After Effects "no such avi compressor" problem

[Marthax]

Hi all!

I've captured all my video from my cam using premiere, but I wanted to work with them in AE and so I exported them as Uncompressed AVI's. When I try importing them in AE, I constantly get the "no such avi compressor" error message. I've had this problem dozen of times before, but I never really solved it.
I tried exporting the video from Premiere using the Quicktime container, which worked fine. Is this a better way or will this reduce my video quality? Judging by this single file it's hard to tell if the quality is worse compared to AVI. I want the method to be as easy as possible as I have a lot of files to import. I'd prefer not to sacrifice quality either.

I tried importing the file into AE by selecting "all files" and switch the format to "Quicktime Movie" and it works partially. It imports the audio, but the video is all white.

Thanks in advance!

Marthax

[communist]

Hi all!

I've captured all my video from my cam using premiere, but I wanted to work with them in AE and so I exported them as Uncompressed AVI's.
Why do you export as uncompressed avi? There is no gain in quality in that. Just export the dv clips as dv avis and import them that way. Or do you mean dv compressed with "Uncompressed AVI's"?

[Marthax]

no, I mean "Uncompressed Microsoft AVI".

Ok, so you're saying that there's no difference between "Microsoft DV Avi" and ""Uncompressed Microsoft AVI" in terms of quality?

[communist]

No there isnt if you're source is a DV camcorder. The captured files in Premiere are already compressed (with the Camcorders DV codec), exporting them to uncompressed avi doesnt improve quality at all - just increases filesize.
Just open the captured clips in After Effects. Or export as DV compressed with "Always recompress" turned off from Premiere if you need to work on edited footage.

[Marthax]

Oh, didn't know that. Thanks.

One thing though. When working inside AE, I the interlacing is really obvious, but I goes away if I use ".... fields first". Question, do I use upper of lower fields first becuase it doesn't seem matter which one I pick.

[communist]

DV is always BFF (Bottom FF) = Lower Field First. Wrong field order will result in jerky output when rendered. When you render out interlaced make sure you set the required field order aswell.

[Marthax]

DV is always BFF (Bottom FF) = Lower Field First. Why is that?

Oh, and what does "...... Fields First" mean technically speaking? I can't seem to find that in the interlacing explanations?

[foxyshadis]

That's just the way they defined it, it's a rather arbitrary decision. It defines the order fields are recorded and displayed (which affects deinterlacing):
TFF -> odd1,even1,odd2,even2
BFF -> even1,odd1,even2,odd2

[Wilbert]

Oh, and what does "Bottom Field First" mean technically speaking? I can't seem to find that in the interlacing explanations?
It means that the bottom field is shown first upon (interlaced) display.