Can someone suggest a DivX player with Brightness and Contrast controls?

[Rooster6975]

I have a series of DivX which are very dark. I had a look at the Overlay controls, and they are set to default. I also attempted to change the DivX settings in the MicroDVD settings, but these had no appreciable effect. Finally, I found that WMP9 worked the best, and it has Brightness and Contrast controls directly in the interface. I edged up the brightness a little and now the DivX is perfectly watchable.

Rather than having to use an MS product, is there another player such as MicroDVD which has integrated Brightness controls? Something where I can just use a key combination to bump it up a little if it is too dark?

I have tried Sasami2k as well, which used to be my favourite player. Unfortunately, it appears my latest DirectX and Nvidia driver upgrade has caused it some problems. There is all sorts of colour saturation not present in other players. I can also no longer get the onscreen display (% done, time to go, etc...) to pop up since the driver upgrade. Too bad, becasue Sasami has every option known to man!

Thanks,
Rooster

[UncasMS]

in zoomplayer3 you could rightclick and access OVERLAY COLOR CONTROL, which lets you change quite some settings.

moreover, ffdshow as playbackfilter will work, too.

[Rooster6975]

OK, thanks, can you elaborate a little on the filter option?

Hi, thanks for your reply. I will have a look at that player. I don't understand what you mean by using a new filter, could you elaborate?

Thanks,
Rooster

[UncasMS]

FFDSHOW is some sort of an all-in-one playback filter.

it plays divx3-5 + xvid and more.

i use it for all playbacks (i.e. any given player i start uses ffdshow instead of lets say divx5 or the xvid playback codec/decoder.

this palyback filter has superb quality and features like brightness/contrast settings.

i do strongly advise to test/use ffdshow since it is the best playback filter i have come across so far!

search the board or use google.com for more.

[setarip]

Regarding the fact that you favor the excellent Sasami player - Now that you've updated your system, you might try uninstalling and then reinstalling the Sasami player...

[Rooster6975]

OK....... now what?

I have found and downloaded the latest alpha version of ffdshow. I installed it, and it gave me two options, Configuration and Uninstall. I picked configuration, and it did not complain. Now what?

How do I know it is using that filter instead of the 5.02 codec? I can't find any way to actually play anything using this filter. Is this what is known as VagueWare? Everyone talks about it but no one actually knows what it is for or how to use it?

I went to the ffdshow site, and the summary describes it as a filter for divX. And that's it! No installation instructions, no documentation of any kind. I can't find any option in any of the divx players I have to change filters.

Come on man, you seem to know what this is, can you explain to me how to use it? I would love to get a new player going, one that has brightness controls, but I have been playing with this download for an hour and have no idea what to do now. It doesn't show up in my codec list in Device Manager, nor did it appear to install any launchable EXE. How do you use it?

[Rooster6975]

Thanks Setarip, but I had already tried that...

Hi,

Any other suggestions would be appreciated. I feel like going back to the old drivers I had before. Sasami is a great player, one of the best for low-sound DivX. However, I can't seem to get it cleaned up. It still works, but the images are all very blocky like they are low-res. Also, I can't get the onscreen display to show anything any longer. It used to pop up the time remaining and other info such as the % of preamp when I augmented it, however now I no longer have any onscreen text.

I have a friend who is also into DivX and he has had this display problem with the controls since he first tried Sasami over a year ago. This is a great program, but is not working very well for me at the moment. I would appreciate it if someone could give me a clue as to why it is no longer working as it did before.

Thanks,
Rooster

[setarip]

Just curious - I'm using v.757 of the Sasami Player, which version are you using?


(By the way, although I personally know NOTHING about the FFD filter, if it has an extender of .AX or .DLL, try placing it in your Windows or Windows/System or Windows/System32 folder and then reboot your system. It should then be recognized by and accessible from all players )

[Rooster6975]

Thanks, it does have a .ax file in the install folder

It is Sasami 757, which I believe has been the latest version since I first found this program in 2001. It hasn't been updated as far as I know, too bad, it's the best player I have ever found!

It worked fine until very recently (since my video upgrade). All other divx players seem to work fine, so I am pretty sure it is something within Sasami which I have either screwed up or misconfigured. It makes the movies looks like DivX which were created back in the early days of DivX, around 4 or 5 years ago. Dark colours are heavily pixelated, and instead of skin tones, the actors faces seem to be created in layers, exactly like you were watching the movie with 256 colours.

Ok, I am going to copy the .ax file into my windows system folder. I am pleased it will be accessible by all players, but does that mean it will automatically take over the playback of divx movies? I have seen numerous posting indicating there is a menu option to configure, however since I can't find any EXE to launch it, I have no idea how to get to the menu option.

Cheers,
Rooster

[setarip]

As I said in my previous post, I personally know NOTHING about the FFD filter...

Usually codec and filter menu options are available from within the player (either from the player's dropdown menu options or by right-clicking within the video window)...


I see SKD_Tech just provided you with a specific answer. Enjoy ;>}

[UncasMS]

you would be able to access ffdshow from within your player of choice the usualk way: RIGHTCLICK and then go for filters....

or use the ffdshow config first and go for the topmost menue: CODEC.
make sure to select divx + xvid + whatever you might like.

use the postprocessing options as well and of course go for the color/brightness/contrast settings.

[Rooster6975]

My player of choice is MicroDVD

There does not appear to be any option to select FFDShow anywhere within that program. On top of that, all my AVIs I try to play regardless of player which use the XVid codec are now nothing but green ever since I installed and registered FFDShow using Zoomplayer. The ones using the DivX codecs are fine.

FFDShow appears to be somewhat more problematic than you make it out to be. I have FINALLY found how to get to the configuration menu of FFDShow. No offense, but I don't suppose it would have killed you to simply say, "To get to the filter configuration menu, you need to be in a player which supports filter configuration such as Zoomplayer. Then right-click, filter properties, ffdshow".

At any rate, I can get rid of the green screen for all players by deselecting Xvid in the ffdshow configuration. When I do that, I presume FFDShow is being used for all DivX codecs, and not for any Xvid codecs. Any idea how I can get it going for Xvid as well?

I just checked the xvid.ax file to see if I could determine it's version. In Device Manager, it is listed there as an installed and working codec but the properties do not show version. The file date is May 21st, 2002 and the corresponding DLL is 28/06/2002. If you think I should upgrade, I will do so, however please be aware that the movies work as long as I disable Xvid in ffdshow.

Cheers,
Rooster.

[Rooster6975]

New Xvid codec, same problem

Never mind, I will just uninstall FFDshow, I can see no appreciable benefit to it, and quite the opposite, it does not work with any of my XVid AVI files. It makes all of the players show solid green. I have upgraded to the latest XVid codec dated 30/03/2003 and I still have green movies. If I deselect XVid in the FFDshow configuration box, the green box is gone and I can watch the movie. I have permanently deselected the Xvid option by de-installing FFDShow.

Thanks for suggesting Zoomplayer though, at least I can now change the brightness on dark AVI files.

Rooster.

[Rooster6975]

Reinstalled FFDShow

It was my own fault, I had a mixed version of FFDShow causing me the problem. I had a look at all the files installed by the latest April 24th alpha build, and found I already had ffdshow.ax in the winxp/system32 directory. I presume that this earlier version (dated April 2002) was installed when I had been playing with codec packs such as Tsunami and Nimo because I have never deliberately installed ffdshow before.

At any rate, only I copied over that version with the latest from April 24th, 2003, as well as the other DLLs present in the directory, I can now get to the famous ffdshow configuration dialog box that everyone is talking about. I had previously been limited to the config box present in the older version, which was much smaller and only had a few options (hence my not seeing the value of this impressive product).

XVids are no longer green either, and brightness controls also work. Now I will have to spend some time figuring out what all the options do because there are an awful lot of them!! Thanks for all the replies.