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[thurston]

I have some problems with video playback using MC 12.  The video files typically start playing correctly, but when I fast forward or rewind and hit play, the video freezes at the frame I FF or rewind to and the audio track continues correctly.  When this happens I shut down MC (if possible).  With the program supposedly closed, system response is very sluggish.  There is a 1sec to 3sec delay between the time I move the mouse and the arrow on the screen moves.  If I open task manager, it still shows the MC .exe file as open with 0% CPU usage.  Once I close the .exe file in taskmanager, the system response problem goes away. 

Can anyone offer advice as to why this may be happening?

Here are my system specs:
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+(65W) Windsor 2.4GHz Socket AM2
MB: GIGABYTE GA-M61P-S3 Socket AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 ATX AMD
Video Card: GIGABYTE GV-NX76T256D-RH GeForce 7600GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16
RAM: CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X2048-6400C4
PS: Xion PowerReal XON-600F14T-201 ATX12V V.2.01 600W Power Supply
Monitors: (Dual view) DVI-D to ViewSonic Optiquest Series Q22wb Black 22" Widescreen LCD and S-Video to Sony TV

[thurston]

Can anybody please point me in the right direction?  Do I need to give more information? 

[ThoBar]

Are you accessing the files accross a network or from an external device?
Is it happening to all vids, or just a couple? All the same format...?

I have seen problems similar to this with a number of multimedia apps,  where either the access speed is too slow, the CODEC is bad, or the machine is too slow. I doubt the latter is an issue, given your system specs...

[tombert]

I've got the same troubles with certain DIVX formats - so I think it depends on the rip you got

[thurston]

Thank you very much for the replies. 

The files I'm accessing are on one of two internal harddrives (SATA 3.0).  I've tried opening video files from both harddrives with the same result.

Is there an easy way of determining the format of video files?  I can get the format info by right clicking the file and selecting properties, but is there a way to view the format of all my video files?
As far as know, I have this problem with all my videos.  As an example, one file has the following format:
Audio
Bit Rate: 128kbps
Format: MPEG Layer-3

Video
Frame Rate: 23 frames/sec
Data Rate: 71kbps
Video Sample Size: 12 bit
Video Compression: DivX

tombert- can you be more specific?  Do you know which DivX formatting you have these problems with?  Most (if not all) of my videos are DivX so I hope that is not the problem.

Any ideas as to why the program remains open in the background as seen in task manager after I close it?

I've also just realized that the system slows down the same way when I am in standard view on the video tab.  Not sure if it is just loading thumbnails for the 100 G of video files or not.  Once I close MC 12 it goes back to normal response.

[thurston]

I was playing around with some of my video settings today and discovered that if I disable Direct3D, the videos play (and fast forward, etc) correctly without freezing.  The only problem is now I can't use other applications that require Direct3D, including TheatreView.

What does this mean?  Can the problem be solved another way?

[ThoBar]

Have you tried updating your vid-card drivers?

If this is a new-ish problem, perhaps regressing to a previous version is also worth a go.

Perhaps try getting some .wmv files from somewhere to compare performance - just to be sure (I think there are some hi-def samples on Microsoft's website somewhere).

I'm not sure about this bit -- but have a look at your video overlay settings in your vid cards software, maybe that has somethig to do with it.

Also try changing your renderer in MC for your filetypes.

C.

[thurston]

Have you tried updating your vid-card drivers?

I checked nVidia's site and an update to my card was available.  Downloaded and installed the latest driver, but no change in the problem.

Perhaps try getting some .wmv files from somewhere to compare performance - just to be sure (I think there are some hi-def samples on Microsoft's website somewhere).

Tried a wmv file from microsoft's site and they have the same playback issues.  Good news is it doesn't appear to be a DivX problem.

I'm not sure about this bit -- but have a look at your video overlay settings in your vid cards software, maybe that has somethig to do with it.

My video card doesn't appear to have adjustable video overlay settings

Also try changing your renderer in MC for your filetypes.

I'm not sure how to do this; could you please explain?

Any chance that I could have a faulty or damaged video card?  Is there anything I can do to test it?

Thanks again

[ThoBar]

Tool -> Options -> Playback -> Video -> Directshow playback settings -->

Try (one at a time, then in combinations)...
- Use Windows Media Player engine for video playback when possible
- Use WMV acceleration if available
- Select "avi" then click select filters, Choose a different Video Render (down the bottom)
- Failing any of these working, try choosing different filters - the system chosen filters can sometimes be the wrong ones.

Apart from that, I'm out of ideas...

C.

[tombert]

I tried to check the video codec but the only thing I found was "MPEG Video Decoder" when playing with Windows Media Player. Interestingly there was only sound in Windows Media Player but no picture. When playing with MC it works well till I try to forward - then the picture is (and stays) still forever but the sound continues ...
No Idea how to get more info about the codec of the file?

[Yaobing]

What are the DirectShow filters loaded by MC? You can find this out by right-clicking in the video window while the video is playing, and choose "DirectShow Filters". Perhaps you should install CCCP if you have not already done so.

[leezer3]

Sounds like a classic case of broken AVI files to me.
Analysing the file with G-Spot should tell you if the file has errors, but it won't fix them. There are plenty of AVI repair proggies out there
http://www.headbands.com/gspot/

-Leezer-

[thurston]

I tried using g-spot and it said that the file has the correct codecs installed, so I don't think damaged avi files are the problem.

Using confishy's advice I was able to solve the problem!  Although enabling the "use windows media player" worked, it didn't allow me to ff or rewind, only to skip forward or back several frames.  So I disabled the "use windows media player for engine..." button.

However, By changing the Video Renderer for .avi files (see confishy's instructions in his posting above) from "Video Mixing Renderer 9" to "Video Mixing Renderer 7" it solved the problem.

tombert- give this a try and see if it works for you as well.

Thank you so much for your help.  Hopefully this is  a permanent solution to the problem.

Any ideas as to why video renderer 9 didn't work?

[Yaobing]

Any ideas as to why video renderer 9 didn't work?

I can only offer a guess:

VMR9 is a newer, and supposedly more powerful video renderer than legacy video renderer and VMR7. With its power, it also puts some extra requirements on video decoders. Some decoders may not have been written with VMR9 specification and thus do not work well with VMR9. So sometimes problems like this can also be solved when choosing a different decoder.

[ThoBar]

Glad you got it going!

Interesting to see the point that Yaobing made about compatibility issues. I will have to keep that in mind...

[tombert]

What are the DirectShow filters loaded by MC? You can find this out by right-clicking in the video window while the video is playing, and choose "DirectShow Filters". Perhaps you should install CCCP if you have not already done so.

Absolutely nothing selected - in both lists

[tombert]

I tried using g-spot and it said that the file has the correct codecs installed, so I don't think damaged avi files are the problem.

Using confishy's advice I was able to solve the problem!  Although enabling the "use windows media player" worked, it didn't allow me to ff or rewind, only to skip forward or back several frames.  So I disabled the "use windows media player for engine..." button.

However, By changing the Video Renderer for .avi files (see confishy's instructions in his posting above) from "Video Mixing Renderer 9" to "Video Mixing Renderer 7" it solved the problem.

tombert- give this a try and see if it works for you as well.

Thank you so much for your help.  Hopefully this is  a permanent solution to the problem.

Any ideas as to why video renderer 9 didn't work?

Thx for the tip - but it's worse - it doesnt even start to play

[tombert]

I conclude: I dont want to waste any more time on this issue - when I want to see a film there are only rare reasons why I should ff
so thx to all of you for support ... and forget about it.

tom

[Yaobing]

Absolutely nothing selected - in both lists

That was my point. You may not have selected anything, but the DirectShow must select something in order to play a file. If you did not select anything, DirectShow would automatically select a set of filters. Maybe the filters selected by DirectShow are not the best set, in which case you can try selecting some filters manually.

[tombert]

That was my point. You may not have selected anything, but the DirectShow must select something in order to play a file. If you did not select anything, DirectShow would automatically select a set of filters. Maybe the filters selected by DirectShow are not the best set, in which case you can try selecting some filters manually.

Thx - I tried - but it didn't went better. But finally I found the problem: I'am not an expert in Video Codecs but it seems somehow to wait for a main frame (scene change) to wait till it continuous - and this might take some minutes. During this time the picture is still and only looks like it's hanging - but in fact it does not (the filters didn't make it better).
tom

[glynor]

I'am not an expert in Video Codecs but it seems somehow to wait for a main frame (scene change) to wait till it continuous - and this might take some minutes. During this time the picture is still and only looks like it's hanging - but in fact it does not (the filters didn't make it better).

The "main frame" you're referring to is called a Keyframe.  MPEG codecs (all versions) are temporal compression codecs.  Most videos don't differ much from one frame to the next.  For example, in a video when someone walks from one side of the room to the other, the person moves, but the rest of the room stays pretty much the same.  Temporal compression works by using the similarities in the different frames to "save space" by not repeating the same information for all of the pixels in the video that stay the same from one frame to the next.  So, instead of describing every single pixel in the video for each frame, it only says "show exactly the same thing as the last frame, but change this, this, this, and this.  Every so often, the videos include keyframes, which are essentially "full frames" (they include all of the data regardless of whether it had changed from the previous frame).

When you are creating the video file, you can specify how often you want the software to include these keyframes.  The more keyframes you include, the better "scrubbing" (FF and RW) support you have, but the larger the video file will be (because Keyframes aren't compressed very well at all).

You may want to take some time to educate yourself on how DirectShow works.  There is an extensive guide available here: http://wiki.jrmediacenter.com/index.php/DirectShow_Playback_Guide