Need help with an AE CS3 problem

[Stephen Knapp]

I'm not sure what I am doing wrong, but thought someone here might be able to suggest something. Not sure if this thread belongs here or with the Cineform stuff.

For my last round of captures from HDV footage I had shot some footage as either 1080i 60P or 720p 30P, and captured it in PPro CS3, which put them out as mpeg (1440x1080 interlaced, anamorphic and 1280x720 progressive, square pixel repectively). I then used Cineform's HD link to convert them all into 1080i avi files. These run fine in PPro and Windows Media Player. However, when I import these into AE CS3 I get a greyscale image with vertical stripes as the thumbnail, and various solid color masses when viewed at other screen sizes from the timeline. If I import the original mpegs, the thumbnail shows the screen you get for file incompatibility, but the timeline viewer shows a clean image.

Any idea what is happening? The specs near the thumbnail for an avi say "separate, upper" which suggests to me it is only showing me the upper half of an interlaced image. I don't know why.

What do I have to set in AE or specify in the avi conversion in HD-Link to get a clean 1080i image in AE in this workflow?

--Stephen