INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Center 11 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: boadle on July 31, 2006, 08:03:15 am
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Since I upgraded to MC 11, I've noticed a lot of my video files (Mainly AVI) aren't recognised. I get a message tell me the codec is updating, but then it fails. These files have worked with previous incarnations on MC.
Any ideas?
Thanks, in advance,
Lewis
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I am having the same problem--avi's play just fine in Windows Media Player will not play in MC. I get the "downloading codec.....error downloading codec" problem. Please advise
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Same problem here. Anyone have an answer? AVI play fine with Quicktime, but not with WMP or MC.
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Having a similiar problem (maybe)... MC11 plays the audio of all my AVI's just fine, but wont play the video. If I convert them to mpeg2, they play just fine. I am NOT getting any errors or warnings, however. Any ideas or suggestions?
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Is there no answer forthcoming from MC?
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i just went to using TVersity instead. No problems.
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AVI is just a video container format, and the data within can be of a wide variety of different types. MC depends on the operating system (DirectShow) to decode and play the files back, so you need to have filters installed that can handle the specific type of compression and encoding inside the AVI file.
Telling us it's an AVI file doesn't help really, it's like asking for help with a specific type of car by describing it as beige. We need to know what kind of AVI file it is. The program G-Spot can analyze your file and report all kinds of details about it, including what codec it is compressed with. If you still want help, download and install (you just unzip it somewhere) G-Spot from here (http://www.headbands.com/gspot/) and open one of the troublesome files with it and post what you find.
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I understand and can appreciate the decoding options available under the AVI umbrella, and if there were just a few choices, it wouldnt be a big issue. But honestly I don't have time or patience to spend hours, days or weeks going thru 30 different decoders trying to figure out the "sweet spot" for streaming the files thru MC. I downloaded and looked at the G-spot program, but it appeared to be so complicated I quickly gave up. Fact is, I hit "play" in Tversity, and they play. Every time. No problems, no issues. No decoder selection needed. What that indicates to me is that, given sufficient program development, the best decoder CAN be automatically selected (if given the option to do so), leaving the manual selection option for those who feel much more comfortable in dealing with such things. Why mess with something if I don't need to? Keeping in mind that AVI files inherently don't have the greatest video quality on earth to begin with, I really doubt if MC's various decoder options would appreciably improve the playback quality anyway.
MC's UPnP plugin for streaming audio is first rate, thoroughly excellent. However, the video streaming function needs a lot more development to be competitive, especially in the UI. There are much better choices available, with far fewer headaches.
This is still a BETA program, so this is just my 2 cents worth regarding this issue. I hope some further development can make it work a lot better.
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Keeping in mind that AVI files inherently don't have the greatest video quality on earth to begin with, I really doubt if MC's various decoder options would appreciably improve the playback quality anyway.
This isn't true at all.
AVI is a container format (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Video_Interleave), not a compression type. The fact that a file is in AVI format has no bearing on its video quality at all. AVI files can contain both DV encoded video (far higher quality than DVD's MPEG-2) or uncompressed 4:4:4 video (about as high quality as it gets) among other formats. AVI's limitations have little to do with video quality, but features that the container supports (stream types and B-Frames for example). While the limitations of the container have some bearing on how small you can make a high-quality file, they really have no effect on how high or low quality the video content is if size (or streamability) is not the primary consideration.
TVersity simply appears to have FFMPEG's libavcodec built in, which is why it handles MPEG-4 ASP content (DivX, XviD, 3ivx, etc). Some other players do that as well (VLC and Zoomplayer for example), but the problem with that is that if you happen to have a media format that is not handled well by FFMPEG's libavcodec then you have no option but to use another player. It also requires you to learn a different interface for each player you might want to use. The DirectShow approach is more flexible and easier to learn with a variety of players (because FFDSHOW works the same no matter which player app is calling it).
Also, I wasn't asking you to do anything with G-Spot. Only to open up one of the files that wouldn't play with it and tell me what it says (specifically in the Video Codec section). Not sure why that is so complicated! I can certainly understand your frustration with the wide variety of different codecs available. I would say though, if you have something that TVersity can play, but MC or WiMP or MPC can't, then installing FFDSHOW (which is the general-purpose filter that provides libavcodec) would likely solve the problem. That's why I asked for you to open the file with G-Spot, so I could find out what compression format was causing you trouble and tell you what filter you need. I'm 99.98% sure it's probably FFDSHOW, but I figured I'd check before recommending it.
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Thats all good and well. But, in the end, I use the program that works for me. Not the opposite.