MP42 playback!?

[Blankman]

I came across an old AVI encoding with MP42 in 4C identifier. The only player which seems capable of playing it is gabest's Media Player Classic. Virtualdub refused to play it, and both BSplayer and WMP rendered a gray video screen with audio. Anyone know how to fix the problem?

[avih]

iirc, ffdshow supports this codec. make sure the correct checkbox is checked. this way, any media player will be able to play it.

[Blankman]

Originally posted by avih
iirc, ffdshow supports this codec. make sure the correct checkbox is checked. this way, any media player will be able to play it.

Unfortunately no. This is not the case. ffdshow is not installed on my PC. I have DivX (Fast-Motion), DivX (Low-Motion), DivX 5.0, Huffyuv, Indeo by Intel, Indeo 5.10, Microsoft MPEG-4 v1, Microsoft RLE, Microsoft Video 1, msh261.drv and msh263.drv installed.

[Doom9]

why not? ffdshow supports that codec, I've seen the checkbox just right now. Are you trying to imply that you cannot install any codecs/filters on your machine? Because if this is the case, you need a player with built-in decoding, I believe mplayer would help you there. If you can install stuff, I strongly suggest ffdshow which is the best playback filter there is.

[Blankman]

Originally posted by Doom9
why not? ffdshow supports that codec, I've seen the checkbox just right now. Are you trying to imply that you cannot install any codecs/filters on your machine? Because if this is the case, you need a player with built-in decoding, I believe mplayer would help you there. If you can install stuff, I strongly suggest ffdshow which is the best playback filter there is.

Because I never needed it. I encode using both XviD and DivX codecs. Between theses two and my DVD codecs, I been able to view everything.

OK, I installed ffdshow and tried it. It made absolutely no difference. MP42 encoded material still gives me gray video on all players except mplayerc.exe.

[Doom9]

press start - programs - ffdshow - Configuration. then in the ffdshow tab go to Codecs, then make sure mp42 is enabled - by default it isn't.

[avih]

Blankman, if you post here, you gotta think, seriously. from my 1st laconic reply and 10 mins of search and destroy... ahmm ..and install, you could have done it already, yet you asked for clarifications 2 more times:

iirc, ffdshow supports this codec.
-> that means that you should find and install ffdshow.

make sure the correct checkbox is checked.
-> that means you should find how to configure it. not that difficult.

this way, any media player will be able to play it.
-> that means your problem is solved.


it wastes both our time and your time. it's not a helpdesk. ppl here must think before posting. and must read other's replies carefully.

cheers mate.

[Blankman]

Originally posted by avih
Blankman, if you post here, you gotta think, seriously. from my 1st laconic reply and 10 mins of search and destroy... ahmm ..and install, you could have done it already, yet you asked for clarifications 2 more times:

iirc, ffdshow supports this codec.
-> that means that you should find and install ffdshow.

make sure the correct checkbox is checked.
-> that means you should find how to configure it. not that difficult.

this way, any media player will be able to play it.
-> that means your problem is solved.

it wastes both our time and your time. it's not a helpdesk. ppl here must think before posting. and must read other's replies carefully.

cheers mate.

Please read the facts, don't assume. I've already researched this problem for over two weeks before posting. From my point of view, your suggestion does not work, and neither do any of the dozen of MP42 codecs I tried.

1) I did located and installed ffdshow.

2) There where no check boxes, only drop downs next to each codec, and the dropdown for MP42 was set to "libavcodec.dll", the only other setting available was "disable". It was set to "libavcodec.dll" by dfeault and I left it set that way.

3) Once again, none of my media players excpet Media Player Classic (mplayerc) were able to playback the MP42 video.

The MP42 codec doesn't seem to be in the mainstream. Even if ffdshow works, it is not going to help me to transcode the video to sometime more mainstream. I want to put an clean end to this problem.

[avih]

1. i've read the 'facts' and hopefully didn't make any assumptions. you didn't say you tried searching and solving it for two weeks. read your posts again. of course, i believe you if you say that u did, but i couldn't know.

2. if ffdshow works for your file, then you can open the file with avisynth directshow source, and encode in any codec you like. it's not real transcoding, but rather re-encoding since you decode and encode, but it will work.

3. i didn't play much with gabest's mpc, but perhaps it can show you the filters used in the graph? maybe in some log or debug mode? this way you will know what filters/decoders are used, and it might help you get better results. maybe gabest can help?

btw, what OS are you using? may i suggest trying the same file on another OS with only ffdshow installed, and MP42 enabled? you could also try older versions of ffdshow (go for one of the alphas from about 6 months ago, these versions still had the checkboxes)

good luck.

[Blankman]

The suggestion on getting an older version of ffdshow helped. I grabbed one from 5-20-2002 (closest to the date of the encoded MP42 files) at soundforge. Bingo! Problem solved. Now I can convert this bad baby to plain MPEG4 using DivX or XviD. :)

[avih]

you're welcome ;)