Bill,

      Thanks for the info on CODEC.  I know the one long file I am re-editing is a MINI-DV based file transfered from a firewire on an older Toshiba laptop and the camera is a SONY HC-36.  Since there is only two NTSC settings for MINI DV files, if I use one of them and get the green bar then all should be good and I wont need to find the CODEC for this one correct?  Also with my GoPro since the HIGH DEFF footage comes straight off the Camera from the HDSC card I could just call the manufacturer and ask them what the correct File extension is and try it in Elements to make sure I get the green bar?  Only if I continue to get RED above the timeline would I need to pursue the CODEC settings and possibly google them and purchase them to get them to work correctly in Elements?

Here is the screen shot of the Mini DV footage.

That particular file is a full length video file I had made last year using files that came from a firewire.  I wanna say it was arcsoft showbiz that I had on my laptop and I used a firewire through that program to upload from my Mini DV.  I then added all the clips and rendered the output file shown above using showbiz to save for future use.  It is not fresh off the firewire.  I did just try to open a new project with this footage using DV Standard and DV Widescreen both had the red line.

Ok I have all the original un-edited video clips saved on my hard drive I will try to put a few of those in a fresh DV project and see if that works.

If I had the original tapes I would just do it all over again, however I do not have the tapes so I need to figure something out with these files to make them work.

The only thing I can think of is when my laptop crashed I had all the files recovered and they put the files on cd's.  Could that have done something to put them out of context?

Well I will put those videos on the back burner for now.  How about this from my GoPro?

nealeh,

           I used both the Standard and Widescreen DV setting for the Mini Dv files not the hard disk setting.  Both of those settings had no color lines until I added effects.  I did not try to render once I added the effects but now I realize it was my mistake and I will try it again.  Either way you say no colors initially is good so that pretty much solves that problem.  This is new software I just can't believe all these issues. 

I have been editing some of my DV footage and it seems to be working just fine now.  It is a little annoying since every time I put in a new effect or title over the video clip it goes from green to red until rendered.  Is there a way to have it render automatically whenever you add something?  Another thing I noticed is some of the clips remain with no color line above them, while others will have green and go back forth from red to green like I mentioned until rendered.  Is this all part of how Adobe works?  I want to be sure I am getting the full quality and performace out this system.

By the way thanks for all the input you guys threw at me on this I have a much better understanding of how this program works now and I feel confident I am achieiving everything I can off my new system.