Photo Mechanic on OS X10.6.8 unable to render H264 .avi

[NickML]

I've recently been using Photo Mechanic to ingest, rename and preview videos shot on a Bushnell trail camera, which initially worked well, with a workflow that used QuickTime Player 10.0 to launch the actual files.

The newer Bushnell trail cameras  produce H264-MPEG4 files in an .avi wrapper. While I can ingest these files and rename as normal, the thumbnails show as "Unable to render" - presumably because Apple's Quicktime can't open the files either. However, I can change the launch application to an app such as VLC which can show the files.

Is there anyway to render previews of H264 .avi files from within PM ? (I'm on the latest version of PM, build 15277, Mac 10.6.8 )

~Nick

[Kevin M. Cox]

I wonder if your only option will be to remux the files to a different container. These links might help:

http://geekdrivel.squarespace.com/blog/2011/9/19/convert-avi-to-mp4-file-without-transcoding-using-ffmpeg.html

http://code.google.com/p/dot-mp4/

[Kirk Baker]

Nick,

Is there anyway to render previews of H264 .avi files from within PM ? (I'm on the latest version of PM, build 15277, Mac 10.6.8 )

No.  Apple will have to add support for those files and then PM will gain that capability as well.

-Kirk