Premiere CC2019 Won't Import H264 .Mov's - And I need it to.

[threeheadedhotdog]

Hey!

Let me start by saying that facile comments about an H264 workflow are unnecessary. Not that I should have to explain, but I am dealing with stereoscopic footage and I need to stay native to the source material. Please only respond with comments that address the issue. Thanks!

I need to be able to import H264's into premiere but I get the error message: "This file has an unsupported compression type."

This puzzles me because windows media player can play them fine, and I can open them fine in Nuke, which means I must  have the codec.

How can I get Premiere to support this codec?

Thanks for your time!

[R Neil Haugen]

How about downloading the free utility MediaInfo, heavily relied upon "around here". Drag/drop one of these clips onto that app's icon on the desktop, then when it opens, go into MediaInfo's "Tree" viewing mode. Do a screen-grab of the video section, drag/drop that png onto your reply box ... and we can all see exactly which form of H.264 it is.

Neil

[threeheadedhotdog]

Neil,

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm not at my workstation so I can't download that particular ap at the moment, though I can say that Nuke's metadata viewer says the codec's id is avc1.

Does that answer your question?

also, these clips open fine on my mac running premiere cc2017 ( im not upgrading that machine's os), the issue i am encountering is on my windows 10 machine runnning cc2019 ( windows machines are simply better for VR development)

[R Neil Haugen]

There are some older QuickTime formats that are not usable any longer in Pr 2019. And that may be the case here, that they're older files. If that's the case, you can either work in 2017 or use MediaEncoder to transcode to say Cineform or ProRes or DNxHD/R or still to H.264.

Neil

[threeheadedhotdog]

Neil,

Thanks for the the reply and the advice. These are not older files. The Zcam Pro K1 was released last year. Unfortunately, as I stated in my post, transcoding is not something I can do at this point in my workflow.  Stereography is a delicate artform, both left and right eyes have to be encoded exactly the same, to prevent ocular disparities that cause headaches. I need to stay native and use the codec the camera used.

Adobe Premiere CC2017 does not have the VR support this project needs, unfortunately. For this project, I shot stereo 180 images that I want to undistort and reproject as equirectangular, allowing me to move my 180 elements freely around the 360 environment.

Actually, as I am looking closer, Premiere 2019 only supports equirectangular VR footage.

Perhaps Adobe is not the proper package for this project, and I should use something less consumer and more pro. Perhaps Nuke Studio  or a Fusion --> Resolve workflow.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to help me figure this out

best,

jonathan sims

[R Neil Haugen]

You've got a different and very interesting setup there. Please, find the bug/feature link (top of the Overview page) to the newish UserVoice system and post this there. That goes directly to the engineers system and also the upper managers who decide budgets and features and such.

Then post a link back here, I'd be happy to "upvote" it.

Neil

[MPositano]

Not usable any longer???  I understand codecs very well and have been using premiere for seventeen years.  Why does Adobe tell me what I can and cannot use?  If I have been given files of a poor encoding but am still requested to edit with them, why must I re-encode them to use in premiere?  I gain nothing, lose time and waste disk space when manually reencode to use Premiere.   It's not worth my time to use Premiere for these projects.

Removing features and flexibility is going backwards.

[R Neil Haugen]

You don't say which ones you're having trouble with, which of course limits the usefulness of any response. If they are older QuickTimes, for example, Apple has 'deprecated' those and required vendors to do the same.

Neil

[Jim_Simon]

The 3D might be you're trip up.  PP has no issue with normal H.264 QuickTime files.

[threeheadedhotdog]

In terms of codecs, there is nothing inherently different about a stereoscopic video file from a monoscopic one.

a stereoscopic video file in this sense is simply a frame consisting of the left eye image either above or to the left of the right eye image.

In this particular case, the left and right eye files are independent and havent been stitched together yet, so this file is exactly like any other.  So, no, the stereoscopic nature of the photography is not why Premiere cannot open these files.

It unfortunately seems adobe is not supporting this h264 codec, which is strange because it is not legacy. The Zcam K Pro 1 was released last year and is used by a variety of cameras.

Perhaps I should use a less consumer software package like Nuke Studio or a Fusion --> Resolve workflow

[Jim_Simon]

It unfortunately seems adobe is not supporting this h264 codec

They do.

Have you tried a non-3D file yet?