Why are my AVI files in Premiere coming out black?

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Why are my AVI files in Premiere coming out black?

Postby DriftRoot » Sun Oct 08, 2006 9:58 am

I'm using some raws in Premiere, and have run into an annoying situation that someone around here probably knows how to solve very easily.

The AVI files were run through VDM with Hyffyuv and should be all set to go. It imports fine, it comes up on the monitor fine, but any clip I place on the timeline and attempt to preview shows up completely black. I've also tried exporting some still frames and they are black. It's worth mentioning that the original raw files also can be imported, but also come out black.
Also - VDM is having a really horrible time with the raw files, it can barely play them back. The resulting recoded files (post job) are unacceptably huge, to boot.

Someone's going to scream xvid/divx warnings at me, I know, but it's not my fault that's how the raws were originally encoded! I wouldn't be using the wretched things if I could get my hands on DVDs instead, trust me. :evil:
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Postby Scintilla » Sun Oct 08, 2006 11:15 am

Are all the video tracks on the timeline enabled?
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Postby DriftRoot » Sun Oct 08, 2006 11:55 am

Of course.
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Postby DriftRoot » Sun Oct 08, 2006 11:55 am

whoa, how the heck did my sig get that big??!! *rushes to fix*
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Postby DriftRoot » Sun Oct 08, 2006 8:33 pm

I decided to experiment with the same files in AE, which throws a fit and won't play them at all, provoking the following message:

"After Effects error: retrieving frame from video stream. (3) (53 :: 34)"

This look familiar to anyone? There's something weird with these files, it's not just me![/img]
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Postby Moonie » Sun Oct 08, 2006 8:37 pm

Maybe it has something to do with the frame rate.
I had a raw anime episode before that was 120fps! >_<
and it didn't play smooth through VDM
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Postby Gox777 » Sun Oct 08, 2006 9:50 pm

So you converted xvid/divx avi's to huffy in vdub but they still don't show up in the timeline?
Do you have ffdshow installed by chance?
If you do, try changing the settings in it so that huffyuv is set to decode huffy files instead of libavcodec. (Or vice-versa)
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Postby madbunny » Sun Oct 08, 2006 10:37 pm

moonie211 wrote:Maybe it has something to do with the frame rate.
I had a raw anime episode before that was 120fps! >_<
and it didn't play smooth through VDM


That would actually account for the huffy being godawful huge. There is a complex and annoying reason why fansubbers do it that way for HD raws, but either way...

Try making a small clip and changing the frame rate to what you want. I had a similar problem with my .Hack Gu and Haruhi HD stuff. See if your clip does what you need and is the right size.
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Postby madbunny » Sun Oct 08, 2006 10:38 pm

sorry for double.

I meant, use VDM to make some new clips at the desired frame rate.
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Postby Willen » Mon Oct 09, 2006 2:56 am

Check the raw video properties with AVIcodec or GSpot. If it says 119.88 fps for the video framerate then that is your problem for the ungodly huge files. A simple SelectEvery(4) for 29.97fps or SelectEvery(5) for 23.976fps in AviSynth should suffice. FDecimate(29.97) or (23.976) would also work.
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Postby DriftRoot » Mon Oct 09, 2006 8:19 am

@ Gox777: ffdshow is long-past bye bye, that codec is the source of more ills than a kettle full of baby ladybugs. (Random, weird tip: if you can't get video to play in Adobe Bridge, uninstall ffdshow - this one stumped even the tech support guys at Adobe!).
That's right, the files were converted and it still isn't playing nice. The frame rate is whacked out, I noticed that right off and took steps to repair it with the AVS script, but it didn't seem to make a difference in Premiere or improve playback in VDM.

@ Willen: I didn't try telling it to drop some frames, though, so I'll definately give that a shot and report back. Thanks!

These are not HD files, btw, I don't want to perpetuate that growing shadow over the quality of available raws. I had a difficult time choosing between my raw sources and ended up going with these because of their larger size (pixel-wise), despite their accompanying problems.
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Postby DriftRoot » Tue Oct 10, 2006 7:39 am

:(

All right, I got the frames to drop down to a nice 23.976 range (VDM seemed to like that best), however, my AVI files are now coming out bigger than ever - a whopping 7 GB from a 400 MB file. Is this new framerate not "sticking" when VDM makes the new AVIs? I wish I could just edit with the AVS files, but the video I needs to be un-divxed. (I haven't confirmed that the video now plays properly in Premiere, btw, I'm kind of stuck unless I can get these file sizes down; Premiere and my computer like to bicker about RAM allocation.)

I suppose I should ask straight up what folks with MOHS raws from SOS-Dan used to get these files into shape. If they did, I should be able to do it, it's just a matter of figuring out how. Any help will be greatly appreciated!
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Postby Willen » Tue Oct 10, 2006 8:58 am

This is the script I'm using:

Code: Select all
DirectShowSource("C:\path\SHnY_Episode_xx(1280x720_DivX521).avi", fps=119.88, ConvertFPS=true)
KillAudio()
FDecimate(29.97)
BilinearResize(852, 480)


Of course, you can replace FDecimate(29.97) with the other filters I mentioned above. Resize the video to whatever resolution you prefer, adding letterboxing or cropping as needed. And add any other filters you deem necessary.
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Postby Willen » Tue Oct 10, 2006 9:20 am

Oh, just to add, 7GB for a whole episode in Huffyuv from a 400MB raw is plausible to me. I edit with Huffyuv clips instead of AVS files and I tend to make them a bit on the longer side than they need to be. I'm up to 2.67GB in my clip folder for a video that still needs much more footage.

You could try to edit with the AVS file you currently have for the SHnY episode(s) you are using. Hopefully the added complexity of decoding the DivX video and the added filters in the AVS file isn't too much for your computer.
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Postby DriftRoot » Tue Oct 10, 2006 3:03 pm

Hrm...well... 7GB still seems burdensome. For some reason, VDM won't let me set in/out points on my AVS file, either, so that's why I was exporting the entire AVI file, rather than smaller clips.

The real issue is whether I can even use the resulting files in Premiere, I need to check and see if they're not coming out black anymore. I assumed it was the Divx messing things up, but it could have been the FPS rate. *salutes* I will report back (again)!
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