[S. Marcotte]

Hello again,

Well there you have it. After dropping useless tips on me (the kind you get at start-ups) they finally stopped returning my calls. I can’t seem to get any more information with regard to their catpuring methods. It’s a big company, too. I guess they don’t like to bother with the little guys. I’m thinking of posting their name and location, not in a spirit of defamation, but just as a “heads-up.” I’m not sure how cool that would be, though. There happens to be a great deal of industry activity, both American and Canadian, up here in Montreal. It might do more damage then it’s worth.

In any case, short of the info I need regarding the capture, I’ll keep barking up the codec tree for a while. Like every one says, that might be a big waste of time, but it’s all I got to go on until I save up for another capture. Maybe I’ll look into Xpress Pro, without the HD (I know a guy.)

Thanks – SGM

[S. Marcotte]

“the person who captured this footage for you did so NOT on an Avid system”

I’m fairly certain he did it on FCP. I spoke with him briefly today. He said the “white source monitor” problem I’m having is due to my selecting the wrong format and resolution when I start the new project. But I’ve tried every option and I still get the same result, or lack of result.

He did mention the file extensions were .mov. I’ll have to take his word for it, cause they sure don’t appear in Windows, with or without “view file extensions” turned on.

He said he still had some of the files he captured and would try to see what the problem is from his end. Kinda strange, come to think of it. If he captured to my drive, what’s he doing with these files in HIS drive. The plot thickens…

“Where are you located? I’m between jobs right now and could do the job (right) for you… :)”

Very kind of you. But what are the odds we’re even in the same country? I appreciate the offer but I’ll put it off for now.

Thanks – SGM

[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.

[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.

[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

[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