When it comes to codecs you may as well be speaking in an unknown language (at least to me). I recently purchased a vHoldR helmet cam by Twenty20. The footage is captured as an .AVI file format and is encoded with Xvid (and decoded with ffdshow -their software component) for Windows Media player and Windows Movie Maker.

 The video plays back real good until I import/copy it into my Liquid 7.2 timeline, where it either doesn't playback very well or it crashes the program. So I guess my question is, does Liquid support Xvid and if so is it automatically in the 7.2 version or do I need to somehow add it to the works. And if I do, how do I do that?

 Your help will be extremely appreciated.

 Christine

Christine,

First, welcome to the forums.

The vHoldR captures in 640x480 XVid, so you need to set your timeline to match as closely as possible. Even then, it's going to be jerky until rendered as Liquid doesn't use MPEG-4 (which is what XVid is based on) as a native format. 

Try this. Create a new sequence, and in the New Sequence dialog box turn on Advanced Mode (if not already on). Choose the NTSC 4x3 preset, and then change the Resolution to 640x480, interlacing to top field first, and Render/Fuse CODEC to MPEG-2 and click on the checkmark to make the sequence.

 Drop your clip into that. You'll still see jerky playback because the frames have to be rendered on the fly.  Either render the slice manually, or turn on Render Yellow Slices and allow it to render.

If I was doing this, I'd convert all of the clips to DV and then edit the DV clips. This will be a lot faster than trying to edit the Xvid.

Hi Dave,

 How do I convert the clips to DV?

Christine

The easiest way is put the video onto a standard DV timeline and fuse. This will automatically import the fused DV clip, and you can edit that.

Because the size of the original clip isn't the same as the DV frame size (720x480), you have a choice to make. Do you want to use black bars lef and right, or do you want to scale the clip to fit the frame size (make everything a little wider)? If you want the black bars, right-click on the clip in the rack, select the V tab, and make sure that the Scaling option is set for No Scale. If you want to stretch to fit, change the Scaling option to Fit X. That way when you fuse the frame will either be centered or stretched as required.

Hope this helps.

Hi Dave,

 I've been away from my computer for a day and so this morning I have tried both of your suggestions. The first one with setting up the sequence and dropping in the clip, you say to render it. It doesn't give me the option to render. There are no yellow slices just grey. The second option converting to DV crashes my program during export fuse and when I shortened the clip from 1.5 minutes to half the length, it fused and exported. When I brought it back into the timeline as a DV/AVI and played back it crashed the program.

 Any other suggestions?

 Christine