Using codec huffyuv in premiere elements

Question

I have a 22GB film I would like to edit and burn to Blu-ray Elements 13.  It is encoded in HuffyUV, a lossless codec.  Elements would not open it.  So I downloaded ffdshow, an encoder that will open it.  But Elements still would not open it. 
Any suggestions?

Answer 1

I'm just wondering why you would want a VHS on Blu-Ray?  Unless the file was upscaled to High-Definition resolution at capture time, I would not recommend Blu-Ray; I would recommend going to DVD, and then using an upscaling DVD/Blu-Ray player, which, for most of the time, does an even better job at upscaling than a lot of the upscaling techniques out there.
Also I don't use Huffyuv (and with Digitalfaqs.com, I disagree with a lot of what the owner says in the forum, especially when it comes to capture, as I have tried capturing using 4:2:0 sources such as set top DVD recorders and the cheap USB MPEG-2 or 4 capture devices that DigitalFAQS Staff prefers to use, since I've found I always got an oversaturated image when playing the video back over anything but a yellow composite cable.  This is even when I have adjusted the setup controls of the various devices.  Even when I'm shooting and editing HD footage, I hate the 4:2:0 Color of AVCHD as I find it lowers the quality of the image, not to mention at about 4GB per hour in H.264-MP4; in black and whit it's fine but not in color) as I've tested it and have not found it to give me the picture quality that I'm looking for.  And at 22GB, unless it's a short video, for a 1 hour time length it sounds like it's already heavily compressed; and going to H.264 is just going to compress an already compressed image even further, and give you poor quality footage.  Also the official version of Huffyuv has not been updated since 2002.
Unless I really need to for editing into a project where I need 4:2:2 from VHS, I capture VHS (using a S-VHS deck) as a 25GB/hour DV file through an ADVC-300, and between my Time Base Correctors/ProcAMPS and the ADVC-300's own controls (that I access through the ADVC's included software), I get a very high quality transfer and an output, that even when I play the DVD in an upressing DVD player, the Colors are not over saturated, nor are they bleeding into other colors.  (Of course VHS transfers are always going to look soft when compared to other video tape formats such as Hi8.). I even transfer the DVD's of productions that I've volunteered on for my local community television station, to my hard drive as DV's to use in my resume reels, and I transfer them through the ADVC-300 via a yellow composite out from a DVD player.  (I use a set top DVD recorder, the Sony RDR-GX380, to record the broadcasts from analog cable, and even if I was going from digital cable the recorder does not record in component video, unless you are going in through the firewire port, and even there you would need to convert to DV for the recorder to recognize the video---the manual even says that the recorder will not capture video from Sony's MicroMV MPEG-2 through the firewire---it only has composite inputs through the RF connector and a couple of yellow RCA's.  And the 2D color separator is the worst, so even when I check to make sure that the recorder has recorded the desired broadcast via HDMI, it is a horrible mess, with the ADVC-300 it has a superior 3D separator that gives me the Colors and look that I'm looking for).
I even have college tapes from years ago that, while I still have the original VHS and S-VHS masters, I transferred to miniDV tape using the old JVC S-VHS/MiniDV decks that the college had, and then a few years later, using a s-vhs recorder and Samsung DVD recorder, and I still use the Mini DV versions, as I was just looking at the DVD's the other day, and everyone looks like they have a fever, when compared to the originals or the MiniDV's.
But, yeah, unless the files were upscaled during at the capturing point, there is no point in going to Blu-Ray (and on Blu-Ray, if you stay in the SD domain it is encoded in MPEG-2, just like DVD), as you'll just be doing a software upscale which is never as good as a hardware upscale.   But you might want to try converting your Huffyuv footage to DV as that will work with Elements.
sorry I keep adding to this, but pnoyes, I just saw your thing about the time.  An hour and 3 minutes?  Good grief DVD will give you good quality video (if captured and burned correctly) at up to a 2 hour 10 minute maximum.  I burn 2 hour DVD's all the time for people and as long as you don't go beyond the 2 hour 10 minute mark, your video will still look it's best, even when it's in a DVD player being upscaled to 1080p.  Sorry, but DigitalFAQ's was giving you a lot of misinformation.