Help! Blue and Red Blocks with XVID playback

[stereozulu]

I did a search and didnt find anything similar to my problem, so if this has occured or is a common problem, i apologise for posting.

Here are some screenshots, i had to use the digicam because screenshots dont work too well with overlays.

pic1 (http://mitglied.lycos.de/stereozulu/DSC00059sm.jpg)
pic2 (http://mitglied.lycos.de/stereozulu/DSC00061sm.jpg)

The same red blocks you see on the screenshot are also mixed with blue blocks most of the time, just difficult to capture because they appear and disappear in different spots so fast.
I'm running Win XP now with a Geforce 2 GTS, 1,33 Athlon, ran Win2000 before that. I've tried using ffdshow or different xvid codecs. nothing changes. I put postprocessing up, no difference. When i switch off overlays (with BSPlayer e.g.)the blocks are gone, but i get horizontal lines when playing back. All my DivX movies play fine in Overlay mode 1 and when i set the Xvid movies to DIVX with AVIC, the blocks are gone too. So it seems to be a decoding problem...

any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Koepi]

Read up here:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24924

[stereozulu]

ok here's some more info:

using:
Koepi XviD-04102002-1 _ALPHA_ Release

either XviD-04102002-1 _ALPHA_ Release or ffdshow as DS Filter
it doesnt matter which i use, i'va also tried others.
it doesnt matter whether post-processing is on or off.

PC:
Windows XP SP.1 (had win2000 before, same problem)
Athlon TB C 1333
Nvidia Geforce 2 GTS 64 mb

I use BSPlayer mostly, there this bug occurs when i use overlay 1.
When i use WMP 6.4 bug also occurs.
When i use PowerDvD error also occurs
Using WMP 8.0 the error is not there...

This bug occurs with every XviD movie I play. When i change the fourcc to DIVX and let DivX decode, the error is gone.

[stereozulu]

someone? help!!! :(

[-h]

Well that's certainly odd. What happens when you disable the overlay, or just play through VirtualDub? If the bug disappears when the overlay isn't used, there's not much we can do.

-h

[stereozulu]

yes it disappears when i disable overlays and in virtualdub i dont have it either. But when i disable overlays i get some horizontal interference from time to time. And DivX plays overlays just fine...

[-h]

Could you post a shot of the horizontal interference?

I'm afraid there is nothing I know of that can fix your XviD+overlay issue - all XviD sees is an address in memory that it writes the image data to, it doesn't know if it's RAM or the overlay or what.

How about playback via ffdshow?

-h

[stereozulu]

strange thing with the overlays. these horizontal lines without overlay appear when there's fast motion in the picture. can't seem to be able to capture it.

but usually a 1,3 GHz + Geforce 2 GTS should be enough to keep up with decoding fast motion right?

P.S. when not using overlay i also get those horizontal lines with DivX, so thats not a XviD problem. These red and blue blocks seem to have something to do with xvid since i dont get them with DivX.

[trbarry]

Could it be a tearing issue because your graphics or directx drivers are not syncing updates with vertical refresh?

- Tom

[kastro68]

But only when i use GMC and B-frames. I never tried GMC w/o bf. However, with GMC i get blocks with both DX50 and XVID fourcc. It is buggy, i know.

I ha e no pr bl ms with qua t r pix ls at all.

[Koepi]

Still I don't see at which resolution you did that movie.

Is it mod4?mod8?mod16?

Or is it even an odd resolution? It's hidden behind the digicam snapshots ;)

Even if XviD's padding code should work perfectly now, most graphic cards will have problems with overlays not mod4/8/16 resolution.

Koepi

[stereozulu]

Originally posted by Koepi
Still I don't see at which resolution you did that movie.

Is it mod4?mod8?mod16?

Even if XviD's padding code should work perfectly now, most graphic cards will have problems with overlays not mod4/8/16 resolution.

Koepi

I'm not quite sure what you mean, video resolution of this movie is 640x272. But generally I've gotten this effect with every xvid movie played with ogerlay.

Originally posted by trbarry
Could it be a tearing issue because your graphics or directx drivers are not syncing updates with vertical refresh?


any way to fix this if this is the problem? vertical sync is turned on in opengl, not sure whether this is used for playback though...

[MaTTeR]

In the newer Nvidia "Detonator" drivers, vertical refresh rate can be tweaked from the display control panel under the Direct X button. It's a shot in the dark but your video memory or GPU isn't being overlocked right?

[stereozulu]

no its not overclocked. i have the newest nvidia drivers installed and nvtweak unlocked... but theres no directx tab...

[MaTTeR]

Whats the newest driver version you have? Nvidia leaks drivers every few days so a version would help here.

I'm using the the WHQL certified 40.72 drivers, in the display control panel a Direct X tab exists which is where you can find the "More Direct X" button that allows refresh tweaking. NVMax should also allow you to change the setting I think.

[stereozulu]

thats strange, i'm using 41.03 and i dont have that directx tab in display panel. :sly:

[Koepi]

Please uninstall that driver via system/software , reboot and install 40.72.

If you're having problems caused by those leaked drivers I'll personally slap you with some MB (former pounds) of UNIX manuals ;)

Regards
Koepi

[stereozulu]

the problems i've had, i've also had with other nvidia drivers. but i can try setting that directx refresh for horizontal lines when not using overlay...

[Nocturnus]

If problem appears only with internal xvid decoder and ffdshow filter, why you still persist on using them to playback your xvid content.
You may play xvids also with internal divx5 decoder without noticeable artifacts until h.263 quantisation wasn't involved into compression. You don't even need to change your fourcc code, just install divx5 codec and run my registry (http://62.179.26.206:3000/~neo/DivX.reg) script.

[stereozulu]

thx! that doesnt solve my problem, but it sure changes the fact that i have to change the fourcc code!

Now when was h.263 quantisation introduced and how bad is the picture then with decoding using DivX 5 internal?

P.S. how do i change it back one day when i want xvid to decode again...?

[Nocturnus]

With reference to question about picture disturbances, only in specific, rare scenes and between keyframes, quite visible and mostly green macroblocks may appear for few seconds. I remind mpeg quant matrix doesn't have that playback issue or rather incompability.
Before applying my reg I suggest to make backup copy of your system registry in case something (I don't know what) went wrong.
Alternatively divx5 codec reinstallation will restore right order.

[Koepi]

Well, I had a big laugh now, but I have to clear up your mess Nocturnus:

h263-quant type producing green blocks?

Muahahahaha, that's really funny :) Next to that it's simply not true.

I advice everyone NOT to download the registry-patch as Nocturnus is NO MODERATOR here (even if he states so in his user-status. It'll hopefully replaced by a "banned" soon) and thus you can't be sure what you get there. Moderators have this nice "Doom9 Team Member" picture besides them.

No need to listen to that troll. DivX5 won't help you with XviD issues. Period.

Koepi

[Nocturnus]

Let explain some stuff, moderator Koepi

1)Indeed I'm not moderator here.
I was moderating linux forum on divx.com some time ago.
My user-status was a kind of a joke :)

2)Movies encoded using h.263 quantiser (your xvid binaries) indeed are being decoded incorrectly by divx5 DS filter.

3)My reg is working well and may help some folks here.

4)I'm not a troll and there's no reason to ban me due to such funny facts.

[Doom9]

My user-status was a kind of a joke Apparently we don't share the same kind of humor. I consider myself to have a very broad sense of humor and I laugh to a lot more things than the average person, but this I don't find even mildly amusing. If you recall the sanctions page there's a comparison between sanctions on this board and the penal code. In real life you can go to prison trying to impersonate people upholding law and order. In the more than 2 years of this board nobody ever tried to imporsonate an authority figure before, hence we have no rule for that violation yet but that can easily be amended and by the time you'll be unbanned the forum rules will contain that additional rule.

May this be a reminder to all of you!

[stereozulu]

well naturally I thought he was a moderator, because it said so... so could anyone that knows this shit check whether that .reg was safe? :(

[MaTTeR]

@stereozulu

As far as I can tell the registry entry is perfectly harmless. If it works to fix your problem is another question though. I'm sure Nocturnus meant nothing malicous by the registry hack, moderator tricking is another issue altogether:rolleyes:

[stereozulu]

strangely enough it worked for 1 movie... and then it stopped working.. i'll have to look into why. as i understood it, all it does is make xvid be decoded by divx5 internal

[kilg0r3]

i guess, to restore the default behavior, it will suffice to reinstall xvid or dffshow

[blivit]

Originally posted by -h
Could you post a shot of the horizontal interference?

I'm afraid there is nothing I know of that can fix your XviD+overlay issue - all XviD sees is an address in memory that it writes the image data to, it doesn't know if it's RAM or the overlay or what.

How about playback via ffdshow?

-h

I have a solution, not for the overlay issue discussed in this thread, but for one of the other ancient "overlay issues with crappy drivers/old graphic cards". I couldn't find any other thread about it, so I figured I might as well put it here so that someone else having the problem might turn up the solution in a search. A while ago, I posted to the xvid.org forum about an issue I was having with chroma bleeding with overlays in WMP. The whole image looked a bit muddy with chroma bleeding, for lack of a better description, all over the place. The general consensus was that it was an issue with my TNT2 card and overlays. Virtualdub plays fine, DIVX fourcc is fine, overlays turned off is fine, xvid dshow filter and ffdshow filter both have the overlay issue even with the most current NVIDIA drivers. It turns out the solution is to use ffdshow and disable YV12 colorspace output. I assume (how can I actually find out?) the source is in YUY2 space, so I don't exactly know what YV12 colorspace has to do with this, I just know turning it off solves the problem. A friend of mine, who also has a TNT2 card, confirmed that disabling YV12 space solved his problems as well. So I would suggest you try toggling different colorspaces off in ffdshow and see if it does anything for you.

Note -- this is NOT the same as disabling YUV or RGB overlays. If I disable overlays, my video looks like it is in 16-bit color even when my desktop is 32-bits, and any WMP window resizing no longer looks fuzzy. Toggling YV12 off in ffdshow results in the same behavior as the divx dshow filter with overlays enabled: full 32-bit color (looks the same as in virtualdub) and the same fuzzy resizing algorithm I am used to seeing in WMP. If disabling overlays didn't look like 16-bit video, I would just disable the overlays and get the crisper resizing. But since I need to enable overlays to get full color, turning off YV12 space is the way to go.

Oh yeah, my friend and I use WMP 6.4 on Win2K and WinME. I can't confirm any of this on other versions.

-Eric

[Koepi]

Ah, that really helps. If you read your post, the problem is: your graphics card OR the drivers of it can't handle YV12 overlays. This is a bit odd since that is the internal storage format of most modern codecs.

But that culd be the solution: the driver reports YV12 capability while in reality it's incapable of it.

Regards,
Koepi

[stereozulu]

@blivit: You are a F***** GENIUS !!! :D THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You saved me from more nights of wondering why i'm getting these damn red/blue blocks, because your solution with turning off YV12 in ffdshow did the trick for me :D It works and my picture is fine now!

This seems to be a neat little trick for several problems and i would never have read it if you hadn't posted it in my thread ;)

btw. i just wonder why my geforce2 GTS with 64mb ddr ram has a problem with YV12 :rolleyes: