Windows 7 Problem

Timothy Lou Ly · January 2, 2011

Recently my Mac that I typically do all my editing on crashed, and I had to back up all my files onto an external hard drive to move the project over to a friend's PC. When I backed up all my files, they were saved as MOV (which should be perfectly fine with Premiere CS5), but they were saved on a hard drive formatted for a Mac. I connected the hard drive to my friend's PC and downloaded a program called "HFS__________" (I can't remember the whole name) to be able to read the hard drive and extract the files onto my friend's PC. But when I extract, the files only contain the audio. Is there a fix for this? I would just import the footage directly into my friend's PC, but it's all HDV and he has no firewire imports. Please help!

Phil Rhodes · January 2, 2011

The audio-only problem is not an issue with the formatting on the drive; if you weren't able to read the mac-formatted disk, you wouldn't even be able to see the files, let alone hear their audio.

You almost certainly have a codec issue, that is a problem with Premiere being able to understand the specific compression algorithm used to store the video. Does the PC in question have Quicktime installed on it? If not, you may find that installing it fixes the issue by providing a wider range of codecs to Premiere. If this doesn't fix it, find out what codec's being used to store the video, and look into ways you can make this codec available to Premiere. If you can't figure out in Premiere what codec it is (by right-clicking on the file in the import bin and examining its properties), get the VLC media player from www.videolan.org, play the file using it, and find the Media Information menu item. The codec type should be listed in one of the tabs.

If you want a guess, i it's from a recent Mac it may well be ProRes in which case installing the free version of quicktime on the PC should fix it (although the Windows version of Quicktime is playback-only for ProRes, so you won't be able to make new ProRes files). If it's from an HDV camera, it may well be MPEG-2 video, but I would have expected Premiere CS5 to be able to handle that by default. I could be wrong. Either way, try installing Quicktime.

If all else fails, you can get a firewire input card for a PC fairly inexpensively ($50, probably less) and just do a batch-recapture of your material.

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Timothy Lou Ly · January 3, 2011

Hi Phil, thanks for the reply.

The files are AIC encoded. I don't believe the Windows version of Premiere supports AIC, so is there a workaround for this? I'm just extremely worried about converting to another format without losing a good amount of quality. H264, maybe? Is there anything better that is supported in both Mac and Windows?

Timothy Lou Ly · January 3, 2011

Hi Phil, thanks for the reply.

The files are AIC encoded. I don't believe the Windows version of Premiere supports AIC, so is there a workaround for this? I'm just extremely worried about converting to another format without losing a good amount of quality. H264, maybe? Is there anything better that is supported in both Mac and Windows?

I just tried exporting as H.264. It was looking good until the camera started moving. I got artifacts everywhere.

Phil Rhodes · January 3, 2011

Exporting from what?

According to the Wikipedia article, AIC isn't supported on anything other than Macs, so you may have picked the one codec that's going to be a fairly significant headache.

You could go to any one of a few codecs - h.264 is a delivery codec rather than an editing codec, but you could use DNxHD, which Premiere likes and has similar performance to some types of ProRes. Unfortunately, to get it out of AIC, you're probably going to have to find a Mac.

Or buy a sub-$50 firewire board and reimport it from tape, if you have a workflow that will let you do that. This approach will minimise quality loss due to transcoding.

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Timothy Lou Ly · January 5, 2011

Unfortunately I can't export Pro-Res. I'm still using an old version of FCP 5 that I got a while back. No Pro-Res. What's the next best thing? Also, are you saying that a MOV file encoded in H.264 won't be able to be read by Windows Premiere Pro CS5?

Phil Rhodes · January 6, 2011

What's the next best thing?

DNxHD has similar performance to some ProRes modes and

Also, are you saying that a MOV file encoded in H.264 won't be able to be read by Windows Premiere Pro CS5?

It will work, but h.264 is intended for distribution, not production. It doesn't have appropriate image quality other than at extremely high bitrates, as users of DSLRs have been finding out. It also eats up a lot of CPU time just to play it back.

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Timothy Lou Ly · January 6, 2011

I'm not at home right now, so I can't be 100% sure. I don't remember seeing any options for DNxHD though. Will I have to download the codec in order for me to use it, or is it already recognized by FCP 5 and PP? And also, any specific export configuration/option with the DNxHD that you recommend?

Edited January 6, 2011 by Timothy Lou Ly

Phil Rhodes · January 6, 2011

I don't remember seeing any options for DNxHD though.

Hrmph, make it complicated, why don't you!

You may find you have to export uncompressed from FCP and use a tool such as ffmpeg to do the DNxHD encode, which is likely to be a longwinded process although it could be automated to some extent. I'm proposing it because I know it has reasonable performance and I know CS5 will read it, there are probably other things you could use - you just need to look at a list of the things you can make FCP produce and the things you can make CS5 read, and see where they coincide. Do some test runs to ensure you can achieve a level of image quality you can live with, and go from there.

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Hal Smith · January 7, 2011

Exporting from what?

According to the Wikipedia article, AIC isn't supported on anything other than Macs, so you may have picked the one codec that's going to be a fairly significant headache.

You could go to any one of a few codecs - h.264 is a DELIVERY codec rather than an editing codec,

Phil,

You might write a little primer on codecs including which ones are robust vs the ones that are designed only to be used for "retail" viewing.

I've been dealing with this for many years with audio. There's a very large number of otherwise professional audio people who think a low bit rate mp3 is broadcast quality. Fortunately for audio I can import it into an editor like Sound Forge or Pro Tools and show them just how smashed the dynamics are. They whine when I tell them to BUY a good mp2 codec and stop using mp3's for anything other than final deliverables to a low quality system like an iPhone, iPod, iWhatever. If it's headed for high end audio, film, broadcast radio/tv, etc. do not, repeat do not, use mp3's.

Phil Rhodes · January 7, 2011

I could, but that's actually quite hard to do as there are an enormous number of edge cases. I mean, HDCAM-SR uses MPEG-4 part 2 to fit 4:4:4 data into 880mbps, and MPEG-4 part 2 (which is not synonymous with h.264) barely provides better encoding than MPEG-2, according to some commentators. It's just that when you throw nine hundred megabits of bandwidth at it, it starts to work out better!

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