Video clips from server turn black

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As a classroom teacher, I am experiencing this problem. I have twenty-eight computers all connected to the server. Four computers have ATI cards and they are running on Windows 2000. The other computers do not have ATI cards they have some kind of video out port (S-video) and they are running on Windows XP. When I my students capture video on the computers that have ATI we are using Premiere as the main capturing device. We save the folder and drop it into the server so other students can use the clips. When the clips are brought in from the server and opened in Premiere on a computer that has ATI and running Windows 2000 we have no problem. However, when we open from the server on a computer that is running XP the clips turn black in Premiere when using transitions. Transitions are what its all about. Are there any solutions?

-- Richard Aber (pineperson@aol.com), April 25, 2004

Answers

That computer that is running XP likely does not have the appropriate codecs for playing back this file captured by the ATI device. This is a common problem when transporting AVI files to and from various computers: one solution is to ensure appropriate codecs are available in all computers intended to use these AVI clips. One complication concerns s/w or h/w or h/w-assisted codecs. For codecs that can be purely s/w (such as Intel Indeo or Cinepak radius) simply ensuring that these are installed and correctly is enough. For h/w or h/w- assisted codecs, which get installed in the course of installing the drivers for a particular capture card, then THAT card has to be installed ALSO in the recipient computer for it to play back properly the intended AVI clips (or edit it for that matter). The ATI cards are likely capturing AVI using its own proprietary codec, which may or may not be h/w or h/w-assisted or if s/w only works in the presence of said card in the system. You have to determine if it's possible for it and the computer it's attached to if capture is possible with any other purely s/w codec, or alternatively if there is a way to install the proprietary codec in the XP computer. Once there was a jungle of competing codecs of all reputes and abilities out there. I nearly became insane more than 5 years ago at, for example, Adobe Premiere 5.1's refusal to recognize the h/w-assisted Matrox MJPEG AVI that was the ONLY codec that can be used for the Marvel G200, producing nothing but green AVIs. ULead Media Studio recognized it but I wanted to work with Premiere. I then used the purely s/w PIC MJPEG and the HuffYUV AVI codecs with varying degrees of success. Then DV AVI became widestream, and though it's not the best code out there (quality-wise) the universal support for its h/w and s/w requirements was a relief.

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), April 30, 2004.

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