Pinnacle Studio 14 AVI won't play Options

[wdtviscool]

Just bought WDTV Live and Pinnacle Studio 14. Using Windows 7 (64-bit), I hooked up my Sony HD video camera and capture using Pinnacle Studio 14. It generated an AVI file. Copied the AVI to a WD portable drive WD 640GB Elements and tried to play using WDTV Live. It says unsupported format.

I prefer not to do any conversion to any other types due to lost of quality. The converted file MPEG4 and WMV plays fine and quality is lost during conversion. I was hoping WDTV Live would play the AVI video as is but doesn't seem to work.

Any ideas what I can do to get WDTV to play this file?

What type of AVI is supported and what is not? Manual does not specify.

WDTV teckie please help. Thank you.

[WDUser]

What type of AVI is supported and what is not? Manual does not specify.

Yes it does, read it again carefully. Pages 34 and 162 to be precise. If your camera doesn't produce compatible AVIs, re-encoding is the only way out.

[wdtviscool]

So it's the camera not Pinnacle Studio?

[WDUser]

Well I'm not too sure what Pinnacle Studio's job is here exactly. Does it accept RAW images from the camera and on the fly encode them as AVI? Or does the camera output AVI by itself and Pinnacle Studio just controls it or something? In any case, obviously whatever's actually creating the incompatible AVIs is at fault. If it's Pinnacle Studio, you might be able to set it so that it uses compatible audio/video codecs while encoding. If it's your camera though, you're most probably out of luck and will have to re-encode.

[wdtviscool]

Video:
Frame width: 720
Frame height: 480
Data rate: 29302 kbps
Total bitrate: 30326 kbps
Frame rate: 29 frames/second

Audio:
Bit rate: 1024 kbps
Channels: 2 (stereo)
Audio sample rate: 32 kHz

What are video data rate/bit rate that WDTV supports? What is maximum? Above is information about my file. Do you think WDTV could not display due to data rate exceeding maximum supported?

Thanks for your time.

[WDUser]

A MediaInfo report about the file is much more helpful, though I personally am not a video encoding expert by any means, so hope others can chime in as well. Do copy-paste a MediaInfo report though and we'll see...

Also, I do not personally own a Live so for the exact specs re. bitrates supported etc., my knowledge is pretty much limited to what's in the manual, which you can read as well. Maybe you can try comparing MediaInfo reports of AVIs that do play vs. those that don't, to see what could possibly be tripping up the Live.

[myty]

So for jumping in on this thread but I'm having this same problem with almost identical setup: Sony DV camera, WD LIVE, Pinnacle Studio. I too wish the LIVE played the DV files that are captured but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. I've also tried reencoding in different formats but look pretty dodgy when played back. Any advice on what format/settings to encode to would be great.

Here is the info of the original captured file:

General
Complete name : E:\Video\to do\25-12-08 Christmas Day.avi
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
Format profile : OpenDML
File size : 6.33 GiB
Duration : 29mn 57s
Overall bit rate : 30.2 Mbps

Video
Format : Digital Video
Codec ID : dvsd
Codec ID/Hint : Sony
Duration : 29mn 57s
Bit rate : 28.7 Mbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4/3
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Standard : PAL
Resolution : 24 bits
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : Interlaced
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 2.767
Stream size : 6.00 GiB (95%)

Audio
Format : PCM
Format settings, Endianness : Little
Format settings, Sign : Unsigned
Codec ID : 1
Codec ID/Hint : Microsoft
Duration : 29mn 57s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Resolution : 16 bits
Stream size : 329 MiB (5%)
Interleave, duration : 1000 ms (25.00 video frames)
Interleave, preload duration : 1000 ms

thanks

[WDUser]

Codec ID : dvsd
Codec ID/Hint : Sony

Looks to be some proprietary Sony crap. Why can't they stick to commonly-used codecs? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/angry.gif)

In any case, it's pretty obvious the Live won't play this. Re-encoding is the only way out. What did you use to convert? Arcsoft? Try Super and see if the result is any better. Any re-encoding will lead to quality loss, but you can minimise this by judicious use of settings (before you ask about the exact settings, I recommend you check out a dedicated video encoding forum).

[mojave_rab]

I don't think it's Sony, I had the same problem using MicoSoft's Windows Movie Maker. I took a few video clips that all played on the WD Live and compiled them together with Windows Movie Maker. The file that it wrote out was and AVI file with the DVSD codec. Which would not play on the WD Live. I also have a JVC video camera using firewire and Windows Movie Maker to import a home movie. Again it creates the AVI with the DVSD codec. I couldn't find any options to save as a different format. If MicroSoft is using it by default I'm afraid it's here to stay. Is it difficult for Western Digital to add this codec? MicroSoft is a fairly common operating and system and I'm sure a lot of people could use this codec.