Power Director 15 not importing video clips

Jimp77

Newbie Location: Guernsey GB Joined: Aug 19, 2016 16:33 Messages: 11 Offline

Solved by

Mar 12, 2018 21:19

I have a Sony Handycam FGR-AXP33
It records to SDXC card according to the small guide in XAVC-S which is supported - or supposed to be - by Power Director (PD), prem Elements and others.

As I read via Google, XAVC-S allows 4k recording in highly compressed form with MPEG-4 AVC/H264 and records in MP4 file.

Google tells me that PD13 is XAVC-S certified for Sony video devices.

I can load the clips without problem into Power DVD 15 & 17 and play them.

I am new to Power Director but supposed that when I open a new project, set to 16:9 aspect and then select import media folder and navigate to the right folder the clips will be imported.

However, having tried most options in case I have missed something simple, I find that PD15 has only imported the .JPG still images into the media library but not the video clips. I have selected ''media files'' and ''video'' at different attempts.

PD15 reads through the file as if importing - even stops a couple of times (out of about 100) on specific clips and gives an error message for that clip which I have OK'd and it continues until the whole file (50GB) has been read. Then simply states that it has failed because my Version does not support the Features I am using.

Any suggestions as to what I might not have set correctly or whether this is a known problem with the camera & software combination - or what I could try would be welcomed.

Thank you Jimp77

Hatti

Contributor Location: Bonn, Germany Joined: Feb 21, 2017 15:54 Messages: 576 Offline

Mar 13, 2018 00:42

Hello.

I have a Sony Camcorder FDR-AX33 and I don't have had any problems with PowerDirector 15 and now PowerDirector 16.
But I must admit, I never imported a 50GB file.
Be sure to copy the clip to a windows folder first. The best way for that purpose is the usage of a fast SD-card reader. Do not import the clip from the SD-card directly. Never import the clip from the connected camcorder. Be sure to have enough empty space on Drive C:, because of temporary files.
For 4K handling, make use of "shadow files". If you do so, you can better edit, but PowerDirector has to recode your clip to the shadow file. That can a loooong time for a 50GB clip. The recoding process starts right after the import.
4K video editing needs a good computer. A 10 y/o Laptop with Windows Vista will not do the job.

As far as I know, the camcorder is completely compatibe to PowerDirector 15 and 16.

Hatti Win 10 64, i7-4790k, 32GB Ram, 256 GB SSD, SATA 2TB, SATA 4TB, NVidia GTX1080 8GB, LG 34" 4K Wide, AOC 24" 1080

ynotfish

Senior Contributor Location: N.S.W. Australia Joined: May 08, 2009 02:06 Messages: 9977 Offline

Mar 13, 2018 01:38

Hi Jimp77 -

Your PDR15 wouldn't be a trial version, would it??? If so that would explain it.

As Hatti says, there are no compatibility issues with the full version.

Cheers - Tony
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Jimp77

Newbie Location: Guernsey GB Joined: Aug 19, 2016 16:33 Messages: 11 Offline

Mar 13, 2018 20:54

Thanks Hatti
Every statement helpful

It was a hundred or so clips. I perservered with the benefit of your advice.
Main conclusion was that my previous attempts -assuming the software use should be intuitive i.e. not reading any instructions - had allowed me to get more familiar with the system but had also involved me creating / loading files of some size.
After a good disk clean up and amending a couple of the preferences (Edit--Preferences-- shadow files --etc) all worked as expected.

I will start to look into the editing options in the next days Jimp77

Jimp77

Newbie Location: Guernsey GB Joined: Aug 19, 2016 16:33 Messages: 11 Offline

Mar 13, 2018 21:01

Quote Hi Jimp77 -
Your PDR15 wouldn't be a trial version, would it??? If so that would explain it.

Hi Tony and thanks for the suggestion.

No. It is a full version. Perhaps just my ''playing'' on the assumption that it should all be intuitive but missing a couple of points on the way including the need to free up disk. Seems OK now - as per my reply to Hatti.

System error messages could be more useful IMHO. I will use the tutorials more ! Jimp77