Huge problem with the A1s
 

This is the last straw, I've been pulling my hair our ever since my purchase. Alright, I capture the HD video with Premiere Pro CS4. It creates a MPEG file. But using this video file in any program, it will at first create huge green colored digital artifacts and trying to play the video will crash the program. It does this in After Effects, Media Encoder, Premiere and about any other video program I've tried. I have tried to reformat these videos with the media encoder but it always crashes. A big filming\editing job is just around the corner, and there's no way it can be done in this condition.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Probably not the answer your looking for, but... go back to CS3. I got CS4, and after a week of testing it out, I finally uninstalled it and went back to CS3 which is giving me no problems. I think CS4 is great, but has some serious problems that adobe needs to work out.

This isn't an XH A1S problem so much as it is a CS4 problem... therefore, thread moved to World Premiere.

Try capturing with HDVSplit (free program)

Make sure you've downloaded the Canon HDV template add on for Premiere Pro.

(especially if you're using 24F)

By Mpeg, you mean M2T? Or something else?

oddly, i have had similar artifacts show up in Vegas...usually a green horizontal line with a pixelated jaggies nearby. it's extremely frustrating, but for me it may be the tape, as it hasn't happened on any other tape. i generally use the panasonic MQ, but i chanced a JVC ProHD in a pinch...ran a head cleaner before popping in the new tape, but my footage is full of artifacts, both of the green and other varieties.

Is it possible to change the capture setting to ".AVI" or does it have to be M2, I'm about to buy the A1s and upgrade to Premiere CS4, but this makes me nervous. I use PC.

After importing the video in Premiere, I just now noticed an error message that might be helpful. It reads "Error detected in MPEG stream around frame 4004. Inserting 33 red frames." What is a MPEG stream?

Jeremiah, Where can the Canon HDV template be downloaded, and what is it for?

Danny, Premiere will only capture HD in the MPEG format.

I'll do some experimenting today and let you know if I find anything out.

Mitch, the MPEG stream is the file that HDV cameras capture when you shoot. When you get MPEG errors, it's almost always the result of dirty recording and/or playback heads on your cam, so you need to clean the heads. You can do a search on the HX-A1 forum for specific advice on that. You might also have a bad tape (this happens, but much more rarely).

IF the clip on your tape has a dropout, it's gone for good. IF the dropout was made on ingest (capture), you can re-capture the clip on the tape. Dropouts with HDV are much more serious than DV because it always affects multiple frames, due to i-frame compression.

Green artifacts are almost always a sign of MPEG stream problems and seldom a software malfunction.

HTH,
Brian Brown
BrownCow Productions
CS4 & XH-A1

Brian, this camera is brand new, less than two weeks old. These videos were recorded on new high quality tapes. None of the Adobe applications can play these videos without eventually crashing. Premiere doesn't seem to have as much trouble as the others do, at least the footage doesn't always turn green. But here's the strange thing, Windows Media Player has absolutely NO trouble playing them.

Hmm... OK. If your camera and tape are fine, you might have a bad Firewire cable. Maybe it IS a software problem. But know that media players will often just parse the stream on missing data OR the A/V will be out of sync.

Let us know some details about your hardware and software. Also, take a look at your CS4 application version numbers... PPro is 4.0.1 now, as is AE. Media Encoder is up to version 2, and Encore has an update, as well. You can update these individually or via the Adobe Updater in the Help drop down of most apps.

By their own admission, Adobe coded CS4 to run most efficiently on a 64-bit OS like Vista64, XP64, and whatever "flavor" of Mac is 64-bit(sorry, I know nothing about Macs, although they seem pretty cool). I'm reading this and other forums of folks having trouble with CS4 on XP 32-bit OS's.

I've had nothing but smooth-sailing with CS4 and my Vista64, 8GB RAM, and somewhat-aged Q6600 CPU.

HTH,
Brian Brown

Brian, I wonder if something in the signal setup on A1's vcr/play mode is incorrect. Because I just downloaded the HDV Split capturing program, and right after I hit the record button it crashed! Could there be a setting on the A1s that is causing all this?

I do have the latest versions Premiere, AE and the Media Encoder. I'm running Vista Ultimate sp1 32bit. With 4GB of RAM, a 3.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and has a Windows Experience Index base score of 5.7. If it wasn't for the processor it would be 5.9 and I think that's as high as it goes.

As for the media player. It will play just fine until I seek or pause it and press play again. It will then distort the video beyond recognition, but the audio still plays.

Something in capture or in camera is very wrong. If you could give me your default settings in the signal setup and time code menus in vcr/play mode I'd really appreciate it.

My signal setup settings:

In record mode
Signal Standard...HDV
Frame Rate...60i
Comp Out.....1080i/480i

In play mode
Playback STD...Auto
Comp Out...1080i/480i
AV►DV...Off
HD Downconvert...Off
Letterbox...Off

My time code settings

In record mode
Frame Setting...Drop
Count-Up...Rec-Run
Start Value is grayed out

In play mode everything is the same except
HDV/DV IN...Regen

Something kind of strange is that the PLAYBACK STD and HD DOWNCONVERT become grayed out when it is plugged into the computer.

Here's a screen shot of the error in After Effects.

My guess from that screen grab would be hardware: faulty firewire cable, or firewire socket? Or possibly camera circuitry or the tape itself (that last one would be easy to rule ... out by trying another tape).

Also, once you connect to the computer, I believe its normal for those HD>SD conversion options to be grayed out. You dont want them anyway. Good luck!