768x576 square pixel footage not appearing on premiere
 

I have imported an avi file with 768x576, 25 frame rate and pixel aspect ratio 1.0 into my premiere DV PAL 25fps 720x576 settings. I cannot get anything to appear on the timeline or the source monitor - all I have is a black screen. I have tried to conform the avi to the project settings but it doesn't seem to make any difference. Does anyone have any ideas please?

Is this a new installation of Premier? Has it worked before?

To check the footage, try to play it back in another player to see if the footage is good. Beyond that, I'm stumped. I have never heard of this problem before.

The footage is on a CD and plays well with Windows Media player. It is actually medical footage thast was recorded using equipment specific to radiology - I am trying to extract the footage and transform it to and mpeg file for insertion into training material using power point. I am using Premiere CS3 which has been fine for all other use.

Curiouser and curiouser. Do you know what codec is used in the clip? If it's even remotely exotic, Premier might have issues with it.

You might try transcoding the clip into an uncompressed avi using Virtualdub and see if that works better. Beyond that, I'm at a loss on this one.

No, I'm not sure of the codec as I did not generate the avi. I'll have a look at Virtualdub (I assume that is something I download?) I'll have a look at that tomorrow morning. Thanks for your thoughts on this query.

Virtualdub is freeware and easily Googled. Install it and see if it opens your file OK. If it does, you can resave using a different codec that Premiere likes better: basically you select /Video/Compression and chose a codec, then "Save as" to create the new file.

(If your clip is short, simply save as "uncompressed" and import that back into Premiere ... uncompressed does generate large files however.)

Thank you so much Tripp and Graham. Tried this out with the Virtualdub software and I now have vision in Premiere. Great site and great solutions. Many thanks!!!