Sony Vegas and Kodak Zi8 – fixing the audio issues of the MOV files

Boy, oh boy, do I really like the Kodak Zi8 camera…

- the best thing is the external audio input that I can use
with the AudioTechnica ATR 3350 lavalier mike to get better
recordings

HOWEVER….

The Kodak Zi8 video file output is MOV files (a proprietary Apple format),
and the MOV files don’t work well in Sony Vegas.

After a full week of knocking myself out trying to do workarounds, doing
research on the web to see what others came up with (none really fixed
the issue, they just almost did so I had to continually tweak things at
every stage of the process), here’s what I finally found that really works:

1 – Make sure you have the latest firmware update for your Kodak Zi8:

Click here to download and install the Kodak Zi8 firmware

2 – Make sure you get the update for the QuickTime DLL file for Sony Vegas:

Find this file on your computer “qt7plug.dll” and rename it “qt7plug.old”
Then download the updated file and save it to the same folder that you
found your original “qt7plug.dll” – click here

3 – Download and install the 7.6.2 version of QuickTime for PC (the newer
versions have some kind of conflict in them: http://www.brothersoft.com/quicktime-43141.html

4 – Convert the Kodak Zi8 MOV files to AVI or WMV (or a format that works well for you in Vegas)

5 – Load into Vegas, edit and render in AVI or WMV

6 – Transcode that output to FLV (if that’s what you want when putting on web)

Now, you may say… “Well, that looks simple enough, so what’s the matter
with you Mark.”

The problem is: all the free video convertors I tried (4 of the top ones recommended)
did not do a good job of transcoding from the Kodak Zi8 MOV files, therefore things just did not
work well inside of Vegas (synch of video to audio, choppy video, etc), and the
resulting rendered files and finally conversions to web format (FLV) didn’t do well
either.

So here’s what I found that fixed it all for me, and maybe this few bucks you spend
today will save you a lot of time and frustration that I had to pay, before finding
this and gladly paying them the bucks for a great software solution.

In this software, I set the video conversion settings to “the very best” to get the
best quality in going from MOV to AVI, then also after I render to WMV from Vegas
and then from WMV to FLV in the convertor (you, of course, may wish to use other
file formats – this software does it all, very well).

Here’s the link to the PC version: Fix Sony Vegas and Kodak Zi8 MOV audio problem

Here’s the link to the PC trial version (it’s a direct download link to and exe file):
Fix Sony Vegas and Kodak Zi8 MOV audio problem – free trial

Here’s the link to get the MAC version (no demo available):
Fix Sony Vegas and Kodak Zi8 MOV audio problem – MAC version

I got the Ultimate version (it’s around $55), and darn well worth it.

One other thing, those are my affiliate links so I will make some bucks when
you buy it – but don’t worry, you won’t pay more by purchasing through my
links, and you will have saved yourself gobs of frustration and I will have
been rewarded for my service to you, you can thank me later.

By the way, here’s a direct link to a lot of the search engine results pages
I found on the topic if you want to take a week to find out that what
I just told you is correct: search link

And here’s link to the some of the best free video converters I’ve used,
they work great in most instances, but the one I gave you the link
to above is the best I’ve ever used:

Media Coder and Prism

Now you can enjoy working with Sony Vegas and Kodak Zi8 – it’s a great combo!

Your comments are welcome below.

As always, my best to you –

Mark Hendricks

http://hunteridge.com/blog

Sony Vegas and Kodak Zi8 – fixing the audio issues of the MOV files

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