In my shop we have an issue. We have Premiere Pro running on a Dell/Matrox. Its primarily used to edit a program about current movies, etc. The studios send us their files via download from the web. They come to us as Quicktimes with 4 channels of mono audio.

We can drop them onto the timeline and can edit them but we only get 3 of the 4 channels, and the render time is way long (compared to the FCP machine we have...no render time needed) So, we've tried to convert them to .avi's using the Adobe Media Encoder, that seems to solve the render issue, but it sums all the audio into a stereo file. Which is no good because we need the isolated channels to take out the movie trailer narration, etc.

And CS4 with Matrox has no support to set up a timeline that will work with the mpegs, only DV or Avi. So that's why I've been trying to covert the trailers.

Is there a codec we need to download for PP or for Media Encoder that will work? Tape is no longer an option as the studios are sending these trailers out to all the shows like ours in this manner.

It seems to work fine on a borrowed Final Cut Pro machine without any issues. Obviously the studios think everyone is using macs....which they probably are. Our management won't buy us a mac, so are we screwed?
Thanks!!!!

Just setup Premiere with a custom template using mov format as your guide. Use quicktime to determine the file type, it is likely compressed one way or another. If it is a master, then I'd like to think it is in animation codec but who knows. Get the specs and setup Premiere to match it. Then when you import the files everything should be fine. I am not sure how Premiere witll handle 4 channels of audio in a quicktime as I have not tried that myself.

Good Luck. You should definitely be able to wrangle this, just not with any of the presets that Adobe ships with....oh....and if you don't already have it you should get quicktime installed for additional support in Premiere.

I thought the same thing, when you can't beat 'em join 'em, right?
If we can't conform the files to fit our timeline, then we'll make the timeline and the workflow fit the mpegs. But, the options in CS4 for setting up the timeline are limited.
There is no setting for .mov or .mpg, is there? What should we set it to? I've tried everything.
Are we goinig to have to download a third party codec or whatever. I hate that i'm having to diagnos issues. I'm not an IT person. I'm an editor.

.mpeg is Premiere's native format. You shouldn't have to do anything. It imports to mpeg by default (or at least every other version did).

You're not using the free trial, are you? Your copies are paid for, registered, activated? The trial version does not have mpeg support.

.mov is another issue.