ARGH I dunno WTF is goin on!! [MPEG Decoding Issue]

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Wed Sep 01, 2004 8:13 am

Something has gone completely screwey somewhere in the bowels of the beast I call my PC. I'm sitting there watching my rather extensive AMV collection when I notice, all of a sudden, there is a rather annoying pixellation applied to the whole of the image. Now, I double-clicked the file to start it playing again - its perfectly smooth and normal. I think to myself "Hmm, rather odd." AMV finishes, next file in the queue starts up. Same problem. By now I'm getting a little frustrated.

So I test something. I click a file, start it playing smoothly and flawlessly, and drag the thingy to the end of the playing bar, so that its in the last few seconds of video. As soon as the next video queues, what do I see but more goddam pixellation.

So I uninstall ffdshow, XviD and re-install both them and WMP9.

To no fucking avail. This is a problem that has just cropped up out of the blue, pretty much. Although I didnt notice it before I installed doom 3 and my new video card drivers... that could have something to do with it...

Anyway, does ANYONE at all have a clue as to what may be going on in the thing that my computer laughingly calls a brain? Coz I'd really like to know how to fucking fix it. I thought it applied to only MPEG1 files at first, then it was only affecting MPEG4/AVI streams, and now its poisoned both.

PLEASE HELP, I'm at wits END!! ;_;

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Wed Sep 01, 2004 8:52 am

Ok I've narrowed it down to something within WMP9 itself, because the video plays fine in both WinAmp 5 and VLC player. I dont know why, but for some reason WMP is deciding to ignore what Dshow is telling it and do it its own way. Not surprising really.

So any ideas as to what it could be?

Jnzk · Post by **Jnzk** » Wed Sep 01, 2004 8:54 am

I have noticed exactly the same problem since I was forced to install WMP9 with SP2.

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Wed Sep 01, 2004 9:19 am

Janzki wrote:I have noticed exactly the same problem since I was forced to install WMP9 with SP2.

I dont have SP2, lol... And like i said, I've had WMP9 for ages with no hassles.

sysKin · Post by **sysKin** » Wed Sep 01, 2004 9:49 am

WMP9 is known to open next video in its playlist (or just the same video again) a couple of seconds before the previous video ends. It's absolutely unclear why it's doing it, but this causes quite a lot of problems.

The biggest problem is with overlays - which is exactly what you're seeing. The second video opens new overlay, which is likely to be rgb32 and/or break existing overlay.

XviD had quite a lot of problems with that, too.

If you can't fix it by reinstalling directX/video drivers, I recommend to drop this lame player. Oh wait, I also recommend to drop this player if you can fix it. But that's just me.

Radek

PS. I think you can disable auto-repeat, it will make player not re-open the same video (since it won't be played again). But if you've got a playlist this won't help.

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Wed Sep 01, 2004 9:57 am

sysKin wrote:WMP9 is known to open next video in its playlist (or just the same video again) a couple of seconds before the previous video ends. It's absolutely unclear why it's doing it, but this causes quite a lot of problems.

The biggest problem is with overlays - which is exactly what you're seeing. The second video opens new overlay, which is likely to be rgb32 and/or break existing overlay.

XviD had quite a lot of problems with that, too.

If you can't fix it by reinstalling directX/video drivers, I recommend to drop this lame player. Oh wait, I also recommend to drop this player if you can fix it. But that's just me.

Radek

PS. I think you can disable auto-repeat, it will make player not re-open the same video (since it won't be played again). But if you've got a playlist this won't help.

Hmm, ok that clarifies things a little. Yeh, I do run off a playlist, and I have it all set up with all my vids in WMP9, so even though its a shitbox player (i do know this, lol) I dont really want to drop it if I can help it.

But would you have any idea why it just all of a sudden did this out of the blue?

sysKin · Post by **sysKin** » Thu Sep 02, 2004 2:48 am

SS5_Majin_Bebi wrote: But would you have any idea why it just all of a sudden did this out of the blue?

Have you done any changes to video drivers or directx? It's related.

The next thing I'd do is discover what filters are being used during plyaback. Any chance there is ffdshow (as "raw video") or subtitle mixer running? If yes, try to disable them. If no, try to enable ffdshow and see what colourspaces it's using. YUY2 is the best (safe and fast) colourspace, YV12 is faster but causes some problems. All RGB cause heaps of problems and are also slow.

Also, is there a particular decoder that causes or doesn't cause the problems? You wrote about MPEG, maybe you'll use ffdshow (the newest) to decode mpeg (1? 2? both) instead of microsoft's filter. It's also got postprocessing so it's even better.

Ah, last thing that comes to my mind - can you switch your desktop to 16 or 32 bits per pixel. It's amazing how overlays randomly depend on this value.

Good luck,
Radek

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Thu Sep 02, 2004 3:32 am

I'll give you all I know about what my system is doin in terms of decoding video, dude (btw, thanks for the help)

My desktop is set to 32bpp.

I use ffdshow to do all of my mpeg4 decoding (DivX, for some reason, tried to take on all the responsibility, so I uninstalled it. It was sticking logos on all my video, even though it wasnt the trial version.)

Dont have any sub mixers running that I know of.

And it just seems to be any kind of video that utilises an MPEG stream, be it 1, 2 or 4 (in the case of AVI) so that yields little helpful information.

I recently installed Doom3, and I'm pretty sure it updated my DirectX version, even though I already had 9.0b, so...

I also updated my video card drivers a few weeks back, but that didnt cause a change in anything.

And the newest ffdshow is a little... uhm... lets just say its really slow for some reason.

Once again, thanks for the help. I know its hard considering you dont know my systems exact config, lol. I appreciate it though.

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Thu Sep 02, 2004 3:56 am

ok this is seriously fucked up. It randomly pixellates shit, uninstalling and reinstalling ffvfw, ffdshow and XviD makes not even a blind bit of difference, changing the colourspace settings does even less.

Anything above a 2002 release of ffdshow causes WMP9 to crash.

Why the fuck is this happening? its total fucking bullshit.

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Thu Sep 02, 2004 4:00 am

Oh fuck this, I give up. I'm just gona wait till I get a DVD burner, back up my entire collection, fucking format my entire computer, both hard drives, lose ALL my fucking video and shit, and start from scratch.