Can't Import PCA Perfect Clarity Audio Files

stevefoobar wrote on 5/31/2010, 10:14 PM
My brother and I both have a copy of Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum. When he double clicks on PCA music files, which is Sony's proprietary lossless audio codec, they open Vegas and they import into an audio track. When I do this on my computer with my same version of Vegas, I get an error message. I've tried to also use Sound Forge Audio Studio and get them same error message when trying to import them with that program.

Does anyone know what's going on? Supposedly, these are Sony files and should be able to be opened and decoded (they are compressed) with either Sound Forge or Vegas.

We both have the latest versions of Vegas running on WinXP Pro SP3

Thanks.

Comments

richard-amirault wrote on 6/1/2010, 5:30 AM
which is Sony's proprietary lossless audio codec,

Apparently, his computer has that codec installed and yours does not.
Allegretto wrote on 6/6/2010, 1:49 PM
You should see the PCA format in the format dropdown in Project -> Import Media and also Render As, listed as "Sony Perfect Clarity Audio". If you aren't, something may be wrong with your VMS 9 Platinum installation.
stevefoobar wrote on 6/18/2010, 6:05 PM
Thanks guys. I have no explanation for this (one of those Windows mysteries) but now I am able to import and play them just fine with either Vegas or Sound Forge.

Thanks.
stevefoobar wrote on 6/18/2010, 6:27 PM
Oops...I replied too soon.

Yes, I do have the Sony PCA codecs on my computer and yes, they show up in Vegas and Sound Forge. What fooled me is that I can play a small hand full of PCA files that apparently came with SoundForge as demo files but I can't play a whole bunch of PCA files my brother got with his latest version of Vegas. Very odd. I can only assume that the files I'm trying to import are corrupt somehow.

I also don't understand why I didn't get these PCA files with my version of Vegas but that's a different issue.

Any other ideas other than possibly corrupt files?
stevefoobar wrote on 6/19/2010, 12:15 PM
OK, I think I finally figured out what's happening. Although rare these days, it appears that the files were corrupted while burning to DVD. I can play the same files directly (not from the DVD) just fine.

Thanks everyone for the help.