Blurred Playback and Conversion???

[Lord_Anselhelm]

I've had few problems with playing back xvid files, though I prefer to use divx for encoding, but I recently downloaded an apparently badly encoded video file off emule ("Garth Marenghi's Darkplace - 4 - 190204") and the only "player" than can understand it properly is VideoLan, which I only use to preview partially downloaded files in emule. Neither divx player nor windows media player can play it back properly -- the image is blurred and strangely green, like paint smeared over a moving canvas.

Aside from the obvious not-being-able-to-play-it-back problem, I'd like to convert the file to divx so I can archive it aware in the size that suits my limited storage capacity best. However, even converting it doesn't seem to do the job properly.

Considering that VideoLan can make sense of it, why can't anything else, including VirtualDub??? Please help me out here, this is REALLY bothering me.

[hacker_on_fire]

Best option for playback for me is: Windows Media Player Classic + ffdshow.

Why can you not reencode it? What error do you get?

[Lord_Anselhelm]

It's not an error I get -- the output is just garbled and blurred. The sound is completely undamaged, and indeed for some reason VideoLan seems able to interpret it fine, but the picture is all blurred and suffers from bad motion awareness. This happens if I play it through anything other than VideoLan, but this is NOT an ideal program, and I wish to re-encode it soon.

[UncasMS]

you might have to install an up2date xvid codec for the conversion (which i would NOT do btw)

[Lord_Anselhelm]

I've already tried updating the xvid codec with no success. Every other video I have downloaded which uses xvid works fine, but this video does not -- it refuses to be read properly by anything other than VideoLan, so I've emailed the VideoLan people to ask them how their program is able to make sense of the chromatically blurred video. In any case, I make no apologies for not liking xvid at all. Though some people make the case for it and say it gives better quality for space and so on, I think that its existence is a superfluous addition to the MP4 codec standard. The fact is that divx does a pretty damn good job and is good enough for everything I want. In addition to this, divx doesn't suffer from:

- instability (since xvid is still very much work in progress)
- video catch up (when you click to go forward in the video and the codec struggles to catch up, compared with the instant catch up of divx videos)
- compatibility problems (as has been shown here)

While I do not mean to insult people who wish to use it, I would rather that people work on getting the divx codec as good as it can get rather than trying to develop their own codec and only making the situation more complicated for people. It's alright for me -- I understand enough about computers to know when I haven't got a codec. But what about someone who just wants to catch up on an episode of Smallville or something and then finds they can't watch the video? Divx has become popular enough now for it to even find its way into some dvd players, but technically obssessed people still want to keep us all on our toes for no reason just because they believe they can do a marginally better job?

In essence, why change it if it ain't broke???

In any case, it's your choice as to which codec of choice you use, just as some people still choose a G5 platform over an Athlon 64 or Opteron based system (an argument which would take far too long to go into here.) We're not going to see eye to eye on this matter, so there's very little point in trying.

All I am interested in is working out why this particular file won't play properly when other xvid files work fine, even after I downloaded the most recent xvid codec I could find (one which wasn't in beta stages nor considered unstable.) If nothing could play it, it would be a case of the file being badly encoded, but VideoLan plays it perfectly (somehow.) Yet, it can't just be my codec setup, since I can play all other xvid videos I've come across just fine, which leads me to believe that someone inexperienced in the xvid codec encoded it.

Actually, the guy putting out the Darkplace files has chosen nearly a different codec each week. The first was 3ivx (prounounced thrivX maybe?) which is another codec I see no reason for existing. The second was divx, and the third was a perfectly working xvid file (albeit larger than it needed to be considering the 352x288 size of the video due to interlaced UK tv signals.) Now I get a file which doesn't work properly in WMP or mplayer2.

How can I fix this file to make it playable?

[UncasMS]

If nothing could play it, it would be a case of the file being badly encoded

no

it might as well be a download problem, since you did not create this file yourself

i will not try to argue any further on pros and cons of divx and xvid since i know both fairly well

i might rather be tempted to say that lame encodings are the price for illegal downloads


sidenote: for further postings i suggest you make yourself familiar with the forum rules ;)

[Lord_Anselhelm]

It seems highly unlikely to be a download error since I used emule to get the file. I wouldn't consider it an illegal download any more than it would be considered to tape the programme and archive it away, especially since I'd already watched the programme on Channel 4 (a UK channel) and just wanted a digital copy to keep. However, just in case this is somehow the problem, I will download the file again to be sure.


On a brighter note, I've also gone into depth with the pros and cons of both xvid and divx, so it was nice not to be bombared with "use xvid or else" comments that I've found on some sites. As for the "lame encoding", it actually uses MP3 ;)


But, no ideas on how to fix the problem???

[hacker_on_fire]

I think UncasMs meant 'lame' as in bad.

Just because emule has a feature to sort out (maybe by re-downloading) corrupted files, this does by no way mean thats its system is perfect. So it may still be corrupted.

What happens when you open it in VirtualDubMod?

[UncasMS]

nope sorry,

it very much sounds like a decoder error
thus apart from recommending ffdshow as playbackfilter there's nothing left

the latest version was released yesterday i think, so go and try that version: http://www.ligh.de/software/mirrors.phtml

[hacker_on_fire]

You could find out what filter VideoLan is using to play it perfectly (somewhere in its settings/statistics) then could make sure they that any other similar filters trying to play the file are removed.

[Lord_Anselhelm]

Tried opening it in VirtualDubMod, but makes no difference. Using ffdshow as a playback filter for xvid videos, I can now watch the file in something like WMP no problem, just like VideoLan, which leads me to believe VideoLan is using a similar filter of some kind. However, this doesn't much help me in terms of being able to recode the file, since when I do so, there are parts of it which are still shifted quite a lot towards red or blue motion unawareness.

I'm waiting on a second download of the file to see if it is indeed somewhat damaged. However, it would be easier if I could work out HOW to make VirtualDub use the same ffdshow filter to decode the video stream, since then I could recode it to a file that doesn't have such problems with the video.

Oh, and I did get that he meant lame as in bad. It was a joke, hence the smilie.

[UncasMS]

which xvid do you have installed?

tried the latest 1.0 rc1 or 2 version?

[Lord_Anselhelm]

Up until recently, when I encountered this problem, I had Nick's build of the xvid codec from a Nimo codec pack. I've since tried the latest build of Nick's (2003-07-16), XviD 1.0 Beta3 (2004-01-02), both of RC1 and RC2, Dec (2003-07-16), Koepi (2003-06-24), Alpha (2003-06-11, 1420), and Root (2003-02-24, 1100).

All of these except the Root produce a good picture after a while, which leads me to believe that, in fact, something is wrong with the beginning of the video stream, probably due to a download error. The Root codec causes the same problem I had initially, which was that of the picture being like paint smeared over a moving canvas, but the rest of the codecs seem more or less fine.

Some of the codecs seem to have trouble catching up with the video and audio if you skip forward, whereas some do not. Which is the best one to have then if all I want to do with xvid is decode, not encode?



Update:

Right. Downloaded file again and the problem is definately not a badly downloaded version of the file. The file itself has been badly encoded, and the problem lies in the hue and saturation mainly, which is why it can be decoded properly by the ffdshow filter, since it adjusts the picture on the fly, just like with VideoLan.

I've also discovered a way to convert the file out its horrible encoding (since the person who did it obviously doesn't understand how to use xvid properly.) I went into Options -->Environmental Settings-->VFAPI Plug-ins within TMPGEnc and changed the priority of the DirectShow Multimedia File Reader from -1 to 2, which now means that I can use the program to convert to a file without the horrible picture and which won't then need a filter to be read properly, as indeed it should be. I'm also getting rid of the noise while I'm at it.

It's silly to think that all this hassle could have been avoided if only professionals used xvid and everyone else stuck to divx on the grounds of simplicity. Maybe divx really isn't as good as xvid, and maybe the picture quality and other features of xvid are worth fighting for, but I've yet to see a badly encoded divx file using version 5 or later, though this may just be my luck.

[hacker_on_fire]

Congratulations on finding a solution :-)

[Lord_Anselhelm]

Thanks to everyone who posted here for helping me to find one :)

[UncasMS]

just as a final note: i've seen many many crappy divx files *g*

good to hear, you have finally solved your problem

[zx50]

Best player i can think of is WMP9 (not that i'm a M$ lover) but the sound and picture quality rocks.

P.S especially the sound when you configure it right.

[hacker_on_fire]

I would have to disagree. Windows Media Player Classic is an all-time best. I would never trade it for everything. It can play dvd's, ogm, matroska, mpeg1/2/3/4, avi, quicktime, real media. Its picture and sound quality are execellent. It also does not take up much cpu power and its just one file you run, no installer. ALso you can configure it to the bone.

[zx50]

Alright, i'll give it a shot and then let you know what i think. I know i don't like the bsplayer though, cr*p sound.

[hacker_on_fire]

I once tried bsplayer and just tought it was rubbish, mainly 'cos of the menu and layout. I didn't get to test the quality as i never really used it after that.