On my second project with Pinnacle 7, I accidentally saved my 22 minute video as a .sdv file (the only other option is .stu—I haven’t found this explained anywhere in the manual). Subsequently, I’ve been unable to open the project with any program. I was intending to save it in a format that I could do a little more editing with, before rendering it to MPEG2 for a SVCD. When I “show all files” and try to open the project in Pinnacle, I get a “File could not be opened” mssg. The file icon itself is a Windows Media Player icon; When I attempt to open it from within WMP, I get “Does not support the format or else file is corrupt”. I realize WMP may not support the Pinn7 codecs... But I can’t figure out why it won’t open in Pinn7, nor why the icon is a WMP icon (my other captures and projects are Nero icons and they work fine).

Despite searching the Forums (and the Pinnacle manual…), I obviously am unclear on what the .sdv file format is for. The only file format options under Pinnacle’s Save option are .stu, .sdv, and “all file types”. When I saved in this format, the file size went from several GB (22 minutes of .avi format) to just 4.5 MB in the process, so I know I either REALLY compressed it or I lost a lot of….something. If possible, I still would like to recapture my hours of work and save this for SVCD.

Can I get this project back, or will I just have to do it over? Does it sound corrupted (that’s the easiest answer I can come up with)? And what file type (.stu or .sdv?) should I be saving (unrendered) Pinnacle projects as? Shouldn't I be able to continue to save as .avi? My first project went fine (VHS to MPEG1 vcd). By the way I have both Pinn7 and Pinn8 (trial version) on my system—Could that be a problem? Sorry for the long post.

Thanks. ----bmoore