Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[CDvd]

Hello,
I have quality problems that happens only with MC. It's been a while since I used MC for video playback because of this and I'm now using media player classic to play my videos!! enough is enough, I'm posting to get help and use again my favorite media player!!

Here are my concerns :

1 - All avi plays with " red ghost lines " when something is moving fast on the screen,
I already posted about that here http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=41201.msg281208#msg281208 (screenshoots included)

2 - All low/medium res video renders poorly : with other programs, videos look like they are up-scaled to the screen resolution, so a 320x200 video seems blurred and has an acceptable quality on the screen. With MC, unfortunately, you can clearly see each pixels, giving the impression of a real 320x200 sreen res setting. (sorry if it's not clear enough, i'll post some screenshots to illustrate when I'll be at home)

I doubt it's an hardware related problem since motherboard, memory & graphic card changed since my last post and the problem is still there.

I'd like to add that :
- windows is a fresh (french) install of vista
- video drivers are up to date (and have always been) : 169.12
- codec pack is different (using k-lite right now and I was using CCCP before)

and... yes, the problem is still there!!

I have no problem with other programs (Media Player Classic, Windows Media Player, VLC and Windows Media Center tested)

Thank you for your help,
David.

 

[JimH]

MC uses DirectShow as do some other players, so if the quality is different, it's the DirectShow filter that's being used.  Try reading about this subject in the Wiki here.  There's a link in the FAQ and in user glynor's signature.  Post again if you can't find it.

[glynor]

For some video types (notably MP4) MC uses Quicktime as the rendering engine instead of DirectShow by default.  Quicktime doesn't use high-quality rendering by default, unless you enable it in the Quicktime Preferences, so it can have substantially lower quality than the regular DirectShow filters.  However, MC can be configured to use DirectShow instead of Quicktime quite easily, and then its quality will match any other DirectShow player on the system (such as ZoomPlayer, WiMP, MPC, etc).

As Jim said... Read the DirectShow Playback Guide.  It sounds like you have some filters installed, but MC is probably not using them for some content.  For others, you might have bad or inappropriate filters handling playback.  With Windows' DirectShow system properly configured, MC will have identical quality to the other similar players.  (Bear in mind that VLC isn't a directshow player and uses it's own built-in filters.  I find it's quality typically sub-par compared to FFDSHOW, though very similar -- it uses the same code-base as FFDSHOW.)

For specific issues, I would need more information on what filters are actually being used for playback.  CCCP or the K-Lite (Standard or Basic -- Full or Ultra are bad) should be fine, but if you had a pile of other filters installed, you might not actually be using those filters in MC.

[CDvd]

Thanks for the help, but.. well... I'm lost

I've played again a lot with filters and found the responsible : the video renderer.

Here are the results of my experimentations. I will refer to the folowing problems :

(1) = ghost lines when objects or people are moving
(2) = poor resolution with low to medium video
(3) = no video (all black) on the 2nd monitor (a tv connected with a VGA cable)

- MC defaults to VMR9 with YUV mixing mode Unchecked, as previously stated, results are (1) & (2)
- VMR9 + YUV mixing mode : (1) & (3)
- VMR 7 : (2) & (3)
- VMR 7 + YUV mixing mode : (3)
- Legacy VR : poor performence and washed out colors
- EVR : flikers around the video when changing view (easier to explain in french : clignotements en dehors de la video : ~1s de video reste affichée et tourne en boucle pendant que la video continue à tourner normalement)

So I don't kown what to do. Will installing a new codec pack like CCCP replace my video renderers? How could I know what video renderer is used by other players?

By the way, is there a problem with the ftp server? I cannot download the latest build and I'm stuck with the .329 build.
(I'm disconnected just after the "USER anonymous" command)

[JimH]

Try installing CCCP.

[Matt]

I see the flickering with my nVidia card on Vista as well.

I read somewhere that it's a driver bug, but let us take another look.

I don't think CCCP is going to help with this one.

[JimH]

Nvidia and Vista are a known problem.

Try a search here and at google to read about problems.

[glynor]

By the way, is there a problem with the ftp server? I cannot download the latest build and I'm stuck with the .329 build.
(I'm disconnected just after the "USER anonymous" command)

The downloads have been working just fine for me.  If they weren't, you'd see LOTS of screaming in the build thread.

The problem with the Video Renderers (which are built-in to Windows -- part of DirectX) is quite likely to be a driver issue, but it is odd that you don't experience the problem in Windows Media Player.  Other players might have Nvidia specific work-arounds built in, but not WiMP.

I would strongly recommend figuring out what is going on with the downloads and getting the newest build of MC (that is a REALLY old build).

It very well could be something specific to MC that is aggravating an issue in the Nvidia drivers.  It's good that Matt said he'd take a look.  It might help if you could post a screenshot of what you're experiencing.

[fitbrit]

Hmm, I was going to start a new thread on a problem I'm having, but this might be a better place to ask; let me know if it's not.

I had an mp4 file that worked fine a couple of weeks ago. I can still play it fine in MPC, but it doesn't play in MC any more. In fact, it won't even import into MC. I saw that I'm using CoreAVC and CoreAAC filters when it's playing MPC. I set up mp4 playback in MC 12 to use the same filters; still no import and no play.
I did update iTunes recently (unsuccessfully the first time) so I wonder if something in Quicktime got broken. However, I did have my directshow filters set up to play mp4 files, but perhaps they're not kicking in? Any help appreciated.

[glynor]

Are you sure it isn't getting imported into the Data Media type (under Documents in the tree)?  Assuming you've checked that...

I've never used CoreAVC, so I can't comment on how well (or not well) they work with MC.  Also CoreAVC (and CoreAAC) are only 1/2 of the filters needed for playback (they decode the audio and video streams but do not "split" the MP4 file).  What Source Filter are you using?

One reason it could work in MPC but not MC is if your Source Filter is missing or broken.  MPC includes it's own built-in MP4 Splitter (it's Gabest's mp4splitter not surprisingly since he also wrote MPC).  MC does not, so you need to use an external Source Filter.  For MP4 you'd want to use either Haali Media Splitter or mp4splitter.  Nero's MP4 splitter (whatever they call it) would probably work too, but I don't know if it works with CoreAVC or not.

Do you know what you have installed or have selected in MC's DirectShow Playback Settings?

[fitbrit]

Thanks for the info. I'm using Haali's splitter. And I did check the data/video thing. At first it showed up as data. I then corrected it, but it wouldn't play. Now it just fails to import at all, even as data. I'll recheck the Haali selection though to be sure. Cheers.

[Matt]

CDvd, build 379 and later should fix the flickering problems with EVR. 

The closest thing to a Microsoft response on this I could find was that it's "by design" that EVR renders junk where it shouldn't after a position change.  That doesn't make any sense, but luckily we were able to find a workaround.

[CDvd]

Wow that's great news for me, and probably for all vista/nvidia/dual screen setup users!
Thanks!

David.