No doubt this is something silly. I am a complete novice to Adobe Premiere 6.5.

I am creating a new project. Clips coming in are Xvid encoded .avis, rez of 1152x864. My project settings are just a modified Video For Windows:

Compressor: Xvid MPEG-4
Frame Size: 800 x 600
Frame Rate: 30

Rendering Options
Field Settings: No Fields

The avis play correctly in the clip window, but when I drag them to the timeline and attempt to preview, all I get is a black screen in the Monitor window. Rendering the work area results in the same. It plays fine in the mini window part of the Project Window.

I'm sure there is just a setting I have not ticked correctly...any ideas?

I notice that when I drag the Xvid clip to the timeline, it creates a yellow bar in the Video 1 channel, instead of a green bar that, say, an mpeg that I import would create, and that mpeg plays back fine in the monitor window.

Sorry...Premiere hates xvid to work with. Lesson learned.