See that box on the upper right? The one that has 709/RGB? Right at the bottom of that box (you can barely see it) that has a pull down menu. Can you tell me what you selected from there? If anything?

If you did not select anything, choose the format most like what you need, but do NOT do any of the codecs that say 10bit or have an "x" after their name. Render that out and see if it acts properly in the timeline. I am thinking you have a 10bit codec on the timeline, and the preview window can only show 8 bit. When I've seen this before, that was the case.

Brief update, CS4 has accepted the videos, I haven't finished rendering them so I'm not positive they will work until the end, but big step forward

Excellent! You just needed some more modern tools! :)

Spoke waaay too soon. So it plays nicely etc etc, but if I render the video, which is kinda vital for it to be fluid, it becomes this blurry out of proportion thing I can only see a corner of in the viewer surrounded by black.
Now I'm trying, just for kicks to do a conversion in 8bit, as you suggested might have been the problem before, and see how that works... I'm starting to get a bit desperate, I have a job in a few days and I cannot not be able to edit...
Maybe it's the codec it uses for rendering that does that?
And no, 8 bit conversion didn't change the problem...

That's what I thought! going from h.264 to h.264 seems odd.

I use Neoscene and like the way the footage looks with their codec, the 4.2.2 does add a nice look. I'm mainly producing stock footage, so I render Quicktime photojpeg and yes get big file sizes, but that's the required format.

I am in the same situation here as the original poster.

I am using Adobe Elements 7 on PC. Works wonderfully. Also have NeoScene Cineform.

The footage was shot on a Sony HDV camera and downloaded into Apple FCP in their own codec, in quicktime. It doesn't work for me, as when I try to open those files in Elements or Quicktime on my PC, it either just gives sound and no video OR (Elements) says it can't find the codec.

So the shooter is trying to figure out the best way to transcode the HDV footage to give to me in a way that preserves quality when I input into Elements.

We're trying H.264 (1080i ??) right now, but as that is a delivery format, when I try to color correct or crop or composite a logo on the footage, will it hold up? Will the footage be as sharp as on the Apple?

Note: I've also tried to convert the FCP HDV footage (in MOV/Quicktime) with Cineform Neoscene to it's own intermediary but Neoscene also wouldn't take it.

I did consider that maybe if I bought Quicktime Pro 7.6 just to do this it may work? Or is there another suggested way for me to get my footage into my PC?

Thankx

First, I believe that FCP uses a proprietary HDV format/codec when capturing, which prevents users from using that footage on a PC, as Apple has not released the codec for the PC platform. Thus any HDV captured on a Mac won't work on a PC.

This leads me to the answer to your question. You will have to use a Mac to encode that footage to another format. There are so many possibilities it's nearly pointless to suggest any one for you, since it's so dependent on what exactly you need to use it for and what you expect out of it.

If you want the best possible quality (visually lossless) DNxHD is a good choice, although that requires installing DNxHD on any system you want to use to edit. If you aren't concerned with maintaining the absolute best quality you can encode to a high-bitrate
MPEG-2 (making sure to use 4:2:2 color space) which will look almost as good without requiring any special codecs. You could encode to DVCPro HD as well, although I don't like that format since it's not really HD. Then again, you say you started with HDV, so it might be just fine. You even could go to XDCAM HD.

Yes, you are right about Apples proprietary HDV code.

I know Elements can take MPEG-2. Kinda nervous about getting it in H.264 as that's the more compressed MPEG-4, but we'll see for sure after I put it in my system how it looks.

Don't know what DNxHD is, it isn't mentioned in the Elements literature...is this a plugin/codec? Free/paid?

It's a free discrete frame codec from Avid that works in a lot platforms.

Hi guys, I seem to be having the same problem as Anna RE the 'snowy' playback on the timeline.#

I've tried all variations in the settings (rgb, the other one, 10 bit, all 3 8 bit options, but in the CS3 timeline, the footage is as above , 'snowy'

Whats odd, is that when I preview the footgage in the top right window, its plays fine?


Any thoughts?

I'm desperate to find the best FREE method of mixing my 7d footage with good old easy to edit HDV footage.

I've got the trial of neoscene, and the avi that I get from that, still isn't the easiest to edit with, I can just about scrub through it, but on the timeline its plays back pretty stuttery.

Right. What he needs to do is go from h.264 to h.264 THEN back to h.264 to complete the circle.

So, I'm going from Streamclip into Premiere using the Avid codec (all this technical stuff gives me a headache.)

Are there settings I can use that makes it so I do not have to render everything? I'd think I should be able to match the settings in Streamclip to my Premiere project file but, as I said, this technical stuff gives me a headache... so I avoid it when I can. ;]

thanks

You say you have Canopus Edius 5? If so just add the files and highlight them, right click and select 'Convert' and then 'Batch files'. It will convert the files to a .avi and they will play fine in the timeline.