Editing Vado HD Video With Premiere Elements 7

If like me you have had some frustration trying to get Premiere Elements to work with VADO HD video, without hanging on import, you may find this solution helpful.

When for a recent birthday I was the glad recipient of a new VADO HD pocket video camera, and a new sealed Premiere Elements 7, I was excited to get editing some footage. However I quickly ran into trouble - when importing the VADO footage into Elements it would either hang, or if it did import would apparently have no picture. Worse, because of the way the Elements video library previews video assets from all your projects by default, Elements would fail to start up and hang - purely because some VADO HD footage was in the library.

If Premiere Elements won't start because of a dodgy video file in the library

First, if Elements won't start, or hangs, because you have some incompatible footage in the library the simplest cure is to rename the suspect file, or rename the folder it is in, before you start elements. This will break the link Elements has to the file. Then Elements will start properly and give you a 'file not found' icon where the video thumbnail once was in the library. At this point you can simply click on it in the library and delete it.

Making Premiere Elements read VADO HD video files

In trying to solve this I have tried 2 conversion methods (one using Super, and another using Prism), but either of those means a laborious process of mass conversion, and you end up with duplicate files in different formats, and the converted files are either much larger than the originals, or a lower quality I found.

The best solution was simply to install the K-Lite Codec Pack. The installer checked for conflicting codecs as it went along, giving me the option to remove them automatically (which I did). I used the advanced installer option so I could choose what to install, and selected the "lots of stuff" option so I got pretty much everything - including the all important h.264.

Once installed I ran Premiere Elements, imported a native unconverted VADO HD video file and added it to the timeline with barely a pause in the action.

Forget laborious file conversion - try installing the K-Lite Codec Pack before you do anything else.

Still stuck?

If you still have problems you may find the following helpful:

Batch converting VADO HD
Handbrake Video Transcoder
Converting Video for Premiere

Convert Flash to HTML5 with Adobe Wallaby

.NET magazine reports this month that Adobe has released a "Flash-to-web-standards converter" called Wallaby, that basically takes your FLA file and spits out standards compliant HTML5 with accompanying JavaScript.

I must say I was waiting for Adobe to make a move like this ever since Apple got the mardies and decided to not support the Flash Player on its mobile devices. But I thought it might be a feature of CS6, I didn't expect it to be a free Adobe AIR app that I could download today.

.NET quotes senior product manager at Flash Professional as saying "Wallaby's initial focus is on converting banner ads and simple animations to HTML5, to cater for iOS, but that future development will be driven by consumer requirements..." buy .NET for more info.

So, while not expecting great shakes for some of my more advanced Flash work, I can't wait to see what it can do... I'm going to have a play.

Manipulating Colour in Flash - #1

Following on from my previous post, I have begun to look into how I can use Actionscript to work with colour.

This experiment looks at how we can convert decimal RGB values into hexadecimal using Actionscript.

It's very simple...

The Code

/* First we set the RGB values as decimal integers (whole numbers) from 0-255, as you would see them defined in any graphics program. This example would reproduce white, but you can change the values to be anything you like between 0-255. */

var R = 255;
var G = 255;
var B = 255;

/* Then we convert the RGB decimals to their hexadecimal equivalents. The toString method is the easiest way I have found of doing it (thanks to Colin Moock). This script takes the value of each of the variables and converts the datatype from a numeric value (in this case 255) into a string using '16' as the radix argument of the method. As a result 255 becomes FF, the hexadecimal equivalent. The code below then simply stitches the converted values of the R, G and B variables together to form a 6 digit hex number for the colour. */

trace(R.toString(16)+G.toString(16)+B.toString(16)); //Returns FFFFFF

What I like about this method is its simplicity. It would form the basis of a very simple colour mixer program, since the R, G and B values could easily be set by sliders, or the user keying in decimal values for each of the channels.

Over to you... meanwhile, I play with colour some more.

Flash Projects - #2 - Converting Video to SWF

The video player you created in the last tutorial allows the user to select and control the playback of video files in SWF format (not FLV format).

The reason for this, as I mentioned at the introduction of the last tutorial, was because I wanted to have a video player that worked with the features of Flash MX 2004 standard (which lacks the additional video capability of MX 2004 Professional).

One of the limitations with the standard version of Flash was that it could only encode video to be embedded in the timeline; this would then be exported in SWF format (not FLV).

Note: Freeware applications for converting video to FLV however have become more commonplace, so I have already begun work on a player that uses the netconnect and netstream capabilities of Flash to play FLV videos instead. Look out for this tutorial in a few weeks. Meanwhile...

So how do you encode video to SWF?

You can use Flash to encode video to SWF or some available freeware.

The Flash method

If you have Flash you can do it very easily by choosing File > Import > Import Video.

Flash MX 2004 standard will only encode video to be emdedded into the timeline, Professional and later versions give more options - make sure you select the option that embeds video into the timeline.

Work your way through the wizard and when the video has encoded, make sure the document size (and the video) are the right size for your player (see previous tutorial).

Then export the movie as a SWF and save it with the name you programmed into your player and in the same directory as the player.

All done. However I tend to find that Flash takes an excessively long time over encoding video, and sometimes prefer to use a freeware programe that seems a bit quicker.

The freeware method

One programme that has worked for me without trouble is Free Video to Flash Converter.

It is completely freeware and can convert video into SWF or FLV. You can even export video with its own player interface - and, while this defeats the object for my use of it, since I wanted a custom interface of my own design, some people may find this feature helpful.

The program is pretty self explanatory, all you need to do is remember to export the movie as a SWF and save it with the name you programmed into your player and in the same directory as the player.

And thats it. Again any problems just leave a comment and I will try to help.