Problem with Prospect HD/HDLink & MTS files

[Jack Falbey]

My old CS4 workflow was to take the MTS files from my GH2 (shot in 24H) & Canon Vixias (shot in PF24) and use Prospect HD/HDlink to convert them all to Cineform AVI (removing pulldown from the Canons so all files would be 23.976), color-correct in First Light, then edit in CS4. I love the convenience and quality of working with Cineform AVIs.

Well, I've upgraded to CS6, had my first shoot yesterday, and HDLink will only convert 134.5K of the videos before stopping with the error message "Got EC_ERRORABORT notification -0x80040228". It does this with both the Panasonic and Canon files, every single time. I can't get HDLink to work with any of my MTS files, new or old. Just as a test, I went back to some old CS4 projects that were shot with the same cameras & the same camera settings That I had successfully transcoded with HDLink in the past, and they too are exhibiting the same "Got EC_ERRORABORT notification -0x80040228". I checked some old DV/AVI files and HDLink converts them with no problems. The PC hardware is still the same: the only thing that has changed is that I'm now using Windows 7 64 Pro instead of Vista 64 Ultimate, and CS6 instead of CS4, but since HDLink operates outside of Adobe, that shouldn't have anything to do with it. Is Prospect HD incompatible with Windows 7? FWIW, here are the PC Specs:

Core2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, stock clocked
8GB DDR2 RAM
640GB C: drive
1.2TB RAID0 Media drive
250GB Cache & Scratch Disks
640GB target drive for transcodes
1GB Radeon HD4870
Windows 7 64-bit

Again, Prospect HD v4.0.5 & HDLink used to work with these MTS files from these cameras under Vista on the very same PC, but now it doesn't work under Windows 7. Any suggestions or advice, please? I've got a 90-minute 3-cam musical to cut and deliver, and one of the key components of my workflow isn't working!

I also tried using Adobe Media Encoder CS6 to transcode to Cineform AVI, and it did work, but it took 90 minutes for a 10-minute clip and the resulting Cineform AVI still wasn't editable in First Light.

[Jack Falbey]

Update: I tried the 15-day trial download of NeoScene v5.6.2 and had the same "Got EC_ERRORABORT notification -0x80040228" error message with these MTS clips...

And GoPro Cineform Studio Free doesn't even recognize MTS files...

Another Update: Just tried GoPro Cineform Studio Premium and got THE SAME error "Got EC_ERRORABORT notification -0x80040228"!

What is up? Does my system just not like Cineform, or has Cineform gone crappy since the GoPro acquisition??? ANY suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated!

[Ian Lewis]

This might not solve your problem, but I had a very similar one recently when moving to Windows 8 - Cineform wouldn't recognise my Canon xf300 .mxf files, which had all been fine before. The problem was the same in HDLink and in the GoPro interface.

Remembering faintly something I'd read here in the past, I installed the ac3filter from AC3Filter and the problem went away. I had certainly done that previously on my Windows 7 machine, but it was so long ago I'd forgotten.

[Jack Falbey]

Ian, you're a lifesaver! That was it! I installed the AC3filter package and everything's working fine just like it used to. I don't recall having to do that on Vista, but it solved the problem for me on 7. Maybe it's a codec licensing issue with Microsoft, or something?

Thanks again!

Interestingly enough, I have the K-Lite Codec Mega packs installed, both 32 and 64 bit, so I would have thought the AC3filters would have been part of that, but apparently not.