Can't Import Audio from Current Movie

[guitarmongoose]

Okay, technically I can. When I have a movie already in session and I choose to import it's audio, I only get about 2 seconds of dead air. Has anybody else had this sort of problem? We are running Pro Tools 6.4 I believe on a G4 Digital Audio Mac. We end up having to export the audio separately from QT Pro and then re-import that audio into the session.

Thanks for the help.

[froyo]

Hello. How was the QuickTime encoded? Check next time you have one of these movies where this happens, open up the movie in QuickTime. Under the Window menu go to Show Movie Info, or do Apple + I. This will show you how the movie's video and/or audio were encoded. So for example it will tell you that Sorensen was used for video and audio is uncompressed, etc.

If the audio was muxed (matrixed) in an Mpeg 1 or 2 codec, you are out of luck. The only way to get the audio there is to either do an analog pass of the audio into Pro Tools (or whatever DAW software) or to use QuickTime Pro to use different elements. I don't think QT Pro will work with muxed audio anyway, but try it.

I also seem to remember a bug with DV QuickTime's which is what you described. I don't think as far as I know this has been resolved other than to use the workaround you have alreday described (QT Pro).

You can also ask whoever is encoding the QuickTime's in the first place to make sure they use codec's that don't have this problem. I am partial to Photo Jpeg's for video and uncompressed audio.

[guitarmongoose]

Thanks Froyo. The Quicktime is a DV Stream file that I digitized with iMovie so I guess the problem is that DV bug that you mentioned. I've never had that problem on my LE system at home. Oh well, that's why we have QT Pro.

Thanks for the quick response!

[froyo]

Hello. OK guitarmongoose, I think I know how you can eliminate this problem. When you make your QuickTime move in iMovie, create a .mov movie rather than a .dv movie. I think the command is called 'Movie to QuickTime Movie' instead of 'Movie to DV Stream'. Under 'Settings' or 'Options', I forget what it's called it comes up with a dialog window where you can chose your video codec, the size of the QuickTime, what audio compression if any to use, etc.

The .mov extension allows for a great many type of codecs to be used in the exporting process. One of those is DVC Pro, which will serve the same function as a .dv movie. You can then there in that drop down list choose the DVCPRO codec. If you create your QuickTime's from now on this way you should be able to do away with this .dv audio bug

[guitarmongoose]

The only problem with that (and I should have mentioned this in the first place, sorry) is that we need to play the movie out the firewire port which is why we are using DV Stream. If the DVCPro codec will do that, then I'll definitely do that and make myself look like a genius. Actually, I'll experiment with different formats today.

Thanks again. You rock!

-Brad

[froyo]

Hello. Yes guitarmongoose, DVCPRO is a DV codec that allows you to play a DV out of the Firewire port. Good luck.

[RKrizman]

Yes, I recently had the same problem, on a movie the audio of which that i had previously imported without problem.

-R