Importing Camera Clips

cworld29 wrote on 5/23/2007, 12:42 PM

importing AVIs from a canon powershot S3IS into Vegas 7 does not work. All that shows up is the sound. I have ran into this problem before with previous versions going back to 4. Some types of AVIs do not import.

What pisses me off about this one is Windows Movie Maker has no problems working with these clips.

Right now the workaround is opening the clip in VDub then "save as AVI". The only problem is the file balloons to 10 times its original size!

I would appreciate it if somebody could explain what the requirements are for AVIs to be used in vegas. Is there a setting I need to turn on, in Vegas or the camera firmware?

Comments

Former user wrote on 5/23/2007, 12:43 PM

IF this is a still camera that does video, you probably need the MJPEG codec. There are some free ones online.

Dave T2

baysidebas wrote on 5/23/2007, 12:56 PM

And "AVI" is just a container that can hold many different formats of video. Think of it as a jar labeled "food." It could contain beans, tomatoes, beets, or peas, or any of a miriad other edibles..

cworld29 wrote on 5/23/2007, 1:44 PM

That worked! Lead, Morgan and PICvideo are the three people offering this codec online. All are trialware.

I imagine this codec is already on my computer, seeing as how Movie Maker can import this file. I guess it doesn't have to share access.

So how hard would it be for Sony to include this codec with Vegas?

Thanks for help all.

John_Cline wrote on 5/23/2007, 4:09 PM

There are two types of video codecs in Windows; those that are Direct-X compatible and those that are VFW (Video for Windows) compatible. Windows Media Player and Windows Movie Maker are based on Direct-X and there is an MJPEG codec included in the bundle of Direct-X codecs. Vegas is built on VFW and does not use Direct-X codecs. Therefore, the Direct-X MJPEG codec used in Windows Media Player will not be available to Vegas.

Sony would either have to license or write their own VFW MJPEG codec and that would probably not be cost effective since so few applications and devices use MJPEG anymore.

That said, the PicVideo MJPEG codec makes a pretty effective intermediate codec to export/import video from Vegas for processing in external applications.

John

johnmeyer wrote on 5/23/2007, 5:59 PM

You can download and install the MainConcept MJPEG demo:

MC MJPEG Demo

If you try to encode with this, it will watermark your video, but it will decode your camera videos within Vegas and solve your problem.

It is pretty cheap ($21), so I'd recommend that you just buy the thing, since MJPEG is a pretty useful codec.

Laurence wrote on 5/23/2007, 8:22 PM

Here's another vote for the Pegasus PicVideo MJPEG codec. It's really good quality with ample adjustments for size vs quality and encodes and decodes are really fast.

It is really good at those odd sizes we need every so often, like 960x540 for one field 1080i half sized progressive or 1440x810 for folding Bluff Titler projects into 1440x1080i timelines, or 640x480 for web video projects.

bw wrote on 5/24/2007, 3:59 AM

I have used a free program called Bink and Smacker to decode still cam video for vegas. seems to be ok.
Brian