Xvid playback trouble over windows shares

[eeatha]

Well I have two machines at home, my main machine that has all the music, movies etc...

My second machine (laptop) I mostly use for work but I sometimes use to listen to mp3's and watch movies over my home network. I use windows shares throughout my workgroup and both machines haven't got a firewall on (I rely on my router for that).

I can play music, and watch movies over these shares but I've never been able to play xvid videos.

Now I always thought that was because I somehow never installed the codec properley, so I finally took time today to get it working. But nothing seemed to work.

The error I keep getting back is something about not being able to read the file. So I just thought it really might just be a permissions thing and nothing to do with xvid.

I checked my share settings (all fine), and I manage to play other movies in the same folder, so I don't know why all xvids don't.

Out of desperation I started dragging across the xvid videos onto my laptop to see if they work, and that's when it became crystal clear. I simply can never read an xvid file over my windows shares!

To ensure this has nothing to do with my settings on the laptop, I copied the movie over ftp and played it from my local hard disk, and it worked just fine.

I don't know why I am getting this read error over the network, but if anyone can think of something to fix it, I would really appreciate it.

[eeatha]

That's kind of amazing, I've first registered in Oct 2001, and this is my first post on the forums :eek:

[K-Dash]

Congrats with ur first post, I've been around for like end of 1999 and havn't quite posted much myself. Mostly because I just got my comp back then and was pretty new to everything, still am :D

[Manao]

eeatha : I never had problem reading video over a samba's share. I can't see what could go wrong. Could you precise :

- Do all XviD videos have the same issue ?
- Do you use FFDShow or just the XviD decoder ? ( btw, you are on windows on both computers ? )
- If you don't use FFDShow, can you try ?
- If you use it, do you also use it for other codecs as well ?
- What is the speed of your network ?
- What player do you use ?

[Koepi]

The solution is simple, copy the movie to the local HD first and then watch it. Using BSPlayer works over shares.

Koepi

[eeatha]

Originally posted by Manao
eeatha : I never had problem reading video over a samba's share. I can't see what could go wrong. Could you precise :

- Do all XviD videos have the same issue ?
- Do you use FFDShow or just the XviD decoder ? ( btw, you are on windows on both computers ? )
- If you don't use FFDShow, can you try ?
- If you use it, do you also use it for other codecs as well ?
- What is the speed of your network ?
- What player do you use ?

All XviD videos have the same issue, all other avi's don't have the issue. I've checked 20 video files and they all confirm that theory.

Both machines are running Windows XP.

On the laptop:
I do have FFDShow installed, but I think I only use the XviD decoder on it's own. Checking, unchecking the relevant box in FFDShow doesn't make a difference. Uninstalling it didn't make a difference either. Re-installing didn't help

On the main machine:
I use FFDShow, unchecking it didn't make a difference, didn't test with installing it, and I have not rebooted the machine after unchecking.

I use FFDShow on my main machine to play some mpeg files I think. (Not divx though) So my use of FFDShow on my machine may be relevant, but unchecking as I did above for XviD hasn't helped.

It's a 100 Mbps ethernet network.

I generally use Media player classic, I've tried Windows Media Player 9, I don't have any other media players installed on my laptop.

If you insist, I am willing to install / un-install relevant media players and FFDShow but please read the comments I have below.

-----------------------------------

I am tempted to say the fault can not possible lie with the laptop's settings. It plays all movie files very well, including asf, and broken avi's, mpeg2 and others that sometimes give me trouble on my main serving machine. I'm really drawing this conclusion based on the fact that even COPYING the file across the windows share is giving me permission errors.

My best guess is I have an XviD related: decoder, direct show filter, windows shell handler, something that's locking the XviD files when attempting to read them and pass them on the network. I don't see why it affects Windows shares only (maybe it uses shell / microsoft specific handlers to read the file) compared to my non-microsoft ftp server which is unlikley to.

I'm gonna try deleting some registry settings to stop Windows explorer from trying to read avi files when I select them, maybe it's related. I really hope it is :( But I don't see how.

-----------------------------------

To who suggested copying the XviD files over to my laptop everytime I wanna watch them.... No comment.

[mf]

Very strange. I encode and play via smb/netbios, with both a windows<->windows configuration and linux<->windows. I have never had any problems. To be precise, all my AVS files are on PC 1 while I encode those same AVS files to XviD on PC 2. And then I playback those XviD files (stored on PC 1) over smb/netbios on PC 2. Downloaded anime is stored on PC 3 and also played on PC 1 via smb/netbios. You'd say I've tested out almost all possible scenarios, but still no problems :D.

[Manao]

I think you're on the right track to solve your problem by deactivating the preview of videos inside Windows Explorer. Did you attempt once to read a video file without using the explorer ? ( With the latest MPC, there is a command line for example )

Concerning FFDShow, I don't understand how you are using it. When you install it, it should prevail on codec such as DivX3,4,5 and XviD. When you check / uncheck the use of libavcodec ( ie FFDshow ) to decode one codec, you have to quit all your playing video, and the configuration screen of FFDshow in order the changes to be applied. When you say that it doesn't make a difference, you mean it doesn't solve the problem, right ?

[eeatha]

Well, removing the registry key's and rebooting the machine hasn't helped. (Done it on both machines).

I just also attempted mapping a network drive, and doing a cp command across.

M:\>cp "Some_XviD.avi" c:\
cp: Some_XviD.avi: Permission denied

M:\>cp non_XviD.avi c:\

M:\>rm -f c:\non_XviD.avi

Regarding FFDShow, I was using a significantly older version on my hosting machine. I installed the latest and attmpted using it with libavcodec, using it with XviD (uses xvid.dll), and finally disabled which defaults to the XviD direct show filter in windows. Again none of them helped me in even copying the file using the command prompt.

I am giving it one final shot, going to reboot the machine, stop it from automatically logging on, and using the command prompt to simply copy the file. I don't really believe it will work. Only divine intervention can save me now But I'm gonna give it a shot :(.

If you are wondering what key did I remove from the registry to disable preview of videos in windows explorer, this is the relevant reg backup file.

----------------------------

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}\InProcServer32]
@=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,00,6f,00,74,00,25,\
00,5c,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,73,00,68,00,\
6d,00,65,00,64,00,69,00,61,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,00,00
"ThreadingModel"="Both"

---------------------------------

mf

If only there was a bigger smilie of this
:P

[eeatha]

Right, well it was solved...

In Windows XP when sharing a folder you have two checkboxes to tick.

The first one is

Share this folder on the Network, and this is sufficient for playing any video except XviD.

The second checkbox which as you already guessed wasn't checked on my machine is

Allow network users to change my files, which I hope you can understand why it wasn't checked.

Checking that box allowed me to view any XviD file. As a matter of curiosity, I checked the Read-only box under properties and it still played fine ...

And to investigate the matter further, I undid everything. Unchecked allowing others to edit the files etc.. etc... and it still played fine :confused: :eek: :scared:

Maybe my divine intervention comment was counted as a prayer :sly:

Aah well sorry to trouble you. Thanks for your help and support Manao

[sdsalsero]

The problem is probably WinXP (which it sounds like you guys have already started to explore). The fact that it works now, both with and without the Allow User To Change Files, would indicate that it's not a problem related to the network/share settings.

Instead, the problem is likely the XP Explorer's annoying habit of trying to scan entire .AVI files for extended attributes ... even when all you're doing is viewing the directory file-list. So, what's probably happening is that when you first open the network share, XP (on the local machine, i.e, the laptop) starts scanning the AVI (plus any others!!) and if you try to playback the file, it'll be fighting for bandwidth and/or CPU. The fact that this only seems to affect Xvid, however, could mean I'm barking up the wrong tree.

Anyway, there's a REGEDIT you can do to disable the scan,
-> HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.avi\shellex\PropertyHandler
Delete the "Default" value, which should be "{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}"

[unmei]

i haven't checked "Allow network users to change my files" on any share and use XP and can read xvid in whatever container without problems. I have unckecked all cpu waste settings (thumbnails,preview,... ) tho, so i still think its some kind of explorer "extension" that borks for you.