Help needed! Dealing with "Hard Disk Camera Movie" files...

[alexniedra]

Hey everybody...


I know this is irrelevent to digital photography, but noticing that many are very technically knowledgable on this forum, I'm looking for help.


I'm trying to cut and edit video clips shot by my friend at school. The footage was all shot on the school's Canon ([]) SD camcorder. I copied all of the clips onto a laptop and I'm viewing the files at home. The problem is, the clips are in "Hard Disk Camera Movie" format. I'm running a PC, and I can play the clips back with Windows Media Player fine. The problems start when I try to edit them in Adobe Premiere Pro - Apparently Premiere Pro doesn't support this file system.


Any ways around this problem?



Any help is really appreciated.

[Daniel Browning]

There are several free programs you can use to convert video into a different format (e.g. VirtualDub, MPEG Streamclip), but it will cause a loss in quality and they can be a little difficult to learn.


What version of Premiere Pro do you have? Have you updated to the latest patch? What camera model is it? How exactly did you transfer the files? Flash card in card reader using explorer? What is the file container (MOV, MP4, AVI?)? What is the codec? (h.264, mpeg-2?)

[alexniedra]

Hey Daniel.. thanks for the response.



I tethered the camera and used the bundled software to save the files onto the computer. They're saved as Mpeg-2 files, which are not accepted by the trial of Premier Pro CS4 that I'm running.



I tried renaming the extensions to .avi, and then dragging the clips into Premiere, but the video became really choppy.


I don't have the time to deal with paying for a conversion program. I need to get this done fast, and I appreciate any advice you have for me...


Thanks Daniel