and 256 kbps, but may not be uncompressed.
You suggest selecting 256 kbps, but any selection from the list without “MPEG” mentioned eliminates selecting kbps. If I select uncompressed, the 256 kbps bit rate range is not selectable.
I’ll try both combinations to see…
Gspot says “contact: temporarily not available” Thanks again. George
-
Yup, MP3 is the same as MPEG3.
The uncompressed setting often has no options. All you can do is try it. The datarate will probably be 1,411 kbps, so a much larger file than the MP3 (256 kbps), but it’s better quality and easier to use for editing.
Regarding gspot, I’m guessing you mean the web site was not available. Happens some times with websites. This app has probably been downloaded millions of times and the guy doesn’t charge a thing for it.
Try it again, I can access it from here.Vince
*Please remember to Rate our replies or check Solution if solved. If you get a good idea from the post, consider clicking the Kudos option.
-
The uncompressed setting often has no options. All you can do is try it. The datarate will probably be 1,411 kbps, so a much larger file than the MP3 (256 kbps), but it’s better quality and easier to use for editing.
So “uncompressed” better to try before MP3 (256 kbps), right? Thanks. GW
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up