Getting file into editing application

[mst]

I have some files (ASF, MKV) that Adobe Premiere won't import- says "Unsupported file type". I really need to edit those files in Premiere. What can I do?

[Baldrick]

Same answer as in your other thread. Reconvert to avi uncompressed or lagarith, huffyuv or other lossless codecs. Use xmedia recode, avidemux, winff, etc.

[mst]

Just curious- what do people "in the business" (aka pros) do when such a situation occurs? I just can't picture them using the freeware apps you mentioned .

And thanks for the answer.

[manono]

I'd think they probably don't work with downloaded ASF or MKV files to begin with.

[mst]

I'd think they probably don't work with downloaded ASF or MKV files to begin with.

Sorry if my question was not taken seriously.
But I would *really* like to know that, I've searched everywhere and nothing.
I can't believe not even one studio got footage in a format Premiere or other editors don't accept.
So what did they do? Surely not used freeware.

[aedipuss]

a studio or station would laugh at you if you tried to give them that kind of source material. premiere, vegas, et. al. all support "editing" formats. i.e. video from cameras, lossless avi, etc. not end use consumer formats that have been encoded by kids. there is absolutely no reason for a "pro" to work with those formats, as they are already overly compressed and useless for editing.

[filmboss80]

I'd think they probably don't work with downloaded ASF or MKV files to begin with.

Sorry if my question was not taken seriously.
But I would *really* like to know that, I've searched everywhere and nothing.
I can't believe not even one studio got footage in a format Premiere or other editors don't accept.
So what did they do? Surely not used freeware.

Adding to what manono and aedipuss posted, there is a vast difference between production video and streaming video. In a rare case that a "pro" editor is forced to accept such footage (usually for a fast tv news piece--never for a studio), he/she would do what Baldrick told you already: convert to a lossless codec (like Huffyuv) before bringing it into Premiere or other editor.

I don't know how many other ways there are to tell you.

[poisondeathray]

As already mentioned, most people would use some form of digital intermediate, and there are 'visually lossless' alternatives that edit much faster as well (e.g. cineform) . Uncompressed or lossless compression is very slow to edit, unless you have a very fast setup and aren't I/O bound . UT video codec is the fastest lossless codec by a fair margin, because it scales very nicely with more cores, even more than huffyuv-mt or ff-huffymt . Fast decoding speed is important, otherwise you are render previewing everything and it is a PITA to edit anything.

There are other ways to do it with if your mkv video is progressive avc. You can use avc2avi, or rewrap with tsmuxer.

You're out of luck with wmv/asf video for premiere in terms of re-wrapping, but frameserving is an option

Earlier versions of Premiere (CS4 and earlier. The CS5 version requires avisynth x64 and the plugin is buggy) will accept avs input with premiere avs import plugin, so you can frameserve in . You can also use avfs (avisynth virtual file system) to frameserve in. AVFS is very stable and works for everything - even other editors like vegas