7D raw video and Premiere Pro
 

I have a friend that shot some video with his Canon 7D in "raw" format, and he sent it to me to see if I could run it through Premiere Pro to convert it to something that he could use in iMovie. Premiere Pro CS5 won't read the file, nor will Quicktime to even view it. As you probably already know, they're currently in MOV format, which PP CS5 can read, but perhaps the codec is unique or the files need to be processed through Canon's own software. I'm need some advice from a 7D expert. Any help would be appreciated.

Steve

Did he try Quicktime pro... ???

Many use Cineform to convert the GOP format to AVI.. it works great.

are you able to open, just not play it? Because this is normal. The raw files are painfully CPU intensive.

I'm not familiar with iMovie but have a look at what formats it accepts and what format is suitable to ur friend and convert it to that.

As Ray mentioned Cineform is a great tool codec/tool. You can us it to convert the Canon MOVs into more manageable cineform MOVs (or AVI for Windows) that should play fine in any editing app. You can download the trial version for encoding which last 15 days i believe - the decoding portion is free, so you can play the file on any machine with the free player codec.

Thanks for the information gentlemen. I'm using a PC with a 3.3g quad core, 32gb of RAM, and a 1.5gb Quadro FX 5600 card. I don't usually run into resource issues related to videos, and I don't think it's the case here. When I try to import the file into Premiere Pro on my PC, it simply says that it's an "unsupported format or a damaged file." My friend is working on a Mac Laptop, and he also has CS5 but he's getting the same error. He assumed that perhaps I would have better luck with tons more horsepower than his laptop, but that didn't work either. I'll give the Cineform software a try as long as it's PC compatible. I'll let you know how it works.

Thanks again!

the fact that it can't open it seems like corrupt files...

After further attempts to read the file, I got in touch with my buddy and it appears that the files are corrupt. It's odd because the files in question had a different naming convention than ones that he's be able to read in the past, and ones that he shot subsequently to test it with newer files. He's only just getting started with the 7D so none of this is obvious to him, but I guess it's a learning process.

Here's the two different file names that were at issue:

The names of the files that were NOT able to be read were as follows:
MVI_5044_0476.MOV
MVI_5044_0477.THM
MVI_5045_0478.MOV
MVI_5045_0479.THM
MVI_5046_0480.MOV
MVI_5046_0481.MOV

The files that worked properly were named as follows:

MVI_5047.MOV
MVI_5047.THM
MVI_5048.MOV
MVI_5048.THM
MVI_5049.MOV
MVI_5049.THM

I don't know why the files were named in the above manner, and why one batch would be treated differently than another, but this was the result. One group was readable and the other wasn't. Were just treating these as corrupt files and cutting our losses, but I'm curious if anyone has run into this before.

The THM files are preview pictures for the Finder. You ignore those. The MOV files will import directly onto an HDSLR timeline. If you open your sequence settings, there is a whole folder of timeline presets that will accommodate the 7D files natively and play back with a green bar. You will likely want to find out, or use Quicktime to tell you the shooting parameters for resolution, etc. so you can set those items correctly in your timeline.

There is lots of information here on whether and when to use Cineform or some other intermediate codec.