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ERROR importing AVCHD H.264 files on Windows
I have a problem that is preventing my students from moving forward with their work, and I am STUMPED as to what the issue is. Computers are all the same, Windows 7, 64bit Enterprise (Octo-Core Xeon 3ghz with 11GB of RAM). CC is installed with the the CCP Enterprise installation tool, and all apps have been updated via Adobe Updater to the latest revs, Premiere happens to be at 7.2.1(4).
All our digital cameras are Sony’s that shoot to AVCHD H.264 (I have provided a profile of a sample clip, below).
Video ingests into Prelude when the material is simply copied from the SD card to a local drive. However, when we attempt to send the video to Premiere Pro, the files all come up as OFFLINE (question mark icon). When I attempt to import the file manually, the following error is received “The file has an unsupported compression type.”.
The next thought was to attempt to transcode the files to another codec (in this case, I used DNxHD as a test). When the files are sent from Prelude to Media Encoder, the same error occurs (Media Coder is unable to determine the compression type) and all transcodes fail. As an aside, After Effects is also unable to import the same media.
This has happened now on numerous computers, and (obviously?) seems to be related to a lack of installation or support of AVCHD/H.264 compression. What’s odd is that students have been using these cameras and compression types all year, so I am guessing a recent update killed support?
If anyone could offer any help/ideas/support/thoughts it would be GREATLY appreciated!
Thanks!
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5 Replies
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Does the camera create a particular folder structure on the card? If so then copy the whole card as is and DO NOT MODIFY ANYTHING. Then use Premiere’s media browser to browse the folder for media.
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Thanks all for the thoughts; I am well aware of the need to keep the folder structure intact when working with AVCHD files. My typical workflow is that I have Prelude 1) Copy the entire folder structure to the D drive intact and/or 2) transcode the material to a work format (if needed). I usually use Prelude instead of using Explorer to copy over the entire file structure. The issue I am seeing is not because of orphan files without an associated IDX, as Prelude would preclude any of those issues from happening.
UPDATE: This issue seems to be related to something in the Windows User Profile! When I log into a given machine, I am able to import AVCHD/H.264 footage just fine, with no issues (either through Prelude and/or Media Explorer). However, the students’ user profiles (some, not all) are coming back with the error.
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OK, I am flummoxed. I just worked with out IT guy for about 40 minutes trying to narrow down the issue. So far, NOTHING is reliably reproducing the issue. Here’s what we’ve done so far…
1) Deleted all local user profiles except for admins, then deleted all registry keys relating to those profiles.
2) Students log in and a new profile is created, we then opened up their existing Premiere Pro project files. Problem still presents itself.
3) We create a new Premiere Pro project and attempt to import the material from the copy on the local hard drive (not the original SD card). Problem still presents itself.
4) We open a new Prelude project to import footage again directly from the SD card again, and Prelude is able to “see” the footage that is copied over to a new folder on the local hard drive (no transcoding). This is promising, so we open up Premiere Pro, and only 4 of 15 files are viewable (the others present the same error that no supported compression type is available).
5) I try reimporting some of the 11 files that don’t work again through Prelude, and this time they work! I note that the video files that DO WORK were imported into a folder that DOES NOT have a space in its name. However, the folder that DOES NOT work DOES have a space in its name. I think I am onto something. So…
6) I have the same student log into a DIFFERENT COMPUTER and we import the SAME FILES into Prelude and create a sub-folder that HAS A SPACE IN IT like the other computer has (we are trying to replicate the problem). And… It works just fine. We can see the files in a folder with a space in its name. So…
7) At this point, I am attempting to reinstall the Adobe CC suite on the affected computer, and we will see if that solves the problem. Fingers crossed… -
Thanks everyone for the assist…
I believe the problem is solved (at least as of the moment). The issue appears to have been tied to serialization, and the codec not being legitimized correctly. Adobe support was awesome in helping track this down, we re-serialized, and the files seem to import correctly under all users. Not sure why it was allowing my (admin) user to work correctly before. But, problem looks like it is solved.
Thanks all!!
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And thank you for posting the resolution! That is what can be most helpful to those who are searching in the future.
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