Editors

Pr Troubleshooting CC 2015.4 Summer 2016

Before troubleshooting anything, make sure your WIN or MAC is optimized for video editing by following the Resolve 12 Configuration Guide. 

Premiere crashes before opening.
Delete the the file: “Effect Presets and Custom Items.prfpset”, which is stored here:
WIN >C:\Users\<username>\Documents\Adobe\Premiere Pro\9.0\Profile-<username>
MAC>/Users/<username>/Documents/Adobe/Premiere Pro/9.0/Profile-<username>

Video file errors:
“The selected file does not contain video media used by clip references in one or more sequences”
This is a codec not installed or not recognized error. Try opening the file in Quicktime or VLC. If it doesn’t open install the missing codec.
If it opens> Reset Premiere >see step 4 below. Also try trashing Quicktime preferences or un-install/re-install Quicktime.
“The File Has no Audio or Video Streams”
This is another codec error > Quicktime Animation codec is not supported anymore in Premiere 2015
Export ProRes 4444 (Mac only) or Cineform for Mac & PC compatibility.
QuickTime for Windows cannot export H.264 on computers that have more than 16 CPU virtual cores due to a problem in the Apple H.264 compressor component. This means no .MOV from a Windows Machine for ProTools. See Avid-qualified video codecs for Pro Tools 11 and 12

Click here for more Adobe instructions on troubleshooting video files

Adobe Premiere Pro CC has stopped working.
pr-stopped
-After the program disappears
-Restart the CPU if you worked more than 3hr.
-Start Premiere by clicking in Start-menu/Dock, NOT the project you had open.
-When the message comes up that the previous project was recovered> save it with a different name in project location.
-Close the recovered project (it is unstable , DO NOT USE!)
-Open the last saved project, either from the Auto Save location or the project folder. (whichever one was the latest)
-Using Media Browser, import the Sequence you where last working on from the recovered project.
-Save the project as, with a new version number>Never rename project files, instead use File >Save as.
-Put the other projects in an “old” folder.
Take care of your project files especially when they get complicated, contain multi-camera sequences, or a lot of media objects (clips, graphics, audio, other media). Managing versions of project files is a necessary part of your job as a video editor. After all, it represents the sum total of all the hours, days, and weeks spent on the project.

Apply these tips in order to prevent time loss:
1. Premiere doesn’t like to be connected to many files in multiple network locations! Improve performance 1000% by working local. Project, Media Caches and Media. That’s what sound mixers and designers do; work local, move final files over network.
Copy the media from the server to a USB-3 SSD (1TB Crucial=$300)
It takes about 1 hour to copy 1TB from the server, easy to relink back to the server.
As a bonus have an SSD as your Media Cache drive. Then you can move around and not have to re-cache the waveform files.
Pay attention to the drive letters. On our systems the first external drive always comes up as (F:) Because the internal media drive is (D:) The DVD is (E:) The second external drive comes up as (H:). So plug them in, in the right order, you can not change the drive letters because you are not administrator.
2. Restart Pr or reboot machine. Adobe has memory leaking out it’s ears. (On PC restart every hour!)
3. If you just imported a file, or added an effect and crashing starts, try to undo or do it different.
4. Trash preferences, to fix all kinds of buggy behavior, like playback stopping after few seconds, or no audio.
Quit Premiere, then re-start in Dock/Start Menu and:
For the Mac, press Shift+Option
For the PC, press Shift+Alt
Verify reset by noticing >recent projects are gone from the splash screen. You’ll have to redo Preferences, Keyboard settings and other things you customized.
5. Only use one creative cloud app at the same time!
Lots of conflicts, stalls and crashes happen because the apps fight over the same GPU, CPU, RAM, output card, media, metadata, preview files etc.
6. Keep the project size under 50MB, >absolute max=70MB (each warp stabilize adds 1 MB to the project size!)
You may want to work in a separate project, render the result out and bring it back into your main project, to speed up project loading and saving. Reduce size by removing: duplicate sequences, warp stabilizes, tracked objects and direct links, then do a save-as.
7. Disconnect any third party hardware, Mouse, Wacom Tablet, external HD, USB-stick etc.
-Remove plug-ins
Temporarily disable everything that runs in background that isn’t absolutely necessary. For example:
-virus checkers
-instant messengers
-skinning software
-power/temperature monitoring software
-automatic updates
-drive monitors/auto-defragmenters.
8. Check that you have more than 20% of free disk space remaining on every hard drive.
9. Stuttery playback:
render-system-Turn on the Render System Display> Ctrl/CMD+SHIFT+F11wrench
-Turn on the green dropped frame indicator in the program wrench.
-Try turning off GPU acceleration. (in project settings) If that helps, it’s probably a driver issue. If so, try updating drivers.
–Choppy multi cam playback?> Don’t be in multi cam mode! (you can still live switch using keyboard Ctrl/CMD + 1-0 number keys)
-Click the timeline wrench, and deselect composite preview on trim
–Lower the resolution to 1/2 or 1/4 (The playback and pause resolutions are stored per sequence)
-Put Media Cache Database and Media Cache files on a different drive than startup or media drives, ideally on 2 SSDs working as raid 0. (1000MB/s)
-When cutting native 4k or 5k for delivery at 1080> set your sequence to 1080 and make your previews even smaller like 720p.
-In Sequence Settings > Video Previews, change the codec to one that matches your footage
-Make a new sequence and copy/paste the troubled timeline.
-If you get stutters on rendered green sections >update the GPU driver and check all playback related preferences.
–Check speed and file locations all HDs.
When green sections stutter you know for sure that your hard drives or connections to them are too slow.
Open Activity Monitor or task manager >performance tab >resource monitor. Monitor disk or network speed when the system is working well and compare when it stutters.

10. “Error Compiling Movie” when rendering or exporting.
If your renders and exports are not 1/4 real time or better, you are not using an optimized workflow!
ALWAYS export using the “Match Sequence Settings” checkbox and “Use Previews”
NEVER transcode from timeline to some other format like MP4.
From Adobe’s “Error compiling movie” checklist.
With export/render errors try:
A. Switch renderer to “Software Only” in Project settings.
B. Set the rendering optimization preference to ‘Memory.’
C. Remove Mp3, or any other compressed audio from the timeline, transcode to WAV or AIF and replace.
D. Export WAV. 24bit, 48k audio only, then cut that into the sequence as the only audio track without any master track filters or effects applied.
E. Export via AME and turn preview on. Watch the encoding until it fails. That is the spot on the timeline you need to fix. (corrupt FX or transition?)
F. Try exporting sections to see if you can isolate the issue.
G. With large images, turn on: Preferences>General>Default scale to frame size, BEFORE importing.
This will match the sequence size, improving performance. Limit image size to 5000 pix longest side, or Preferences>Memory>Optimize rendering for>Memory (restart Premiere)

Specific errors:
“File not found.” Make sure all input (source) files are linked. (See Relinking offline media for more information.)
“Disk full” Make room on the hard disk that you’re exporting to, or choose a hard disk with adequate space.
“Duplicate file.” Make sure that the name and destination specified for the output file is unique.
“I/O error.” Make sure the hard disk has adequate room and you have permission to write to the specified output location.
“Unable to save file.” Destination file is in use by Premiere” or  “Destination file is in use by Adobe Media Encoder.” An application is using the destination file. For example, the destination file can also be in use as an input file for another operation. If possible, close the program using the file.
“Invalid output drive.” The specified hard disk can’t be written to or found. Choose another output location.
“Out of memory.” To maximize available memory, set the rendering optimization preference to ‘Memory.’
“Unable to create or open output file.” Check that the hard disk has adequate room and you have permission to write to the specified output location. (See Managing the media cache database for more information on freeing up hard disk space by clearing out cached media files.)
“You do not have permission to create or delete the output file.” Choose a destination folder that you have write access to, or change permissions on the destination folder so that Adobe Premiere Pro has write access.
“Codec compression error.” This codec may be unable to support the requested frame size, or there may be a hardware or memory problem.”
Try an unconstrained codec, such as None in an AVI container or ProRes 4444 in a QuickTime container to determine whether the frame size is the issue. (See File formats supported for export for more information.)
“Unknown error.” The specific cause of the error is unknown by Adobe Premiere Pro. The Solutions for unknown errors section can help you identify the problem.
11. Check Preferences>Memory=set to Performance.
Premiere will use up to 16 cores for rendering, but sequences requiring large amounts of memory – like sequences with large stills – will need too much memory and your system will potentially starve on RAM. You can make a struggling system more stable by changing this setting to Memory. Remember to change back to Performance when done.
12. Delete Media Cache Files (by trashing the folder in Explorer/Finder)
13. Clean the Media Cache Database by pressing the Clean button, If that doesn’t work, manually delete the cache files from the media cache folder while Premiere Pro is closed. Then relaunch Pr and allow them to be regenerated.
14. Trash all Preview files (by trashing the folder in Explorer/Finder) and re-render.
15. Update Premiere Pro to the latest version
16. Run the Adobe CC Cleaner Tool to resolve installation issues.
17. Run “NUCLEAR” Scripts from VideoRevealed.com
18. Ensure Adobe preference files are set to read/write
19. Before opening project, Sign out from Creative Cloud, restart Premiere Pro, then sign in
20. Repair permissions.
21. Clean your font cache.
22. Create a new user profile in OSX or WINDOWS with ADMIN privileges and try to run from there.
23.Warp stabilizer in Premiere doesn’t work with interlaced footage > use AE instead.
24. With audio playback problems, make sure the Dolby codecs are installed, by doing an export H264 choosing Dolby as the export format. If they are not loaded they will automatically get loaded.

Premiere in networked environment.
These tips apply only to Premiere standalone systems. Premiere Pro was not designed with a multiple editor workflow in mind. It is meant for one editor, one machine. Building a network based editing system shared by other editors can be a major undertaking. One which requires knowledge of data throughput, data rates, and networking, in general. If any of these things are out of balance, you may experience all kinds of issues. Differentiating Premiere troubleshooting form Network/Drive performance issues is important. For that, I recommend taking Premiere Pro off the network and troubleshoot the system standalone first.
Do not use network drives for Media Cache Database.
If Premiere Pro is trying to use a disk that is no longer accessible, or a directory (folder) that is read-only, it causes strange problems.
Adobe’s FAQ Speeding up rendering & exporting

1. If moving between MAC<>WIN check permissions & file path.
2. Import sequence into new project
3. Match the 7 Scratch Disk and Media Preferences on both systems BEFORE opening project.
4. Right-click on problematic shots that don’t play in the timeline and “Restore Unrendered”
5. Premiere might be unable to access the preview files. Test by setting  a new location for preview files (in scratch disks) and re-render.
6.  As a last resort, trash all preview files and re-render.

Crashes/errors all the time, system never works right:
Build/Configure a balanced system.
When you drive a Porsche 928 with it’s 800+ HP engine in rush hour. The engine is mostly idle. The Porsche is no faster than the Fiat 500 in the next lane, despite the enormous power of the engine.
 
The CPU and memory need to feed the video card with data, in order for the video card to do its magic. If the data feed is no more than a trickle, the video card is mostly idle, waiting for the next trickle of data.
 
A faster CPU and more memory help to increase the trickle to a steady stream of data. That’s just talking about GPU, CPU and RAM, the disk setup has to also be very fast on all volumes with transfer rates in excess of 800 MB/s or 6 Gbps. Multi core CPU (at least 8), Recommended RAM (at least 5 gigs per core), GPU (at least 4GB ram or 1000+cores),
SSD vs HD as system drive gives about a 3x speed bump in overall performance.
Use at least 10G Ethernet to connect to storage.
In my experience the differences between MAC & WIN have disappeared. It all comes down to configuration, settings, hardware, codec and ultimately workflow. Adobe has gone on record via their Adobe Hardware Performance Whitepaper to point out that the performance of their software comes down to specs, not operating system. But for some projects (like when PRORES is involved) you want to be on MAC. PRORES does not work at all on PC!
General Tips:
Work your way through each of your hardware devices and visit the manufacturer’s Web site to download and install the latest drivers.
Video card and audio card drivers are the primary causes of problems, but drivers for other pieces of hardware often cause problems too.
Sometimes it may be better to revert to a previous version of your video or audio driver if the latest version causes problems.
Be aware that New NVIDIA drivers will no longer support older CUDA GPUs
If you have AMD GPUs or you are on a MAC, make sure CUDA is not installed. On a MAC use OpenCL as the renderer.
For certain applications, such as Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve, CUDA drivers are automatically installed, even if you have AMD GPUs. CUDA must be installed in order for that application to launch. If other applications have issues, you may need to install a different version of the CUDA drivers. Currently, if you need to have CUDA software installed on AMD hardware, you can install the 5.5.28 CUDA drivers. In the future, consult support for the manufacturer for the correct CUDA driver version. If CUDA drivers do not need to be installed, please do not install them. It’s best to not have CUDA drivers on non-CUDA hardware unless you absolutely need to, as in the case with Resolve. Stay away from any Quadro card when purchasing GPUs for Adobe software. Quadros are crazily overpriced and only offer minor performance gains when used with software designed specifically for Quadro drivers of which Adobe software isn’t anyway.
NVIDIA Card with Yosemite and Premiere causing graphics failure MAC ONLY

Excellent YouTube video about trouble shooting.
ADOBE’s Troubleshoot system errors and freezes (Windows)
ADOBE’s Troubleshoot system errors and freezes (Mac OS)
Troubleshooting QuickTime errors with After Effects.
Adobe’s “Error compiling movie” checklist.



Most talked about

1. Edits any format without transcoding

Not really true, because it creates “media cache files” to make the unplayable, playable in the background. Sometimes your audio and video play stuttery before lunch but when you come back it plays smooth (because it “rendered” preview files)

Not true with more than 3 cameras. For 12 cam you still have to transcode to either DNx 36-wrapped mxf’s or very low quality MPEG2’s (our COVE or proxy spec.) Relink to the originals for the online.
Also not true in a multi user or Dalet environment, you’ll have to normalize to be compatible with Dalet and media sharing with other users.

2. Warp stabalizer fixes shakey footage

In the past these shots where either deemed unusable, to be replaced or send to a time consuming and expensive Flame or After Effects session. It works in background. You have to learn what it can and can not fix.

The same tracker, used in AE can also be helpful in other ways.

3. Encoding in the background The Adobe suite includes Media Encoder (AME) an app that can take footage or edited timelines and encode for final output or proxy use in realtime in the background. You can create many versions and then work towards a final version as part of your workflow.

Keeping older versions as screeners in a collaborative environment brings out creativity and new posibilities. Gone are the days that the editor sits in a room, not to be disturbed until the cut is deemed watchable and perfected. Why not assemble the script long, then re-cut and re-think, then explore some use of b-roll etc. keeping all those versions for the whole team to watch and use.

Team members can transcribe, screen, create logs and write watching footage & cuts outside the editroom.

Here is a 3.5hr timeline with timecoded footage of one location

This file is a 1GB mp4 that can be uploaded to a transcriber, carried on a memory stick or posted on our internal network for anyone to watch like a proxy. Plays on PC or Mac.
other advantage is you don’t have to use the editroom as a screening/meeting room.

4 Ultra key greenscreen compositing and effects.

The New Year’s Celebration 2015 used to composite Julie Andrews on a background.
Ultra key is considered the best and easiest to use greenscreen tool in the business. Build into Pr.
We will use it for Reel 13 and any other greenscreen application. It opens up a new world of creative use of green & blue screen in our productions.
With a small workaround you can even use it in AE.

5 Direct link between Adobe suite apps
The idea behind it is great (link a Photoshop document or After Effects comp directly in the timeline) In reality when you link more than 4 AE comps and a few PS docs the project becomes too complicated and slows down too much to be usable. Most computers don’t have enough resources to have lots of apps & windows open at the same time. The workaround is simple: Create those documents in their own app, render out and keep replacing the file that you link too on the media drive. Or render in place, a technique that most editors used for many years.

6 Title Tool
Brings back sanity, efficiency, creativity, design.
In Pr you design lower thirds, titles and credit rolls on screen in realtime. Multiple rows, different fonts. The sky is the limit.

7 No more rendering/render in background is here!

A radical change in postproduction thinking.
When I discovered Pr’s realtime capabilities I decided to never render again.
Provided that you have a video card GPU with at least 4GB of Vram.
It gives you freedom of adjustment and rethinking. You never have to lock the GFX and wait.
A cut always flattens in realtime in the background no matter how many effects and layers you have.

Welcome to the new normal: The FCP7 to Premiere shift.

FCP7 was based on Quicktime 32 bit, Premiere is based on the Mercury playback engine 64bit. In the last decade operating systems went to 64bit, ram went from 8 to 128 GB and GPU’s are now accelerating tasks like rendering and encoding. If you don’t watch out when you switch to Premiere, you’ll become a beta tester for big corporations like Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, AVID, HP, Dell, and all the camera manufacturers. In postproduction, there are so many moving parts, so many “improvements” around the corner almost every month, that it’s hard for these poor corporations and their hardware and software engineers to keep up.
So there you are, sitting in a room trying to edit with Quicktime movies that were working fine in the last decade, but instead of working on your edit, you’re Googling glitches, system crashes and audio drop outs. 

Adobe sells the creative cloud suite as if it is one interconnecting piece of software. But if you have Pr and Ae open at the same time you experience lots of conflicts, stalls and crashes because the apps fight over the same GPU, CPU, RAM, output card, media, metadata, media cache data base, preview files etc. Adobe keeps adding on “features”, keeps stacking code on code which creates tons of bugs. So how do you actually get work done?
Simple; don’t use direct linking the way it’s designed. Use it to move metadata between apps, then close the other app, render or export out a file and import that back into Pr. If you have to make a change, simply overwrite with same name on your media drive and it will update on the Pr timeline.
This is how editors worked in the past decade. The Adobe programmers agree:
-With Speedgrade & Premiere it is either-or (using direct link), you share the same project, media and metadata and can only have the Pr project open in one app at the same time.
-When you send a sequence to Audition CC2015, it creates a separate set of WAV files in a folder called “Adobe Audition Interchange”. The picture now links using “dynamic link”.
PS2015-GPU-warning-Photoshop CC2015 programmers where given this language by marketers. Why doesn’t the message say: “The computer is too busy, please close some apps”?
-In Speedgrade and Ae the available VRAM is sometimes reported lower than what you have installed because the software correctly shares the GPU cores with the other open apps.

Today as editors we wear more hats than ever: editing, sound mixing, graphic design, rotoscoping, stabilizing, color correcting, closed captioning, subtitling, encoding for the web, and collaborating with clients and team members inside and outside the edit room in real time.

I finally started to understand that it’s possible to weed through all the marketing bullshit and get back to work. Testing camera’s, camera settings, I/O hardware and software settings is the key to finding a stable workflow.
To get up to speed in Premiere read this book’s 600 pages.
This website functions as a collection of links to pages and PDFs that helped me learn Premiere.

Updating and backing up project files: best practices
How do I speed up rendering, exporting and encoding?

Manually copy keyboard shortcuts between computers

You can copy your customized keyboard shortcuts from one computer to another computer, or to another location on your computer, but not between WIN & MAC.

1. Save keyboard settings As.
2. Locate the keyboard shortcuts file (.kys) that you want to copy to another computer.

Signed into Creative Cloud Sync Settings
Win: Users\[user name]\Documents\Adobe\Premiere Pro\[version]\Profile-CreativeCloud-\Win\
Mac: Users/[user name]/Documents/Adobe/Premiere Pro/[version]/Profile-CreativeCloud-/Mac/

Signed out of Creative Cloud Sync Settings
Win: Users\[user name]\Documents\Adobe\Premiere Pro\[version]\Profile-username\Win\
Mac: Users/[user name]/Documents/Adobe/Premiere Pro/[version]/Profile-username/Mac/
[version] can be 7.0 , 8.0 or 9.0

At WNET signed in as regular user
\\thirteen.org\users\YourName\mydocuments\Adobe\Premiere Pro\9.0\Profile-yourname\Win\keyboard.kys
Or
Click on documents in side panel and search for “kys”

To copy the keyboard shortcuts file to a location on a different computer, copy the .kys file to a removable drive. Then, copy the .kys file from the removable drive to the same folder on the new computer.

Optimizing media in Premiere

Premiere’s “Editing modes” are the same as FCP7’s “Easy setups.” The Sequence Settings show in one window how the application will behave. Understanding them can make the difference between struggling through your days or having a smooth experience. Related to this is the connection speed to your media drives, the performance of those drives and correct media locations.

Go to File>New>SequencePR-sequence-settings
Click Tracks>choose Multichannel.
pr-tracks-multi
Never work in default stereo, because you can’t change output channels from the sequence afterwards.
You also loose your renders when you copy and paste between sequences.
Uncheck “Composite in Linear Color” for better dissolve performance.

PR-yellowIf you can match your mediafile’s settings in part 1 & 2 of the sequence settings, you’ll have no yellow render line on your timeline. (save as preset for later)
Adobe calls this: “use the media file as the preview file.”

 

multi14-2
Like in FCP7, a sequence can change “Editing Mode” the first time you drag footage into it when empty and like FCP7 it doesn’t always recognize the incoming clip correct.  So when do you choose change or keep?
Nine times out of ten, start with File>New>Sequence, choose an editing mode, make it multi-channel or re-use an old sequence. “Change sequence settings” is unreliable!
WNET-p2setting
–With DVCPRO-HD60i choose Editing Mode: P2 1080i-1080p 60Hz DVCPROHD
–With C100, MTS, AVCHD, DSLR H264 files and MP4 clips, choose either:
P2 1080i-1080p 60Hz DVCPROHD .MOV
or
AVC-Intra 50 1080i .MXF
With these formats you edit with yellow real-time line, then render and get the green line, for screening without stutters.
-Avoid losing your render files by clicking AWAY from your rendered sequence, BEFORE closing Premiere!
Premiere immediately checks to see if the render files are available. If it doesn’t “see” them in those first milliseconds, they are ignored and you get a red bar.
–NEVER use “I-Frame Only MPEG” in part 2 of the sequence settings.
–On a MAC always work in QuickTime ProRes.

For final exports, export straight out of Premiere. Export matching sequence settings, using previews.
Remove all disabled clips from the timeline before export! Premiere has a bug that exponentially inflates export times with even one disabled audio clip on the TL!
Export speed should be 1/4 realtime or better. Don’t use Queue because when you send a timeline with hundreds of edits with adjustment layers and filters. Dynamic linking has to pass all that information from Premiere to AME in the background applied to the footage in order to render all the frames correct. It causes glitches and is too slow.
The correct way of using AME is letting it crank out screeners from flattened files in the background while you work. H264 from flattened file should take 1/2 realtime. 

NOTES: In Premiere on WIN> PRORES Quicktime can’t be used at all, because it is a Mac-only format. (Apple will not license it to Adobe)
With DSLR’s try to shoot with KiPro or Samurai to avoid transcoding altogether.

This is the list of preferred I-Frame codecs that play without generating cache files:
DVCPRO-HD in MXF wrapper (the file structure on P2 cards)
DVCPRO-HD in Quicktime wrapper
PRORES  (Mac only)
AVID DNxHD & DNxHR MXF (Adobe licensed for both Mac & PC)
AVID DNxHD & DNxHR in Quicktime wrapper
AVC-intra MXF (Mac & PC)
C300 & C500 MXF files
AVI (windows only)
Any other file will generate Cache files on import for both Video & Audio

Resources
FAQ: How do I speed up rendering, exporting, or encoding?
Test disk speed WIN MAC
All about Pr Media Cache Files

7 Scratch Disk settings for a shared Premiere project:
File> Project Settings
pr-scratch-disk
Edit > Preferences > Media
Both should be local, preferably on a 3rd drive. Unfortunately that means that in a shared project setup the Cache files will get regenerated when you open the project in another room. Check the “Write XMP ID” box for a better database experience.
pr-pref-media

Sample Level Audio Editing Mode in Premiere CC

By following these steps you create a “sample level edit mode” in Premiere CC.
You only want to be in this mode for precise audio edits. In this mode a 25th or 30th of a second is huge, it is like putting a microscope on the audio, the picture usually doesn’t even move!

1. Go into keyboard shortcuts >search for “time unit” and give all the “show audio time unit displays” the same shortcut (I did F10)

prem-aud-sam

2. Focus the timeline panel and click your new shortcut.
3. Right click the timecode display and make sure it’s on samples.
prem-show samples
4. Now you can toggle with your new shortcut between sample & frame editing using all the normal controls.
in/out, zoom, rubber banding, keyframes etc. It works on both Source and Program side because you made all panels switch with your new shortcut.
Space will still playback, but that’s about the only navigation key still working normal.

Dealing with odd files like: .mpg, .mp4, Powerpoint, Animated GIF’s, Flash .swf .flv .fla

My secret weapon: The VLC player and screen recording software like Screenflow or Camtasia to make files into a Quicktime movie.
Flash
Read this to learn what an .swf file is.
When you receive .swf flies to use in an edit, ask the developer for the .fla files. Or better ask them to export a Quicktime in dimensions and frame rate of your edit to avoid alignment errors. Flash is vector based so in most situations it can be resized without getting pixelated. This is especially important when something was created for the web and now has to be sized up for broadcast.
The .fla file is the editable project file that was used to create the .swf file, it also holds the audio. When you re-import a .swf into Flash the audio does not get imported.
2 steps to pull audio and video from a .swf
1. VLC and screen recording software to record the audio.
2. Flash app (download free trial) to export the animation. Change the stage-color to black (or ignore stage and make Alpha) and use the Quicktime settings to match the dimensions and frame rate of your timeline.
.flv are flash video files that most software can import. MPEG Streamclip and VLC also open it.