Premiere Pro 1.5 cannot import DivX AVI

[Arjun_M]

The source was a DVD made from a MiniDV tape. The converter/capture unit was VirtualDubMPEG2. I had captured/converted the video using a 2000kbps bitrate on DivX 6.7 codec, and the video is 3 minutes and 57 seconds long.

It looked fine (by far the best render) when I played it back. When I imported the file in Premier, however, the dialog just said "Importing files" and stayed forever at zero, not getting ahead. I looked for solutions, but couldn't use any of them. I looked for other instances of this problem and didn't find any. I want to use a file of similar size and top quality, ripped from the DVD, while working on Premiere. What can I do?

[lordsmurf]

Premiere doesn't like high-compression files for import. It is a pro app, and expects uncompressed or lightly-compressed video input.

[jagabo]

Premiere doesn't like high-compression files for import. It is a pro app

No, it's an inflexible piece of crap like all Adobe products.

[Safesurfer]

Not sure why you would want to convert it before use in Premiere Pro instead of using the extracted MPEG2, is disk space really that much of a problem? If so, I would investigate frameserving from the DVD, that way you avoid any intermediate files, see the link https://forum.videohelp.com/topic261416.html for one method.

[filmboss80]

If you capture your minidv tape to DV AVI, you get the exact bits and bytes that were recorded onto the tape without any further encoding or compression. Premiere LOVES DV-AVI and was designed to work best with that format. However, Premiere's designers never intended it to be a divx/xvid editor. The divx/xvid formats are highly compressed PLAYBACK formats not designed for editing.

Edit first in DV-AVI, and then convert your final edited product to Divx. You have everything backwards in your workflow.

[M Bruner]

Premiere doesn't like high-compression files for import. It is a pro app

No, it's an inflexible piece of crap like all Adobe products.

Sorry you feel that way, Jagabo. I made this with After Effects, Premier Pro and Soudbooth. Although it's not production quality, I had fun with it and found them easy to work with and worth every penny.
Click here to view

[poisondeathray]

Older versions of Premiere were really inflexible. CS4 works with many more kinds of input formats and compatiblity has improved

Another option is the avs import plugin for Premiere, which is another way of frameserving (newer and more stable than using vfapi as outlined in the above link)