Ultimate X4 Problems

[Chips]

Two to be exact. Firstly, X4 is having troubles recognising MP4 files. It says that the format isn't supported when I drag some clips over it. Strange that it seems to accept some MP4s and not others. I've tested them on my old Roxio and that accepts all my MP4 files.

Secondly, when putting AVI clips onto disk it's not recording the sound, even on clips that used to record A-Okay on my old unreliable X2! Can anyone tell me what's up and how to fix these problems? Codecs maybe?

[bobp]

Is this a new installation of x4? If not, has it ever worked correctly?

[Ken Berry]

VS X4 is of course now rather old in software terms, and was developed before some (many?) types of mp4 were even thought of. So it could indeed be a codec issue. Where exactly did your video come from? If it's a smart phone camera video, then it may be using a variable frame rate, rather than a fixed one like 25 fps (PAL) or 29.97 (NTSC) which those older versions of VS had never heard of!

As for the AVIs, since you can at least insert those in VS, can you please right click on one of them in the VS timeline and copy ALL its Properties here (or take a screen grab of the Properties box and upload it here as an attachment). I ask since there are over 800 widely different video formats which use the AVI extension...

[Chips]

Is this a new installation of x4? If not, has it ever worked correctly?

Yes, it's a new install. I wondered why I never kept using it and reverted back to my old unstable X2. This must be the reason!

[Chips]

VS X4 is of course now rather old in software terms, and was developed before some (many?) types of mp4 were even thought of. So it could indeed be a codec issue. Where exactly did your video come from? If it's a smart phone camera video, then it may be using a variable frame rate, rather than a fixed one like 25 fps (PAL) or 29.97 (NTSC) which those older versions of VS had never heard of!

As for the AVIs, since you can at least insert those in VS, can you please right click on one of them in the VS timeline and copy ALL its Properties here (or take a screen grab of the Properties box and upload it here as an attachment). I ask since there are over 800 widely different video formats which use the AVI extension...

These days I don't buy my movies on DVD in shops. Instead I buy them off the Net and put them on blank DVDs to watch. These days most of the downloads are in MP4 format, whereas a few years back they were mostly in AVI format. The AVIs I collected recorded perfectly before, but now I want to put them on newer disks (all Maxell disks) using X4 instead of X2, X4 is refusing to record the sound. Like I said, X2, although unstable, is okay with recording AVI files, and Roxio accepts everything, but X4 seems to not like recording sound on the AVIs for some reason. The MP4s that weren't being accepted I tried to convert into AVIs via a tried and tested program called MediaCoder, but again I found X4 didn't record the sound!

How can region and fps do anything to the sound? The picture records okay. I don't have access to my other computer at this time, but I'll try to get the details you want.

[bobp]

I see three courses of action here:

Try a few different media converters. Not all are created equal. Or...

Update your copy of VS. Or...

Hook up your computer to your TV and watch directly. Obviously a laptop is better for this.