qtplayer white screen on macpro from vdub

[BabaG]

i've been making some avi files on an xp based
system and they don't read on my mac system. i don't
get an error, they just appear, both in the qtplayer
as well as in fcp as a white screen. the play cursor
moves but the screen remains white. don't know about
audio as these are silent files. all these files are
uncompressed, sometimes in somewhat unusual
formats, like 1024x768.

i've been told to ask here about a codec so i could
find a compatible codec to do the vdub export
with. i thought uncompressed meant no codec,
though.

could someone please point me toward a way of
troubleshooting this?

might this be something to do with colorspace?

thanks for any pointers,
BabaG

[setarip_old]

Hi!

Load the .AVI into GSpot and post a screencapture back here...

[BabaG]

thanks setarip. here it is. i've found that mpeg streamclip can
see the video on the mac. not much use as a player, though.

BabaG

[foxyshadis]

I bet _RGB just isn't recognized in quicktime, since it's a windows format. Try uncompressed YUY2 (stored as 2VUY, same thing) instead, or lossless AVC. If you're trying to work in RGB from start to finish that might be a bad idea, though. ffdshow has lots of uncompressed formats you can test with.

I'm sure _RGB can be renamed to a compatible fourcc, but I have no idea exactly which RGB format it would be. Maybe one of these (http://www.fourcc.org/rgb.php) will work.

[setarip_old]

@BabaG

What was the original source material and what software and procedures did you use to create the .AVI?

I ask because it's indicated that:

1) The file contains 33.9Gb of "unneeded" bytes at the end of the video, and

2) The video is comprised of 3 joined parts

Both of the above situations are likely contributing to the lack of visible video...

[BabaG]

the original source is a qt dv file from fcp. that was imported into
vdub via an avisynth script using the qt dll import plugin. yadif
was the only other thing used in the script.

from there a tga sequence was exported. that tga sequence was
run through an up-res script using an app called nconvert, which
is an image processing app. its main site is here:

http://www.xnview.com/

the image processing was done on two different boxes, one linux,
one xp. the final tga frames were then placed back into a common
folder. i then used vdub to reopen the new image sequence and
export it as an uncompressed avi at the default rgb888 setting.

to summarize:

qt dv
tga sequence
tga sequence up-res'ed
uncompressed rgb888 avi

later today i'll run the sequence through all the various colorspace
options in hopes that turns one up that can be read by qt/mac.
rgb888 sounds like the best of the lot, though. is that correct?

thanks,
BabaG

[setarip_old]

the original source is a qt dv file from fcp1) What is the filesize of this file?

2) If I'm correct that Final Cut Pro is only an editing program, then the original source material must have originated elsewhere. If so, what was the original source for the Final Cut Pro file and what is its filesize?

3) At what point in your various conversions was the file split into 3 parts and why?

4) Have you determined when/how/why an "unneeded" 33.9Gb were added to the file?

[BabaG]

setarip, thanks for your time. just lost a long response to you
when the mac crashed. in a nutshell:

dv all the way through to the first tga export from vdub. 720
x 480. the exported piece (from fcp) is a compilation of a lot
of things. 11min 20sec. straight ntsc dv.

the idea that the file is in three parts may come from the tga
files having been processed in batches, i thought there were
four, on two separate machines. i did this to save time. the
finished tga's were then dumped back into a common folder
which vdub then opened.

i suspect finding the cause of the 33gb being 'unneeded' will
point to the issue. the finished file is 39gb as listed by the mac,
slightly bigger by the pc.

for foxyshadis, i stepped through each colorspace export option
under the vdub video menu and did a test export of a portion of
the piece with each setting. none worked. same white screen
each time. qtplayer does scroll through the timeline but the
screen remains white.

also tried various combinations of resize and interlacing to see
if qt didn't like the odd frame size (1024x682). no luck. in this
process i eventually got around to exporting a dv version which
the mac has no problem with. at least this tells me my media
is good. whole point here, however, is to up-res the dv to
something larger so this is just a test and not a solution.

also tried exporting an uncompressed file from qtpro and found
that the 4cc used in that file is araw. does that tell anyone anything
useful? would simply changing the 4cc maybe work? how do i try
that?

one other detail, when i tried to play the various colorspace
exports, several just white-screened. some, however, popped
up a dialog that something additional was needed by qt to play
the file. unfortunately that dialog only pointed to a webpage
with a lot of links to vendors of codecs and utilities but no
specific info on which one might help in the issue. the ones that
popped up the dialog were:

uyvy, yuy2, 422, 420, luminance

thanks again,
BabaG

i'm runnning out of ideas

[foxyshadis]

What sort of upres script are you using? I use nconvert, and I can tell you avisynth has everything it does and much more. (Unless you have a particular affinity to, say, a hanning or bell filter that a spline36, lanczos, or bicubic just can't fill.) Especially filters like nnedi or multiswar, though there's not much point in using them if you deinterlace with just yadif.

The time spent on a slower, more accurate interpolation will be more than offset by the time saved dealing with the image sequences. And if you use one of avisynth's internal interpolators, you'll save a ton of time.

[BabaG]

thanks foxyshadis. looked at nnedi and multiswar. will probably
try to incorporate them. for now, however, i have to get my mac
to be able to use my output file. without being able to get it into
there it's all academic. other issue is avisynth being pc. i'm
working between mac, pc, and linux boxes, splitting tasks between
them. nconvert is available on all three platforms. that lets me
send 1/3 of my image sequence to each machine and cut the
processing time substantially.

thanks again,
BabaG