[aymonroche]

I use my K-r primarily for stills but I do sometimes like to film with it.
recently the avi files have been corrupting when i try to play or edit them on my mac

Does anyone know if this is a common problem? I did a quick search on the forums and nothing came up...
I didnt lose anything too important so i havent bothered trying to recover them but how can i stop this from happening

thanks in advance.

[Ari]

Try swapping out your memory card before anything else. I had issues with multiple cards of the same brand.

[Adam]

You may not have the correct codec on your computer, as every manufacturer basically produces different avi files. The only program I've seen that can open and edit pentax avi's without fail is premiere pro, though I'm sure there are other alternatives out there. I also think that the codec itself is available for download somewhere, but I can't remember exactly where.

[aymonroche]

oh yeah i forgot to add that i tried different cards because i thought that was the problem, however they were all sandisk cards..

adam - i have edited in the past both on premiere cs6 and fcp7 but only the other day they started corrupting.

[JimJohnson]

Factoid: AVI is not a video format per se. Rather AVI is a container for a variety of video file formats. A codec is a software library that tells a video application how to encode or decode a file to store or recreate video and audio.

Case in point, a friend recently emailed a video to me that came from a local TV station. Somehow the file extension disappeared. I slapped on .avi and the file played fine. I later learned that the file was in .mp4 format. I switched the file extension and the video again played fine. When I used .avi, my player first read the header information in the file and determined it needed a mp4 codec. When I changed the file extension, my video player assumed the file was in mp4 format and just loaded the proper codec. The advance instructions (mp4 rather than avi) probably saved me a millisecond or so of load time.

If anybody knows which video format Pentax is using (mp4, but that is only a guess), you could rename your video file. That way your video player/editor will make no mistake about which codec to use.

[exwintech]

Jim - The K-R Manual - Page 334, says its video format is Motion JPEG (MJPEG), in the AVI container.

MJPEG is easily edited video, and converts readily to std MPEG4, Xvid4, MPEG2, or H264/AVC (Advanced Video Codec) - which is the native video format of the K30.

Those who don't at present have an efficient Video converter, can use Avidemux, free for Windows, Linux or Mac. Converting MJPEG to MPEG4 or Xvid4 is a fairly low-medium CPU loading. MPEG2 is a little more, and H264 encoding quite heavy work.

The 'native' file extension for H264 is *.mp4, though the Pentax K30 uses Apple's proprietary MOV container, like most current camera makers. Perhaps they use that container for DRM - Digital Rights Management - legal reasons, in some countries, but I don't know that.

Regards, Dave.