Avid: Faint sound – blank white image

[Jon Zanone]

I think what’s relevant is someone else captured the footage. Are you sure the footage was captured correctly? You don’t say, but I get that you are receiving this footage as Quicktime – am I correct in my assumption? Check your import options make sure they look correct (I’m not in front of my Avid, and it’s been a long weekend) – I don’t remember if there is a radio button for audio and video or not. There is an option button on the first import dialog that pops up.

Capturing DVCPro50 is not relevant, unless you are capturing DV footage – then it’s a waste of space. Capturing DV via Firewire gets all those pesky 1’s and 0’s – nothing more, nothing less. Of course, if you are on an older system without the DVCPRO50 CODEC, then that might be your problem.

Your version of QT is very important. It should be the recommended version. Check the readme for your software version. There were HUGE problems with ver7.0 QT when it first came out – Avid would not export or import footage, among other strange behaviors. Avid apparently fixed that problem in subsequent releases. Do you have the latest version of software? I don’t need 7.0, so I keep 6.5 on my machines.

If you could fill us in on your system details, that would be a great start… (OS / video card / memory / CPU)

Jon

[S. Marcotte]

Mr. Zanone,

Thanks a lot for the reply.

“I get that you are receiving this footage as Quicktime – am I correct in my assumption?”

I’m not sure what you mean by “receiving”. Before Avid turns them into OMF files, they come (from the lab) as .AV files – is this what you’re looking for?

“Check your import options”

I will. Avid strikes me as incredibly difficult to navigate, as compared to Premiere. Might take me a while to find these options.

“if you are on an older system without the DVCPRO50 CODEC, then that might be your problem.”

I tried MainConcept’s DVCPRO25/50 codec. I installed it to my system, but did nothing special in terms of bringing the codec into Avid. I tried to export my imageless file, just to see if the new codec would be available from the export menu. It wasn’t. Nor was it present in Avid before the MainConcept installation.

“There were HUGE problems with ver7.0 QT when it first came out”

I tried it first with 6.5. No go. I currently have 7.0. No go. I might try 6.5 again. Does the regular QT non-Pro download suffice in your opinion?

“If you could fill us in on your system details”

XP Service Pack 2 – nVidia GeForce FX 5500 (256MB) – 1.5GB RAM – AMD Athlon 2GHz processor – Western Digital IDE 7200 RPM (8M Cache) disk – and a beautiful, moss-laden forest scene on my desktop.

What I’d do for a silver-bullet plug-in.

Thanks again for your help – SGM

[Jon Zanone]

Well there’s your problem! Moss is incompatible with Avid. Unless of course, you have Moss2.5….

I am a little confused – you say you’ve got files with a .av extension? Are you on a PC? Are they AVI files? If not, what kind of file is a .av?

If 6.5 didn’t work, try going back to 6.0.

Jon

[S. Marcotte]

Yes, I’m on a PC (I know, I know, that would appear to settle the matter – unlike Mac, I’m told, PC isn’t “in bed” with DVCPRO or any other Panasonic goods.)

About the file extensions, here’s what went down (I have a feeling this matters): The gentleman who captured my footage did it from Mac, after first formating my external drive in FAT32. I asked him what codec he used. “DVCPRO,” he replied. I took the hard disk home, open it up and found files that look like this “Tape 1-av” (no period, just a hyphen).

That’s all I get from the file name. Under “Properties>Type”, I get the helpful but predictable word “File”. I simply assumed file names were a casualty when going from Mac to PC.

In my naivete, I half expected the folder to contain names like “Tape 1.DVCPRO” Didn’t happen.

Maybe I should have mentioned this earlier: I took my external drive to a producer friend’s place, hooked it up to his Mac via IEEE 1394, fired up Final Cut Pro, and watched the footage open up cleanly. No issues, no problems. Like butter. This told me I probably didn’t have to digitize my footage yet again, but rather had to deal with PC-related software problems.

Just to recap: I import my original “Tape 1-av” file. Avid turns it into one “Tape 1-av.omf” file and a pair of “Tape 1-av.aif” files. I then import the .omf file into Avid and get two very faint audio tracks, and a virgin white source monitor. Time code appears to work. The timeline seems to display all three things: Video, audio 1 and audio 2.

You think YOU’RE confused…

Very appreciative – SGM

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

Okay, let’s just work from some basics and then proceed. What format was the original footage recorded in? DVCPRO, DVCPRO50 or DVCPRO HD.
All of these can work with newer Avid systems but not all.

This leads me to question #2. Which system are you on? Be specific.

And lastly there is at least one identifiable problem with the files and that is there has to be an extention to the file name. So, it should at least be like clip1.mov. This would indicate a Quicktime file.

Well that was almost last, what was it that the guy that was prepping this for you thinking he was doing for you? What was the source of the footage and does he still have it?

Hope I can help at least clear some of the confusion.

Best,

Jan

Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems

[S. Marcotte]

“Okay, let’s just work from some basics and then proceed.”

Very good place to start. Original footage (my own investment) was shot on DVCPRO50 with the SDX 900, a crew and a bunch of actors. My original tapes (I own them – they’re on my dinner table right now) were brought to a place for capture. A week later, the guy hands me my tapes back and a hard drive with my precious little movie footage on it. I bring it all home, and here I am trying to open the clips with Avid Xpress Pro HD version 5.0. (No, the tapes weren’t blank – we had a monitor, and I’ve seen them on FCP – I wasn’t dreaming.)

Again: I’m on PC. The capture-guy was on Mac.

Indeed, the files that were captured to my hard drive did not have any extentions. Did they have an extention in the capture-guy’s Mac? No idea. They don’t in my PC.

Nonetheless (and this is relelvant, I think) when I ask Avid to import one, I get a “Creating audio/video from QT” progress bar. Takes forever. Three new file appear in my folder, now with extentions! (.omf and .aif). It’s these new files that, whem imported, give me sound and TC, but no picture.

My first born to whoever nails this one. Ask me any detail, right down to my shoe size.

Regards,
S.

[Jon Zanone]

What NLE captured the footage – FCP, Avid or (heaven help you) iMovie?

I don’t think the fact you shot it in DVCPRo50 (the 900 is an AWESOME camera, BTW) is important. I think the problem was how it was captured initially. Also the fact it plays in another FCP system is key.

Have you tried copying one of the video files, moving the copy to your desktop, and adding a .mov extention? Or, will the file play in Quicktime without adding an extension? Will it then play using Quicktime? If it does, it SHOULD import into the Avid fine. If it doesn’t play, that’s a clue that whatever CODEC the original file was captured in is not on your machine.

As a side note, I recently exported a same as source quicktime from an older MC Meridian system (c. 1999). Even after installing the Meridian CODEC into a new fancy shcmancy iMac, it would not play the quicktime. However, it plays fine on an XP machine! Go figure…

Jon

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

I think the problem is in the capture. It is altogether possible that that the guy doing the capture was clueless. Call him and ask him how he had his cature window set up. Which version of FCP was he using? Get him to nail this down, then lets move onto the next step.

Best,

Jan

Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems

[S. Marcotte]

“the guy doing the capture was clueless. Call him and ask him how he had his cature window set up.”

I tried to reach him today but couldn’t. I’ll try again tomorrow. He’s friendly but not terribly articulate.

In the meantime, I dug up this post from another Avid forum – I’ll paraphrase:

Q: “When I import it into Xpress Pro HD, the video is a white screen.”

A: “…try to convert it to DNxHD”

So I looked around for the DNxHD Codec and found the “Avid Quicktime Codecs Light Edition 1.0.1” available for download at https://www.free-codecs.com/download/Avid_Quicktime_Codecs.htm. It includes the DNxHD codec, among several others. I downloaded and installed. I installed where? Nowhere specific, just Windows. How do you send a codec specifically to Avid on PC? I’m new to this. Also, the post suggests that I “convert it.” Once I have the codec installed properly, will I need conversion software, or does simply importing it to Avid constitute an official act of file conversion?

Or am I barking up the wrong tree altogether?

Thanks – SGM

PS I won’t waste your time much longer with this. I just need a bit more clarity on the million different variables involved in this process.

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

I am thinking wrong tree. Keep on the FCP guy. I am willing to be he had his settings wrong. The DNX is an HD codec and is not relevant to what you are doing. Although the only thing I do not know is if the QT from Apple plays in the Avid system. This would be my next step. A phone call to Avid may net this answer. I know on the HD systems they are not compatible.

Best,

Jan

Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems