Video will not play in timeline

[James Brady]

Are you running any other software at the time? And are you using a particular video card for playback?
I ask because After Effects CS4 doesn’t like to let go control of our Blackmagic video card while it’s running–whether it’s minimized or not.

James Brady
Senior Editor
Results Video & Animation
El Paso, Texas
http://www.resultsvideo.com

[Brian Louis]

[william carey] “I imported a bunch of avi files into CS4”
What kind of avi files? avi is a generic term and can apply to all types of interleaved files.
If the files play on Ppro2 is it on the same machine??

Depending on the type of file you may need a codec installed, do you have quicktime installed? sometimes a codec that quicktime installs can cure a problem like this

[William Carey]

Brian Louis

“I imported a bunch of avi files into CS4”
What kind of avi files? avi is a generic term and can apply to all types of interleaved files.
If the files play on Ppro2 is it on the same machine??

Depending on the type of file you may need a codec installed, do you have quicktime installed? sometimes a codec that quicktime installs can cure a problem like this

How do you find out “What kind of avi files”?
Yes the files play fine with Premiere Pro 2 on the same machine.

Yes I have Quicktime installed. But I’m not sure how to use it to re-encode the avi files. I did use conversion software to convert the avi files to various other formats, including Quicktime, but they all played in CS4 with the same problem.

Bill Carey

[Beryl Stajich]

This is just a thought. I had a similar problem where I convertd an MPEG2 file to an avi file using a third party converter. Since the file was already on my machine, there was no need to take it thru the capture card. I tested the new avi file using the windows media player and it played and looked fine. When I brought it into premiere, it played and looked fine in the project window, but would not load or play in the timeline–so I could not edit it or do anything with it.

The problem turned out to be, as Brian suggested, all avi files are not the same. I use a matrox pro rx100.extreme capture card and presets. If the avi file is not brought in using the matrox presets (which in this case it was not), then the timeline in premere does not know how to read it becasue it’s looking for a matrox codec.

To solve the problem, I would have had to turn off the matrox presets, use the std NTSC setting, but then lose all of the matrox realtime editing/exporting capability. So, I had to rethink what I was trying to do.

In your case, you may be able to bring the file into premere2 through whatever capture card you are using on that machine, and it works because the capture codec and premere are in sync. But in CS4, they may be out of sync for whatever reason. (I am assuming that p2 and CS4 are on separate machines using different capture cards.)

Hope this gives you some clues as to what rock to look under. I think Brian is right, it’s a codec incompatability issue.

Beryl Stajich
bstajich@comcast.net