I'm transferring videos from my TivoHD and decoding them to just standard .mpeg files.  All the files play just fine in just plain Windows Media Player.

Studio 12 recognizes some of the files, but not others.  In the Edit mode, the preview just shows a big question mark.  If I try to play the unrecognized files inside of Studio, I hear audio but no video.  One thing I've noticed is that all the files that it recognizes fine are under 2.8 Gb.  The files it doesn't recognize seem to be bigger than 2.8 Gb.  I don't know if the size is specifically the problem, but that's what it appears to be.

Any way to get Studio to recognize these larger files?

Thank you.

Anyone?

 

What video card are you using on this machine? Try checking Hardware acceleration and High Resolution preview on/off

Marc P.:

What video card are you using on this machine? Try checking Hardware acceleration and High Resolution preview on/off

 My video card is an nVidia GeForce 9800 GTX+.  I played with turning the Hardware Acceleration and High Resolution Preview settings on and off (and various combinations) and nothing made a difference.

Note, this issue is not with finished video after I've added it to the timeline or anything.  The issue is with the original video before I even add it to the timeline.  The video plays fine in just plain Windows Media Player.  I'm not sure this has anything to do with it, but it seems to be only files that are over 2.8 Gb in size.  Files from the same source (transferred from a Tivo) that are under 2.8 Gb in size (I have some that are 2.6 and 2.7 Gb) play fine.  Also not sure it matters but they are all high definition 1920x1080 resolution videos.

Good catch on file size, the reason I asked about the video card as since you are dealing with 1080p video in this footprint, it could be a possibility that you may run out of Video memory. But I doubt if this is the case. Have you tried opening other video types of the same size?

Unfortunately I don't have any other video anywhere near that size in another format to try to open.

I don't know what your problem is, but I think that your problem is not file size.  I have several mpg files in the 3+ gb range (up to 3.7 gb) and S12 recognizes all of them.

only files that are over 2.8 Gb in size.  Files from the same source (transferred from a Tivo) that are under 2.8 Gb in size (I have some that are 2.6 and 2.7 Gb) play fine.  Also not sure it matters but they are all high definition 1920x1080 resolution videos.

1) What length in time are these Files?

2) Are you waiting long enough for them to Open into the Edit Album?

3) If they are Open in the Edit Album, but won't Open into the Timeline, are you waiting long enough for that? You could try Splitting the Scene in Album into several smaller Scenes & Drop them into the Timeline.

BTW - I Import very short Uncompressed RAW AVI Files upto 3Gb from Heroglyph into Studio. Importing into Edit Album & Dropping into Timeline can take upto 5 minutes. Neither Studio or WMP will Open over 3G. Other Posters have experienced the same.

Thanks the additional replies everyone! 

To my earlier reply where I said I didn't have any other video to try, I came up with some.  I have some mini-DV tapes from my camcorder and I transferred a few of these over.  These come out to 13 Gb for a full 1 hour tape, but they are only 720x480 resolution, but the video works fine.

 

colour:

only files that are over 2.8 Gb in size.  Files from the same source (transferred from a Tivo) that are under 2.8 Gb in size (I have some that are 2.6 and 2.7 Gb) play fine.  Also not sure it matters but they are all high definition 1920x1080 resolution videos.

1) What length in time are these Files?

2) Are you waiting long enough for them to Open into the Edit Album?

3) If they are Open in the Edit Album, but won't Open into the Timeline, are you waiting long enough for that? You could try Splitting the Scene in Album into several smaller Scenes & Drop them into the Timeline.

BTW - I Import very short Uncompressed RAW AVI Files upto 3Gb from Heroglyph into Studio. Importing into Edit Album & Dropping into Timeline can take upto 5 minutes. Neither Studio or WMP will Open over 3G. Other Posters have experienced the same.

1)  For the MPEG files I have, they are all exactly 32 minutes long.  It's just the amount of compression that either makes the actual file size less than 2.8 Gb or more than 2.8 Gb (general range is anywhere from 2.6 to 2.85 Gb).

2) I've let it set for half an hour and all I see in the Edit Album on the problem videos is a big question mark in their thumbnail.  The thumbnails on the other similar videos that do work in the same directory on my hard drive show their thumnails with the first frame of the video instantly.  When I try to play one of these problem videos in the preview window, it takes a few seconds before it starts playing (the working videos start playing immediately, no pause at all after click the Play button) and I just get audio with blank black video.  (But again, I can play them just fine in Windows Media Player outside of Studio.)

3) No, they won't even open or play in the Edit Album.  I went ahead, based on your suggestion, and tried to split one anyway by just moving the slider in the preview window about half way through and then splitting it.  It let it split but both split sections show the question mark in the Edit Album and both split sections still play audio but just blank black video.

So no, it's probably not only size, but I'm still thinking size tied to something specifically related to the MPEG-2 format, maybe tied specifically to HD 1920x1080 resolution?

Oh, one other thing I'll add, in the Edit Album for the problem videos, it does still display the proper statistics for the resolution (1920x1080), format (MPEG-2), and frames per second (29.97) of the problem video, so it's at least able to partially recognize the video.  But the thumbnail shows the question mark.

 

clh:

Thanks the additional replies everyone! 

To my earlier reply where I said I didn't have any other video to try, I came up with some.  I have some mini-DV tapes from my camcorder and I transferred a few of these over.  These come out to 13 Gb for a full 1 hour tape, but they are only 720x480 resolution, but the video works fine.

 

colour:

only files that are over 2.8 Gb in size.  Files from the same source (transferred from a Tivo) that are under 2.8 Gb in size (I have some that are 2.6 and 2.7 Gb) play fine.  Also not sure it matters but they are all high definition 1920x1080 resolution videos.

1) What length in time are these Files?

2) Are you waiting long enough for them to Open into the Edit Album?

3) If they are Open in the Edit Album, but won't Open into the Timeline, are you waiting long enough for that? You could try Splitting the Scene in Album into several smaller Scenes & Drop them into the Timeline.

BTW - I Import very short Uncompressed RAW AVI Files upto 3Gb from Heroglyph into Studio. Importing into Edit Album & Dropping into Timeline can take upto 5 minutes. Neither Studio or WMP will Open over 3G. Other Posters have experienced the same.

1)  For the MPEG files I have, they are all exactly 32 minutes long.  It's just the amount of compression that either makes the actual file size less than 2.8 Gb or more than 2.8 Gb (general range is anywhere from 2.6 to 2.85 Gb).

2) I've let it set for half an hour and all I see in the Edit Album on the problem videos is a big question mark in their thumbnail.  The thumbnails on the other similar videos that do work in the same directory on my hard drive show their thumnails with the first frame of the video instantly.  When I try to play one of these problem videos in the preview window, it takes a few seconds before it starts playing (the working videos start playing immediately, no pause at all after click the Play button) and I just get audio with blank black video.  (But again, I can play them just fine in Windows Media Player outside of Studio.)

3) No, they won't even open or play in the Edit Album.  I went ahead, based on your suggestion, and tried to split one anyway by just moving the slider in the preview window about half way through and then splitting it.  It let it split but both split sections show the question mark in the Edit Album and both split sections still play audio but just blank black video.

So no, it's probably not only size, but I'm still thinking size tied to something specifically related to the MPEG-2 format, maybe tied specifically to HD 1920x1080 resolution?

Oh, one other thing I'll add, in the Edit Album for the problem videos, it does still display the proper statistics for the resolution (1920x1080), format (MPEG-2), and frames per second (29.97) of the problem video, so it's at least able to partially recognize the video.  But the thumbnail shows the question mark.

 

Include some ScreenShots (One per Post). So that others can see what you're seeing. How to, in THIS Post.

Okay, this post and the next one have some screen shots.  This first one shows the Pinnacle Studio window where in the Edit Album I have the directory selected that lists all of my videos.  You can clearly see the ones that seem to work okay (have a thumbnail showing the first frame of actual video) and the ones that don't (have a bit blue question mark for the thumbnail).

These are episodes of Red Dwarf that air on my local PBS station that were recorded on my Tivo, transferred to my PC using Tivo Desktop, and then converted to regular MPEG files using a program called Tivo Decoder GUI.  All files went through exactly the same process, even the files that work.

 

 

This post includes a screen shot of the directory listing of the files in this directory showing the file size for each.  Although we still haven't totally established that size is a factor, if you compare this list to the previous screen shot showing the Edit Album and the videos that show the "question mark" thumbnail, you'll see that all the ones with the question marks are larger than 2,800,000 KB, and all the ones that work (show the actual video thumbnail) are smaller than that.  But again, time length-wise, all of these videos are exactly 32 minutes long.

I'm not sure what else to show besides these 2 screen shots.  They seem to indicate the problem pretty well.  But if anyone has any other specific screen shots they'd like to see, let me know.

Thank you!

 

 

clh:

you'll see that all the ones with the question marks are larger than 2,800,000 KB, and all the ones that work (show the actual video thumbnail) are smaller than that. 

I see:

"The End"  2.87GB  shows in album

"Better Than Life"   2.76GB  does not show in album

I still don't think it is a size issue.

clh:

I'm transferring videos from my TivoHD and decoding them to just standard .mpeg files. 

Have you tried to re-decode any of the problem files?  Possible there was a problem with the decode process on those files.

IMO, your File/Comment View should also show the File Time Duration. It doesn't. Changing to Scene/Comment View (you might have to Cancel Scene Detection) might populate all Clips without the ? & show Time duration.(Radio button next to glasses symbol). If that doesn't work; Select Video from another Source via empty Folder Icon (Rop-right in Album) & Windows Explorer. 

Selecting the 1st Clip will Populate just that in Edit Album. You can choose to/not have Automatic Scene Detection by Cancalling it. Select further Clips via Camera Tab Drop-Down. If none of those now have ?  You can Drop each one into TimeLine. If they do, then you've tried another approach for elimination purposes. 

patndave:

I see:

"The End"  2.87GB  shows in album

"Better Than Life"   2.76GB  does not show in album

I still don't think it is a size issue.

 You're right!  I missed that!

patndave:

clh:

I'm transferring videos from my TivoHD and decoding them to just standard .mpeg files. 

Have you tried to re-decode any of the problem files?  Possible there was a problem with the decode process on those files.

Yes.  I've tried re-decoding the same file multiple times, and I've redownloaded the file from my Tivo and then re-decoded it again.

colour:

IMO, your File/Comment View should also show the File Time Duration. It doesn't. Changing to Scene/Comment View (you might have to Cancel Scene Detection) might populate all Clips without the ? & show Time duration.(Radio button next to glasses symbol). If that doesn't work; Select Video from another Source via empty Folder Icon (Rop-right in Album) & Windows Explorer. 

Selecting the 1st Clip will Populate just that in Edit Album. You can choose to/not have Automatic Scene Detection by Cancalling it. Select further Clips via Camera Tab Drop-Down. If none of those now have ?  You can Drop each one into TimeLine. If they do, then you've tried another approach for elimination purposes. 

I played around with it and found the fact that it doesn't show time duration has nothing to do with the issue.  It's because I have such long file names on them.  Studio will only display 3 lines of information and with the long file names wrapping onto a 2nd line it pushes the duration off of the display.  To demonstrate, I renamed all the files to remove the additional information about the date and channel it was recorded from and included a new screen shot here.  You can see that all of them except "Confidence and Paranoia" now show the duration.  "Confidence and Paranoia" does not because the file name is still long enough for it to wrap to a 2nd line, again pushing the duration off the display.

Changing to Scene mode, or using the Video from Another Source don't do anything.  It displays just another blank black square with the blue question mark.  I've included a screen shot in the next post after this one.  It also does not even try to detect scenes when I select one of these.  Same thing happens when trying to select one of the "bad" clips from the drop down when I'm already in Scene mode.  When I select one of the files that shows a proper thumbnail, it does begin to detect scenes.

Following up from my previous post, here's the screen shot showing one of the "bad" clips selected in Scene mode in the Edit Album.

clh:

1)  For the MPEG files I have, they are all exactly 32 minutes long.  It's just the amount of compression that either makes the actual file size less than 2.8 Gb or more than 2.8 Gb (general range is anywhere from 2.6 to 2.85 Gb).

This is beyond my expertise (if I ever had any ), but I would be looking to find out why Studio is reporting these file durations as anywhere from just over 30 minutes to just under 33 minutes if they are all exactly 32 minutes long.  Are the files actually various lengths or is Studio just reporting them wrong?

patndave:

clh:

1)  For the MPEG files I have, they are all exactly 32 minutes long.  It's just the amount of compression that either makes the actual file size less than 2.8 Gb or more than 2.8 Gb (general range is anywhere from 2.6 to 2.85 Gb).

This is beyond my expertise (if I ever had any ), but I would be looking to find out why Studio is reporting these file durations as anywhere from just over 30 minutes to just under 33 minutes if they are all exactly 32 minutes long.  Are the files actually various lengths or is Studio just reporting them wrong?

I doubt that has anything to do with it.  I made that statement before I really looked at it closely.  Using the term "exact" was probably not a good idea.  I knew they should be 32 minutes because the show is half an hour and I set my Tivo to start recording one minue early and stop recording 1 minute late.  But it doesn't surprise me if the Tivo isn't absolutely exact each and every time.

 

Ok then.  I've got nothing else.

Is this problem only follows this particular file? Can you try and capture another video with about the same length and see if you can import that.

Marc P.:

Is this problem only follows this particular file? Can you try and capture another video with about the same length and see if you can import that.

I may be misinterpreting what you're saying, and if I am please do clarify and I'll answer as best I can, but did you see my screen shot a few posts up?  There are 8 files shown in total, all about the same lenth (approx 32 minutes).  4 of them work, 4 of them don't.  So it's not just a single file, but it is similar files, but also similar files do work.

I found, downloaded, and installed the Studio 14 trial.  I have the same issue with the same files with Studio 14.

I also have Roxio Creator 2009 which includes MyDVD and VideoWave.  Both of those programs handle the files just fine.  (I'd much rather use Studio though.)