Re: Sony vegas 8 H264 video decoding problem?

Hey,

I have a similar problem, and feel like I'm close to a solution. I have a Samsung NV24HD camera which records 720p video in the H.264 format with AAC audio, in a .MP4 QuickTime container. From what I've read, different vendors handle encoding this container differently, so it played in Quicktime but nothing else. Then I downloaded a special MPEG-4 codec called 3ivx which allows me to play the video. I can also play the video now in players that support FFDshow. It may have played in FFDshow before the 3ivx installation--I don't know.

However Vegas 7 just gives me blank (well actually green) video, but the audio works. Vegas 8 gives me an error and then crashes when I try to import the file. The crash apparently occurred in "mcmp4plug.dll". I did some more research and found that players usually use DirectShow codecs (FFDshow), while Vegas uses its own VFW codecs. This is why some files can be played but not edited. So no matter what I add or change, Vegas still uses its own H.264 decoder which happens to be incompatible with my H.264 files. Sure enough, I just looked in the Sony/Shared Plug-ins/File Formats/MCMP4 folder and found mcmp4plug.dll, the MP4 codec by MainConcept.

I then tried re-encoding the file using Quicktime Pro, basically as the same type of file (H.264, and let the audio pass-through). It then worked in Vegas. So it appears that MainConcept doesn't like the type of H.264 file my camera produces. I could re-encode every time, but this is not lossless, and it takes much time. I know the video can easily be decoded using other codecs, but don't know how to make Vegas part from its beloved MainConcept codec.

Does anyone know how to force/allow Vegas to use third party MP4 codecs? I would really just be able to utilize the FFDshow or 3ivx codecs which play the file so nicely. Or, at the least, is there a way to change the settings of the Vegas MainConcept codec?

Thanks,
Jonathan