1st, what version of Quicktime do you have installed?
Quicktime errors http://forums.adobe.com/message/4545437
Quicktime X does NOT work http://forums.adobe.com/thread/888722
2nd, Read Bill Hunt on a file type as WRAPPER http://forums.adobe.com/thread/440037
What is a CODEC... a Primer http://forums.adobe.com/thread/546811
What CODEC is INSIDE that file? http://forums.adobe.com/thread/440037
Report back with the codec details of your file, use the programs below... a screen shot works well to SHOW people what you are doing
Thanks for the links and the push in the right direction. I had QT Pro 7.7.2 installed and updated it to 7.7.3, after which the previews worked in both apps. It was odd that the previews worked in the Organizer and not in PrE, but, hey --
Several of the clips I am working with are broken (I get a codec error). I created a hundred or so clips from several VERY large AVI files, and made errors on these few. I extracted these smaller clips using QTPro (it played nice with both the AVIs and MOV files and that is what I had at the time). I was thinking I would just go back and redo these few that way, but would it make more sense to use PrE directly to convert from AVI to MOV?
Thanks again for your help.
It depends on where these AVIs came from and what codec they're using.
Video captured from a miniDV camcorder, whether it's DV-AVI or DV-MOV, works interchangeably in Premiere Elements.
AVIs from, say, still cameras can be problems though. And converting them with Quicktime Pro would be a good idea.
Just to report back. Reinstalling QTPro fixed the preview problem, and going back to the original AVI (and a few original MOV) files and using PrE to break up into smaller AVI clips solved quality problems as well. Thanks, John and Steve!
It was odd that the previews worked in the Organizer and not in PrE
There is a major difference between playback in the Organizer (or Source Monitor), and playback from the Timeline. In Organizer, one is using a simple video player, to play the file from the system's HDD, where with playback from the Timeline, they are playing back the files, prepared for editing, and those two operations are very, very different. John T. Smith goes into some of those differences in this article: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1066154?tstart=0.
To the user, the differences are not seen - things appear to be the same, but "under the hood," they are very different.
Glad that you found the solution, and are up and editing.