Migrated project between computers and some files appear offline no matter what i do
 

Hi. I have a Vegas project which I edited on my laptop. All media files were stored on a external hard drive.
Now I have migrated the project to my desktop. I simply copied the .veg file and hooked up the external drive. when firing up the .veg file I relocated the offline files by pointing to the external drive. It recognized all the offline files and my project came up on the timeline. Yet, some files still remain offline!

The project consists of material shot from two cameras - one is an HD dslr and the other is a cheap webcam. It is the material of the webcam that appears offline in the timeline and can't be previewed within Vegas - even though I have clearly imported these files and they appear in the Project Media window.

I can play the original files with no problems using VLC player or Windows media player, but they are not recognized by Vegas (although they DID work on my laptop with Vegas). Both laptop and desktop run Windows XP.

Does anyone have any idea what might be the problem and how to fix this?

thanks

Sounds like a codec issue to me. You don't have a "Video for Windows" version of the codec installed on the desktop and, apparently, you do on the laptop. So you need to locate what codec is required and install that on the desktop. Please DO NOT install a "codec pack", though!

Thanks Ed for the reply. Can you please tell me how I might go about locating the missing codec?
(btw, i have k-lite codec pack installed on both, also installed cineform and lagarith)

The first step is to figure out the codec used. If you don't know what that is, you'll have to use some program to tell you that. A common one is gSpot. Do a search here and you'll see the process discussed.

Thanks! I downloaded G-spot and got the codec information of one of the problematic files. I also found how to list the codecs installed on each system.

Here is the list of video codecs installed on my laptop
http://i53.tinypic.com/ws6wwl.jpg


Here are the codecs on my desktop
http://i52.tinypic.com/wkqph0.jpg


And here is what G-Spot says about one of the files which is not working with Vegas on my desktop
http://i55.tinypic.com/nx04gj.jpg


What do you think...?
I see two codecs which appear on the laptop and are not installed on my desktop:
iccvid.dll
msvidc32.dll

Be advised that the k-lite codec pack (along with other codec packages) has a known history of messing up computers (as far as Vegas is concerned) in that it can overwrite a working codec with it's own untrusted and unreliable one :(
The recommendation is to only install a codec when needed and then only from a trusted source, preferably the equipment manufacturer.

Thanks Mike. Noted.
Do you think that k-lite codec pack could be causing this? Should I try to remove it? Or could this be an issue caused by something else that I haven't tried yet?

I'd just like to point out that I have worked on several Vegas projects on this exact desktop computer and with k-lite installed with no such problems - for the past 18 months or so. I don't mean to say that I don't think k-lite is causing this, I just want it to be clear that this isn't the first time I've ever tried to work with Vegas on this computer with the current setup.

What do you think I should do to try and solve my problem?

THX!

Adi, I guess the fact that both computers have worked OK so far says that the codec pack hasn't messed up your system.
In the first post, you mentioned a cheap webcam.
If this is an external one, it probably came with an install disk so I'd install the software on your desktop computer and keep your fingers crossed that it works in Vegas after you do this.
Remember to re-boot after you do this.

Hey Mike. Yes, the webcam is external. It did come with a cd with some kind of video capturing software on it, but it also works without installing it.
This is the order of events as they happened some months ago when the webcam footage was shot.

1. The webcam is supposed to be able to work without having to first install a driver. So that's what I did. I connected the webcam to my laptop (without installing the software) and it DID work, no problems.

2. Then I saw that it was written on the package that the software on the included CD supposedly enhances the video quality. I had my doubts, but I said 'why not' and gave it a try. The camera is some generic Chinese brand so before installing the software I made sure to first make a restore point on my pc. After installing the software I could not see any significant change in the video quality (i think that what it did was maybe add some kind of blur which made the pixels look somewhat less blocky, but I'm not sure). What DID noticeably change was that after recording video with the cam and saving the files, the software would freeze causing my whole system to freeze. So I would need to restart my computer.

3. Figuring I'd be better off without this "enhancing" software, I uninstalled it and used Windows system restore to go back to the point before installing it.

4. Then I continued to record the video with the webcam, no problems.

With the desktop - I did not install the software that came with the camera at any stage. Could this be the cause? I noticed the laptop has a codec called msvidc32.dll installed which doesn't appear in the list of codecs on my desktop. Could this have something to do with it?

Thanks


after instaas I remember (this happened some months ago) after installing the softwa

the software is not necessary for using the webcam. I never installed it on either computer. I just plugged in the camera to the usb jack and it worked.

Adi, that would be my guess.
Create a restore point, install the software, re-boot and see if this cures your problem.
At this point, you have nothing to lose except a few minutes of your time.

msvidc32.dll comes with Windows, so I do not see how it could be missing. I also doubt that any video file you have uses it.

In Windows Vista and 7, to see the installed codecs you have to go around big circles. First you have to load the Windows Media Player. Then go to its help menu (which may be hidden, in that case press the Alt key to unhide it). Then select About Windows Media Player. Then click on Technical Support Information. That will create a list of your codecs (and some other things) as an HTML file in a temporary directory and open the file in your browser.

Almost as if Microsoft did not want you to know what codecs you have...

Just a thought, rather than jumPing through hoops trying to solve the problem, why not just work around it.
You said you can open the files in other programs on your PC, just convert them to Lagarith with another encoding software then import them into Vegas. The process is lossless and should be quicker than trying to troubleshoot an otherwise fully functional system.

Hi all. Thanks for the replies. I'm kind of stuck. I can't find that CD that came with the webcam. The software on it caused crashes when recording with it, and the camera worked fine without it. So I guess I didn't think I'd need the cd. I doubt I threw it away, but I'm not sure where its at now.

Adam, thanks for your reply but I'm on XP.
Gerald, the software I can open the files with is VLC media player. It is a media player, not a video editing program. Is it possible to render with VLC player? Or maybe you know a different software I could try to do what you suggest?

thanks :)

Here is the information I have MediaInfo on a sample "problematic" file:
Video
Format : YUV
Codec ID : YUY2
Codec ID/Info : YUV 4:2:2 as for UYVY but with different component ordering within the u_int32 macropixel
Duration : 2mn 1s
Bit rate : 73.7 Mbps
Width : 640 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate : 30.000 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:2
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 8.002
Stream size : 1.04 GiB (100%)

I am able to play the file perfectly with VLC Media Player. Windows Media Player and also with Media Player Classic. But in Vegas the file shows up as offline on the timeline.

My last resort will be to migrate back to my laptop and convert all the files which is kind of a pain since my laptop is not with me at the moment and it will take time. If it is a codec problem, I'd much rather find the file that I should install which will fix it. If I have the codec info of the file and the list of codecs installed on my system, is it possible to somehow figure out which codec I am missing?

I appreciate you help. thx!

update: I have successfully loaded one of these webcam files into VirtualDub. I don't have much experience with using VirtualDub but what I did is selected File > Save as AVI...
This resulted in a new .avi file which SUCCESSFULLY loaded into Vegas and appears as online! Yay! The only downside to this is that the .avi files created by VirtualDub are about three times as large as the originals. So this is not an ideal work-around, but it will be the one I'll fall back on if no better suggestion comes up. If anyone thinks they might have a simple solution to my problem, please let me know. I'd be very happy to get this sorted out. Thx!

Adi, Virtualdub seems like a pretty good solution to me.
Maybe render them out to Lagarith or Motion Jpeg if the file size is a problem.
Once you work out Virtualdub it becomes a very useful tool.
good luck.

Thanks Gerald. I'll do that.