View Full Version : XDCAM EX wont play in CS4 PPro


Bill Rankin
May 24th, 2010, 06:53 PM
CPU I7
6gig ram
Vista

With only PPro running and after importing XD CAM ex 1980 x1020 full raster video, The video will not display, however, the audio does play. When I attempt to make changes to playback settings, etc. PPro will keep part of the dialog displayed within the black area of the monitor. The program will save and I can pull down menus and move the scrubber, but it will not play video OR audio.

Any suggestions. The program works fine with HDV and DV.

Eric Addison
May 24th, 2010, 07:28 PM
How are you importing the footage? Are you importing the entire BPAV folder from the SxS card? If not, try that - that's the best way to get the footage into PPro.

Also, you aren't running the trial version are you? That version doesn't support XDCAM EX...or any MPEG based codec.

Bill Rankin
May 24th, 2010, 08:17 PM
I am importing BPAV and this is the full retail version. It actually showed the video for once, but would not allow me to scrub the timeline. When I move the scrubber no change in picture. Eventually goes into nonresponding status.

Steve Kalle
May 25th, 2010, 03:02 PM
I bet it is the length of the video. I have the same problem in CS4 with my xdcam ex footage that is roughly 50 mins and up so I use ClipBrowser to cut the clips into 30 min segments. I think the problem lies with the conforming to media cache. With long clips, I must create a PPro project and import, let Premiere convert them, then close Premiere, open Premiere and create a new project and then import the video. Look for my thread from a couple weeks ago when I first experienced this problem.

Open Task Manager and you probably have to end the Premiere Pro process so you can re-start Premiere. I noticed that the Importer process is stuck open until the Premiere process gets ended.

Btw, I now have CS5 installed alongside CS4 and have ZERO problems with long clips in CS5.

Bill Rankin
May 25th, 2010, 04:12 PM
That might work, because I had tested the software with my EXCAM EX footage with maybe 3 minutes of video and it worked fine.

Thanks, I'll let you know.

Nik Skjoth
May 26th, 2010, 06:54 AM
never use the BPAV folder file structure for long shots.. Simply copy all files to the root directory and import them..

Bill Rankin
May 26th, 2010, 09:33 AM
I have not figured out how to cut the video in half using the XDCAM ex software.

In the meantime, Nik, copy all files to the root directory? Please explain.

I just copy the BPAV folder to the computer harddrive.

Steve Kalle
May 26th, 2010, 02:49 PM
Bill, in XDCAM EX ClipBrowser,

1) Double click the video clip to load into the Preview window.
2) Select a point in time, preferably no more than 30 mins from the beginning.
3) Click "Mark Out"
4) In the Explorer window, right click the clip and select "New Clip using In/Out"

Nik Skjoth
May 27th, 2010, 04:17 AM
In the meantime, Nik, copy all files to the root directory? Please explain.

I just copy the BPAV folder to the computer harddrive.

Open windows explorer..
Make a new folder somewhere
do a serch for *.mp4 files in your BPAV folder
Copy or move all of those mp4 files to the new folder.
Delete the BPAV folder and everything in it. (not nessessary, but you dont need it)
Put your mp4 files into PP
Done

Bill Rankin
May 27th, 2010, 04:59 PM
Thanks Nik and Steve. I am dividing the clips now and we will see if that works. I suspect it will work, because smaller video clips I've shot work fine.

Also, I'll try importing just the .mp4 files.

Thanks again.

Steve Kalle
May 27th, 2010, 10:51 PM
Bill, over in the XDCAM EX forum, everyone will say NO!!!! to deleting the BPAV folder and only keeping the MP4 video files.

Also, Premiere will not be able to automatically merge all mp4 files together into a single clip without the files in the BPAV folder.

Eric Addison
May 27th, 2010, 11:35 PM
Yes - PPro needs the BPAV folder. It contains the metadata needed for the clips.

Nik Skjoth
May 28th, 2010, 04:23 AM
Well.. no.. CS4/CS5 does NOT need the BPAV folder.. It can recognize XDCAM files nativelly.. The only thing it cannot do is merge the files to one big sequence.. WHICH BTW IS THE REASON FOR YOUR PROBLEM... Trying to merge long shots in CS4 causes it to stall....

so guys before you give advice, be sure you are right.. I have been doing this for half a year now since adobe added the XDcam native update... Hmm no BPAV folder and it works.. strange huh?

Bill Rankin
May 28th, 2010, 05:24 AM
I did not delete the BPAV folder. I just saved the mp4 video files into a folder, then imported that folder into PPro. It works fine. Video plays in the monitor.

Thanks Nik. and thanks to everyone else too !

Steve Kalle
May 28th, 2010, 05:29 PM
Nik, we are RIGHT. Nothing in my statement is incorrect.

Go ask anyone in the XDCAM EX forum, and they will all say to keep the BPAV folder and contents in the same condition as when you ingest from the SxS cards. If you want to make a copy of the MP4 clips and edit from that, then there is no problem.