Movies with LE

[Alvin]

Hello there,

I was recently trying to import AVI and Quicktime movies into LE, but they do not play.

Has anyone had any experience with this, and does it work for you.

Happy Christmas to you all in Digiland...

[Bastiaan]

I have succesfully imported a quicktime movie into ptle. I had to change some setting in quicktime though....can't remember wich one...

It had something to do with enabling or disabling acceleration. It should be disabled, otherwise you only have a white window.....

[espron]

What graphics card are you using? I use a matrox G550 and mov/avi/mpeg all play fine in PTLE on my system. I did not have to turn off any acceleration for QT to make this work, so it may be your video card or some setting regarding it that is to blame.

Espen

[gerax]

Hi Guys

Two questions:

1) What version of Quicktime do I need for PT 5.3.1 and where do I find it (it didn't came with the PT installer I downloaded from Digi's website)?

2) What setup do you think could work in order to be able to visualize the Quicktime movie on a full size separate screen and still have the two monitors for PT (I'm running a Matrox G450 Dual Head)? How do the TDM guys do (I didn't get any answer from them)?

Thanx

L.G.

[Bastiaan]

quicktime can be found on www.quicktime.com .

I think having the video full-size isnt possible with ptle right now......but i could be dead-wrong...

[espron]

Hi Gerax

1: QT 5 and upwards will work, but I'd recomend QT6 for it's improved mpeg playback.

2: Having done a lot of research, I still haven't found a good way do view the quicktime window on a external monitor. According to Digidesign, video playback is currently only supported on the computer monitor.

The way I have done it is to use a Matrox dual G550 and use the DVDMax option to send the contents of the quicktime window fullscreen to a TV set. The only problem is that the second monitor/TV set will only work properly during playback, and if you nudge or select single frames it will just show the last frame where you stopped playback. This is very annoying to say the very least, and really renders this solution useless.

The problem seems to be that PT uses QT as it's playback engine and to my knowledge no videocards for the PC supports true fullscreen video out using quicktime.

The only option i can think of is checking out the Matrox Parphelia, which does support two VGA displays and an external monitor/TV set. I don't know whether or not it will work any better than the G450/550 in regard to the mentioned problem though.

I guess this is a subject that needs to be adressed by Digidesign. Adobe Premiere also uses QT as it's playback engine and they have no problems writong plugins for various video cards wich allows true video output to an external monitor. Video support for the PC in PT is still not up to par with that of the mac, I'm afraid.

Good luck and hope this helps!

Espen

[skman]

Best solution I have found is to have a second machine running cubase SX just for the video,
playing the video in direct show mode (much better than Quick time, Very smooth playback in full screen) slaving to protools via MTC. Works perfectly.
Takes alot of the strain of the pro tools rig as well, and alows you to have full screen Video slaveing to protools.

If you also tell pro tools to generate MMC as well(you do this in the peripherals menu) then every cursor move in pro tools is chased by the cubase machine.

I have these two computers networked so I import audio from a movie file that is on my cubase computer into pro tools ( this can be done from non registerd audio drive, so it can be done over a network, thanks Digi) and then import the same movie into cubase, set syncing and tempo options in cubase and Bingo!

this system works flawlessly all day long for me and I do alot of this work.

Give it a go,
You'll love it.

Scott.

[Alvin]

Good stuff guys..

I am running a matrox G550 in dualhead mode.

Bastian, I tried your suggestion for quicktime but it didn't make any difference.

Skman, I like the SX idea, my main reason for this is to write some scores for video, so I was hoping I could accomplish this entirely within PT, but a second computer may be a better idea.

I also have a Pinnacle pro 1 card that may be causing the problems. I'll have to check this over the next week, but any other ideas would be appreciated.

[gerax]

Same thing here:

I downloaded and installed the QT 6.0 Stand Alone, and halfway thru the installation process I got an "Can't acquire hardware error", though the rest of the install seemed to go fine; anyway, all I get when importing an .AVI file is a blank window (but I can see the image on the timeline); when ran alone the movie plays OK (altough I spotted some sync prblems with the audio).
In the end it's a good amount of things to troubleshoot don't you think? [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img]

I tried to enable/disable the Direct draw acceleration, but no results, I set the sample rate frequency of the QT player to match that of the PT session (48KHz) but no luck again.
Any ideas?

Thanx

L.G.

[gerax]

Ok, maybe I spoke too early: it's working [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

The curious thing is that it only works if I drag the QT preview on my second (right, in dual head mode) monitor over the edit window, while if I keep it on monitor 1 on the left I get a blank window.
I didn't have to enable or disable any acceleration or the likes; it's a curious behavior, but as long as it's working I'll keep it that way [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img] .

I emailed Matrox about the possibility to visualize the QT preview on a full size TV/Pal screen using their Parhelia video card: the Dual Head + video out is available for softwares like Premiere or After Effects, maybe it will work for PT too.

I'll post their answer (provided that I get one [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img] ).

Thanx for the help so far.

L.G.