.avi files that won't work correctly!

[RolloSwe]

Hey!

A couple of weeks ago I did a job for a local dance studio. They wanted me to film their showcase. They had told me that the "venue" had a 3-camera system that I could use. What they failed to tell me was that they basically had a "tv-setup" with these 3 cameras connected to a computer with a bunch of screens and a panel to control everything. So, instead of pressing record on each camera manually, getting each camera's file and going home to edit the material, I sat in the control room editing in real time and got these already cut .avi-files from the recording PC.

Now to the problem. These files won't play at all in Quicktime. No error messages, just a black screen and no sound. VLC gives me picture, although very choppy, but no sound. MPEG Streamclip finds neither sound, nor picture. Importing the files directly in to FCP doesn't work either. The canvas tells me something about codec error.

What do I do? The cameras were all Canon HF21's and I think the software used to record these clips was Adobe Premiere. I checked them before I transferred them to my external hdd to take home and they worked fine. I was kind of hoping I could just convert them in MPEG Streamclip to use in FCP and I'd be fine, but apparently not.

Any help would be really appreciated!

[zoobie]

what you need to do - as I'm sure you now know - is to check them after transfer
try a codec info program below and see what's going on
gspot & mediainfo
post the results

[RolloSwe]

Mediainfo can't read the files. :S Gspot won't work since i'm in OSX.
When I select one of the files to open in Mediainfo nothing happens.
Could it have something to do with the fact that all the files are like 35GB a piece?

[edDV]

Try this. Run the file in VLC. Select Tools, then Media Information and post results here.

Here are samples from a cable QAM recording.

[edDV]

Could it have something to do with the fact that all the files are like 35GB a piece?

What is the play duration?

[RolloSwe]

Duration is just over an hour.
Oh, and sorry about the Swedish VLC. :P

[edDV]

OK, you have 1280x720p Motion JPeg (MJPEG) at 60 fps with ~60 Mb/s bit rate.

Audio is 16 bit, 48 Kb/s uncompressed PCM which should play in VLC.


MJPEG is not supported by FCP directly. Try converting to AIC or ProRes422.


**Suggest Mod move this to Mac Forum**

[RolloSwe]

That's the problem! The files won't work in MPEG Streamclip where I convert/conform all my other material. So I can't convert it to Prores. =/ I can't do anything.

Edit: Just tried Compressor too, just got "failed" as the status for the conversion.

[edDV]

That's the problem! The files won't work in MPEG Streamclip where I convert/conform all my other material. So I can't convert it to Prores. =/ I can't do anything.

Edit: Just tried Compressor too, just got "failed" as the status for the conversion.

Post your picture results over in the Mac Forum. Someone will know how to import MJPEG.