During the Fall of 2017, I spoke with some of you asking about a fix for video engine failures in Pro Tools running on a PC with the new Windows 10 (Creators release). No one knew of any solutions at the time.... I had also combed the internet looking for postings related to the issue; again, to no avail. Our resident AVID Tech in our department at CSUN tried everything suggested on the AVID site; and even our Pro Tools master instructor & textbook author could not solve it.
Video files that used to run under QuickTime no longer worked. Codecs were up to date, QuickTime was up to date. But Pro Tools kept indicating "video engine failure" and inability to recognize codecs -- even though these same exact files used to run flawlessly prior to Windows 10 (Creators upgrade). I tried using different programs to convert older files to DNxHD, which should have fixed things, But even they did not play.
During December 2017, I needed to renew my annual academic Pro Tools subscription, and was speaking with Sweetwater Sound. After completing the transaction, they transferred me to their in-house Avid Tech. Lo and behold, Eric was more than aware of the problem -- and just recently his team at Sweetwater came up with a solution! Apparently. this issue affected a whole lot of end users.
The problem is that the new Windows 10 cut off support for Apple QuickTime (which Pro Tools uses). Regular attempts to reformat video files into Avid DNxHD using QuickTime created files that still were not recognized by Pro Tools.
Sweetwater eventually figured out that a specific conversion program was able to get around the Windows limitations and handshake with QuickTime to produce Pro Tools compatible Avid DNxHD clips.
The trick is to download: MPEG_Streamclip_1.21.b6 which downloads as a zipped folder and to execute that program under Windows 7 Compatibility. (found under properties).
After opening MPEG_Streamclip (as Windows 7 compatible).... open FILE and select your video clip, and then select EXPORT to QuickTime. In the QuickTime dropdown menu, select Avid DNxHD as the desired format (using the default low res video image; some systems may be okay with a higher res video).
These newly created files appear to work perfectly in sessions that previously refused to recognize video clips (including DNxHD). Not sure what the difference is, but for whatever magical reason -- these clips play just fine, and I was able to add/delete/replace video clips in older sessions as well as brand new sessions.
Feel free to pass this along to your editing students who may be struggling with Windows 10. This has not been an issue with Windows 7 or 8 on older machines.
Sweetwater will be posting this workaround to their online Knowledge board in a couple weeks, but until then, just forward this email to students and colleagues. Or speak with Erik in Avid Customer Support at Sweetwater Sound.
Addendum: I just returned from NAMM 2018, where I had an opportunity to discuss this issue with reps from AVID at their booth. In spite of how wide spread the problem was, they were MAC people and not familiar with it, although they were aware of general issues regarding Windows 10 and QuickTime. QuickTime for Windows was deemed as a security risk, so Apple stopped supporting it for Windows. AVID did just release their new version, Pro Tools 2018. As of this posting, PT2018 has only been out a couple of days, so the verdict is not in as to whether the video engine issue has been solved yet or not. Please leave comments with feedback.
