VV3.0c Ignores TIF files

southside_g wrote on 7/17/2003, 2:13 PM
Greetings all,

A couple of months ago I edited a project in VV3.0c. Except for a couple of PTT glitches that got resolved with the help of this forum, all went swimmingly. I have not used VV since.

Today I go back to do some re-editing of the project and it won't open -- the loading of the project gets to 87% and then the system just hangs.

Thinking maybe the project file somehow got corrupted -- even though NDD shows no file system errors -- I try to work around it by opening a new project and starting it with the "fimal" AVIs from the first project as the basline video and building the new edits on top of that. The new project opens just fine and the AVIs load and play and edit fine. So far, so good.

The problem comes in when I try to edit TIF files into the timeline. VV won't do it, telling me that the files are an "unsupported format". Even the original TIF files that I used extensively and error-free in the original project are now being rejected by VV as being unsupported!

There have been no hardware or OS changes to my system since the last successful run of VV a couple of months back. There have been some software additions/deletions since then so I was thinking perhaps that some registry entry or library file critical to VV had been changed or deleted. So I tried first running the VV repair option of the uninstall utility. No help there. Then I did a full uninstall and re-install of VV from the CD-ROM, telling it to replace all files for which copies still/already existed on the system. Still no success.

In fact, now after re-installing VV, TIF files do not even show up in VV's explorer file listing; it pretends they are not even there (yes they are there, as confirmed by Windows Explorer and any number of other graphics and media programs, just that VV is ignoring them.)

I can't help but think that there is a libraby file or OS file or setting somewhere that is messing up my VV on me by making it think that it cannot handle TIF file formats -- and perhaps even keeping the original project from loading for the same reason.

HELP! I am dead in the water with a client deadline at the end of the month unless I can get this probelm fixed. Anyone who has lived through a similar problem or with a lead as to its fix would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance,

Glen S.
SouthSIDE Multimedia

Comments

jetdv wrote on 7/17/2003, 2:41 PM
TIF requires the Quicktime Authoring components to be installed.
southside_g wrote on 7/17/2003, 3:31 PM
Jet,

I'm not sure which components you are referring to. As I stated in my original post, TIF files worked just fine in VV before. I have not added or removed any Quickime "authoring" software from my system since then (though I did update my version of the Quicktime player to the 6.0 Pro Player Edition).

I can find no options in the VV install or preferences structure giving me any options on Quicktime component instalation, and in fact VV does give me the option to export my projects as Quicktime .mov files.

I tried un-installing/re-installing my Quicktime...no help. Perhaps that need to be installed *before* VV is (re)installed, but that would still not explain why TIF files *did* work a couple of months ago.

I am probably missing something in the reasoning here.

G.
TorS wrote on 7/17/2003, 3:37 PM
Why don't you convert your files to png instead? Vegas treats them like its own children.
Tor
jetdv wrote on 7/17/2003, 3:37 PM
Installing the new version of quicktime probably did it. I don't know if 3.0c is compatible with QT6. If it is, try reinstalling QT6, pick Custom, and choose EVERYTHING.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 7/17/2003, 3:54 PM
I had a similar problem and it turned out to be a problem with the Shared Plug-Ins directory. The fix was to uninstall all Sonic Foundry software and delete all the SonicFoundry directories! If you installed on a D: drive there may still a Shared Plug-Ins directory on the C: drive (which was my problem) so make sure you delete that too. Then do a complete re-install and this should clear it up. I even cleared out the registry entries for SonicFoundry with regedit and you might want to try that too if you’re ok with using regedit.

Apparently, the Shared Plug-Ins folder keeps some pointers into your registry (or visa versa) and if something changes in the registry and is not reflected in the Shared Plug-Ins folder, Vegas thinks that the plug-in no longer exists. Re-installing without deleting the directories doesn’t clear it up because if the installation program sees the files in the shared plug-ins directory it won’t overwrite them, but worse, it assumes they are registered correctly and won’t re-register them. Sounds like QT may have registered its own TIF plugin and, in the process, disabled SoFo’s.

You might as well try it. You have nothing to loose and TIF support to gain. ;-)

~jr
southside_g wrote on 7/18/2003, 11:22 AM
TorS: I have scores of TIF files that would have to be converted to a native format; I'd really like to avoid that. Plus future work would require the format conversion as an extra step (and extra file with extra disc space used) every time I created a graphic for use in a video. I'd really like to avoid that as well ;)

Jetdv: I have re-installed QT6 and ensured the authoring components were installed (it turns out they were indeed there before, but it didn't hurt to do the re-install ;) This in and of itself is not the problem. See below.

JR: Thanks a bunch for the plugin/registry lead. I have followed your lead and have so far been unsuccessful in solving the TIF problem. I suspect there may be a QT version compatability problem as Jetdv alluded to earlier, but I am not yet sure. Here is the deal:

I removed the Shared PlugIn directory structure and also went in to the registry (CURRENT MACHINE/Software/Sonic Foundry/File Foramts 2) and removed the key for "Quicktime 4". This was the only key related to QT I could find in the Sonic Foundry structure.

When I re-installed VV, it did indeed re-build the Shared PlugIns structure and built a new QT key in the registry. The problem(?) is that both the DLL and LNG files for QT in the Shared PlugIns directory are named begining with "qt4", and that the new registry key is again labled as being for "Quicktime 4".

In short, VV installs assuming (or believing) that QT4 is the version to use. While QT6 itself should be backwards compatable with QT4 itself, I an wondering if the VV DLL has a problem using QT6?

As I write this I am downloading QT4.1.2 from the Apple website, but I am hesitant to perform the downgrade for reasons outside the realm of SoFo issues (I'd like to keep with QT6, if possible).

Can anyone shed any light on whether QT4 vs. QT6 is actually an issue with VV3.0c, and if so, how to "fix" it? (I have found no references to this issue so far in the SoFo support pages.) Or am I chasing a red herring?

Thanks all for your help in this so far. It is much appreciated :)

G.
mfranco wrote on 7/18/2003, 11:54 PM
You may find your answer at the QuickTime List available at:

http://www.lists.apple.com/

Although the list is more Mac centric (I don't ever recall seeing sofo or vegas mentioned) they do deal with QT for windows issues and they might point you in the right direction to solve your problem.

Good luck,
franco

snicholshms wrote on 7/19/2003, 1:56 AM
You might get Irfanview...it converts any graphic format to any other graphic format. I changed all my TIFFs to PNGs so they could be used in Vegas weithout any of these hassles. Check out: http://www.irfanview.com/
SonyTSW wrote on 7/19/2003, 3:17 PM
southside_g,

QuickTime 6 should be compatible with VV3.0c. I've got QT version 6 installed on my home machine, and I can load TIF files just fine into VV3.0c. What version is your QuickTime plug-in in Vegas? Select QuickTime as the render format and click About in the render as dialog.

However, the QuickTime plug-in does not "advertise" to Vegas that it can read TIF files. You'll need to set the explorer view to All Files to see them.

Alternatively, if you are familiar with editing the registry you can append ";*.tif" (omit double quotes) to the list of supported file reader extensions in the following location. Standard disclaimer applies if you choose to edit the registry.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sonic Foundry\File Format Cache\{DDDB20E0-...}\ExtReader

This is a semicolon-separated list of file extensions supported by the plug-in, and is used for filtering files in the file open dialog and media explorer window. Please note that if you uninstall or reinstall Vegas (or any other SF app) you may have to re-edit that registry entry again.