VS X2 "catastrophic failure" error

[HomerB]

Brand new to this board and hoping someone might help. I'm trying to render MTS clips into an AVI video

Project Properties -

NTSC drop frame (29.97 fps)
Microsoft AVI files
24 bits, 720 x 480, 16:9, 29.97 fps
Lower Field First
DV Video Encoder -- type 1
DV Audio -- NTSC, 48.000 kHz, 16 Bit, Stereo.

When the rendering completes, a "Catastrophic Failure" error code comes up. When I try to play the video in VLF, I get the following message

"AVI Index

This AVI file is broken. Seeking will not work correctly."

If I press "don't repair", the file plays, but the indexing bar does not run along the bottom of the player. Obviously something is wrong, but I can't seem to work it out.

The input files are as follows:

Video Type: H.264 video, upper field first
Attributes: 24 bit, 1920x1080, 16:9
Frame rate: 29.970
Data rate: variable, 16,800 kbps max

Audio type: Dolby digital
Attributes: 48000 hertz
Layer: none
Bit Rate: 256 kbps

I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling, with no luck. Anybody have any thoughts where I might look next? Thanks.

[Ken Berry]

Apart from being mystified as to why you would be going from high definition AVCHD to standard def DV, the only thing I can see wrong with those settings is that the original AVCHD is upper field first, whereas DV is always lower field first. And a basic rule of video editing is that you should always maintain the same field order as the original video throughout a project. But in this case you can't since DV is *always* lower field first and cannot be made into upper field first. But normally, mixing up the field orders would only case distortion artifacts in the rendered video, rather than caused the program to crash, and especially not with a catastrophic error message!

Perhaps if you could tell us why you are doing that particular conversion and perhaps someone might be able to come up with an alternative workflow...

[HomerB]

Ken, the video is going onto a DVD that is for standard def TV. I'm working with some folks that produce the DVDs and this is the workflow that has been requested.

After sending up the smoke signal for help, I continued to search the forum for other "catastrophic failure" posts (I had done this earlier but found nothing with AVI Index issues). I did come across a post by Ron about "lost AVI codecs", and that branched into a problem that Ulrich Birch had with X4. His problem was described as not being able to import or edit AVI files that he had previously been able to view/edit.

He corrected the problem by downloading new K-Lite 32 bit and 64 bit codec packs, then using the K-Lite Codec Tweaking Tool to change the AVI setting from a third party codec to "Microsoft (recommended)". I followed his described procedure and viola, the problem was also corrected in my X2 software.

The fix also cleaned up the issues with the AVI files I had already rendered that gave the "AVI Index Error Message". So it looks like that was the problem.

Thanks to the board, Ulrich and you too for help. You can consider my issue resolved and close the thread as needed.

HomerB