Uncompressed avi question

[PaulC]

I have a hd project in pe4 that I want to export to tape. Since pe4 won't export to my vixia hv40 I have been saving my projects as mpeg 1080 30 and using Sony Vegas to export to tape. Hoping to maximize the quality I exported as uncompressed microsoft avi and imported this into Sony Vegas. However Sony Vegas could not recognize the audio. I tried playing the files in Windows media player and creative mediasource and both played the audio but couldn't play the video. Since there is no option in the audio when exporting as uncompressed avi other than uncompressed audio is there any thing I can do to get Sony Vegas to recognize the audio. If not what would be the best setting to export as in mpeg to get the highest quality.
Paul C- Dell xps 420, Vista home premium, intel quad cpu q6600 @2.4 ghz, 3 gb memory, sata 320gb and sata 1.5 terabyte drives, radeon hd 2600.

[RJ Johnston]

I don't think you want the preset "Microsoft AVI Uncompressed."

Instead, first select the preset "Microsoft AVI," then inside that select "None" for compressor.

Someone with a similar camera will have to help with the MPEG-2 question.

[PaulC]

Thanks for the quick reply RJ. I did as you suggested and opened the file in Sony Vegas. The audio worked fine but in the preview window the first few frames of video play and then it sticks on one frame until the end of that scene and then it plays a few more frames. It does this with each scene. I saved the audio from the project as a wav file and I used it along with the uncompressed microsoft avi files. It seems to work so I'll try a short test to see how it looks on tape. I may end up using Sony Vegas to edit my video. I prefer PE4 but the trouble trying to save to tape is starting to override the benefits. If only someone at Adobe would figure out why their software can't do this and fix it.

[Steve Grisetti]

If you're outputting a file from Premiere Elements to use in a Vegas project, Paul, you should use Share/Computer/AVI with the DV preset.

Uncompressed video is actually so huge that a lot of computers have trouble working with it (which is why you were seeing poor playback). A DV-AVI, however, is the standard for high-quality PC-based video editing.

[PaulC]

Thanks, I'll try that. I'm just trying to maintain the highest possible quality from pe4 to Vegas. The original video was shot in hd, if I output as dv to vegas does this mean when I export to tape from vegas my video will now be standard dv and not hdv.

[Paul LS]

Yes, if you want to finally export to a hd format using DV from PE4 to Vegas will not work. As Steve says uncompressed AVI will result in a hugh file, especially for a hd clip. I have done this for short clips of a few minutes but anything longer and you will need to use a compressed format. You could use MPEG2 or H.264, I would go with MPEG2 as it is easier to work with. In the Export Settings increase the bit rate of the MPEG2 to say CBR at 30Mb/s (or 35Mb/s if this is setable, I cant recall the upper limit now). This should give a high quality file that will not suffer much quality degradtaion when re-rendered in Vegas.

[Steve Grisetti]

I agree with Paul.

If you want to output a hi-def video for editing in Vegas, use Share/Computer/MPEG with the 1440x1080 MPEG2 preset.

This file should edit easily in Vegas if you set up your project for HDV.

[PaulC]

I exported using the mpeg2 option and all went well. The cbr option has a mb/s of up to 40 which I used and I set the quality to 5. I had used this option previously but with vbr 2 pass. Thanks again for the time and effort you put into helping those like me trying to figure this stuff out. I was wondering would Steve's book for pe7 work for pe4 and is this the type of problem it could help with?

[Steve Grisetti]

I've learned a lot since writing the book for version 7. I personally think the books for version 9 are much more accessible. (The version 9 book, for instance, offers more of these types of tips for working with HD.)

But they should both be great for learning version 4 pretty thoroughly.