Acid Pro 9 Compatible Video Files

Royce-Lerwick wrote on 12/17/2019, 9:18 PM

I'm SCORING VIDEO so please no hundred responses telling me how to convert video files to .mp3's or whatever. I'm currently experimenting with what might actually load into the video track and play back well enough to score some music in Acid Pro 9. Seems to me back in V7 I had no trouble with various file formats at all, essentially anything Vegas would play Acid would play. So far .mp4 is out of the question. Looks like there's a Windows Video format that will give me 24fps compressed enough for Acid not to puke its guts out and stutter along. I don't know. I'll get back to you. Just wonder what THE format is supposed to be for scoring video.

Comments

sheppo wrote on 12/18/2019, 2:31 AM

Hi @Royce-Lerwick

I'm not sure there is a single correct answer here, or maybe I'm just not experienced enough with video in Acid to know. :) But, I think you're along the right lines with anything Vegas will play.

According to https://www.magix.com/gb/music/acid/acid-pro/specifications/ Acid supports WMV, and AVI file formats, but AVI could be any number of codecs, since it is just a container, and loading them in to applications relies on you having the right direct show codecs installed. So yes, any AVI that works in Vegas should in theory work with Acid.

I tend to find scrubbing around the timeline with more advanced codecs requires more disk and CPU power for decompressing, so for me, on my aging PC I would look at converting video to a codec designed for efficient decoding, something that's not going to lag as you scrub. I have used Picvideo Motion JPEG (https://www.accusoft.com/products/sdks/picvideo/) in the past with Vegas (not Acid) and it's worked really well and is super quick at decoding, so maybe you can check the trial out to see if it works / works well for your composition.

Former user wrote on 12/18/2019, 3:46 PM

Install something like Pinnacle Studio on your machine (Trial Version works). It will install the Cineform CODEC, and then when you uninstall it, the CODEC stays. This will give you a reliable Intermediate CODEC to work with, that won't destroy your CPU when you score to Video in ACID Pro.

Unless the DAW uses hardware to decode compressed formats, stick to Digital Intermediate formats, and just render out low resolution video to use in the DAW (480p/720p).

If you use the trick I stated, you'll also be able to render Cineform out of VEGAS Pro and other software that uses Microsoft Libraries for AVI formats. Software like Resolve, HitFilm, and others do not need this to render Cineform - but you need it to load/play/edit the Videos on Windows machines (via WMP or in software like ACID Pro/Sound Forge Pro/VEGAS Pro).

Royce-Lerwick wrote on 12/25/2019, 9:38 PM

I've got Studio 23 installed and it didn't help Vegas at all, the catch was I shoot at 24fps and the only quick and easy format I found in the Vegas 17 Pro options that allowed me to compress and actually play video in Acid 9 turned out to be .wmv. Several of the .mp4 and other options (meaning I need to compress the file quite a bit from full HD, either refused a 24fps option or when manually changed the files wouldn't play.) For anyone else out there with a similar problem, click on the Windows Media menu, scroll down and you'll find a 24fps standard option that allows a good amount of adjustment for compression, measured out in frame size choices etc. They play very well in Acid 9 and I'm sure if I had the time and interest I could play with some of the other codec options and get a couple more to work at 24fps. (The point being is that all presets in highly compressed formats are not intended for anything else but device and net streaming at 30fps and all the cine compatible options in vegas are relatively huge to very huge files which Acid either doesn't play at all, or coughs and sputters at. But we'll see if my new computer works better tomorrow when I upgrade everything.)

I haven't tried scoring with Acid since I was shooting everything in MiniDV format, which it handled very well indeed.