Anyone else having a problem with WMP4Player?

shahmat · 24th April 2002, 23:40

I've downloaded this thing from both Doom9 and Rarewares and each time it crashes. I don't think it's the MP4 file I encoded, as when I encoded and muxed it there weren't any problems, but every time I open it in WMP4Player, the thing crashes, usually taking down wmp4client.exe first. Checking the log, the only problem I see is something like:

16:34:49.647-plugin-3: Can't find export point in plugin SDL.dll

So I'm guessing something's screwed up with the Simple DirectMedia Layer. I've run this program on two separate Win2K machines and a box running WinXP Pro. Does anybody know what's going on or is everybody else's version of WMP4 working just fine and it's only me that's having problems?

Shah Mat
Lord of the Land Of COnfusion (LOCO)

neo_sapien · 25th April 2002, 06:36

Mine isn't working either. The video window appears, but it just stalls on what appears to be the first frame.

kastro68 · 25th April 2002, 07:22

Quote:

Originally posted by neo_sapien
Mine isn't working either. The video window appears, but it just stalls on what appears to be the first frame.

I think your problem may be trying to play a divX5.01 encoded video with the divX5 codec installed.

I'm most likely wrong because i have no idea what wmp4player is.

Edit: I still think it is a conspiracy by DXN and not a bug. I hate having to use a product from someone I no longer trust. I can't wait till the Xvid team gets B frames up and running...that would be the day I would gladly wave bye bye to DXN.

neo_sapien · 25th April 2002, 08:48

the movie was encoded with DivX 5.01, and I have the DivX 5.01 codec installed.

Chibi Jasmin · 25th April 2002, 11:30

Current WMP4Player only plays movies encoded with DivX5(.01), if no b-frames, no gmc and no q-pel options were used...also you can try turning debug/iso encoder on/off...for me it works iso decoder turned off...

XVid on the other hand works fine, but only if h263 matrix is used...this is still all alpha software, don't forget that!

BTW: You have the sdl.dll in the player's dir?

DeXT · 25th April 2002, 11:39

@shahmat: this SDL.dll error is perfectly normal. When you run wmp4player it starts looking at all the dll files in the current directory, searching for plugins. SDL.dll is not a plugin, so that's what this error means.

I think your problem may be due to either a) a wrong MP4 encoded stream (perhaps it's a DivX 5.01 fault, perhaps you are using unsupported features such as B-frames or GMC?), or b) some kind of incompatibility between wmp4player and your system. Wmp4player is still very early beta and it may not work properly on all configurations.

@kastro & neo_sapien: wmp4player does not make any use of the system installed codecs, it has its own mpeg-4 decoding engine. So this has no relation with this problem.

I'd suggest you to use a XviD encoded video which seems more compatible with the current tools.

shahmat · 25th April 2002, 14:50

@DeXT: I should have said this earlier but I forgot. I am using an XviD encoded video stream rather than DivX 5 (gave me all kinds of muxing problems when I forgot to change the FourCC), and as far as I know, XviD doesn't support B-frames yet. I encoded everything as per Doom9's MP4 guide, so anything you see on there is what I did (except subtitles...)

As I said before, I tested this and got the same error ("Client Session Crashed") on three separate machines, although each was using Win2K or derivatives (XP). Could this maybe be a Win2K incompatibility? I tried using the Win98 compatibility and got the same errors... Would have attached the system dump info when it crashed, except Windows wouldn't let me copy it.

@neo-sapien: you're lucky, I don't even get the window. Occasionally it won't crash outright, it'll just sit there with the green "play" button lit up but nothing happens. If I play just the AAC audio track, it works fine, however, but video usually always crashes it...

Oh well, guess I'll just have to use XviD AVIs till MP4 is into late beta/RC stage...

Shah Mat
Lord of the Land Of COnfusion (LOCO)

Chibi Jasmin · 25th April 2002, 15:13

shahmat: well, xvid movies only work here, if muxed with mp4creator and using h263 quantizer....mp4creator screws frame rate if it's not integer. That's how far I got.

DeXT: What is normal about the sdl.dll error? I never had it...

shahmat · 25th April 2002, 16:52

Okay, here's a little update. I played around with it some more and I found a setting on the help menu (debug tab) called "use ISO decoder" which actually gave me a video window! The bad news is that the video was horribly garbled, little green blocks everywhere (ever watched a DVD rip without pulling off the CSS first?). So that was a no-go. However, without another player to compare it to, I don't know if the problem is in the player's decoder or if something got screwed up while the video was being muxed into the MP4 stream. The original XviD AVI looks fine, and I don't think it's the audio stream at fault, because I muxed the AVI into a separate MP4 without the audio and had the same problem.

@Chibi Jasmin: used the h263 on first pass, Modulated on the second pass, just like the guide said. Still didn't work.

So that's where I'm at right now. Any new ideas?

Shah Mat
Lord of the Land Of COnfusion (LOCO)

Chibi Jasmin · 25th April 2002, 16:57

I'll tell you a third time:

It does not work with XVid containing anything else than h263 quantizer....if you chose modulated it alternates between h263 and mpeg matrix depending on quantizer....choose h263 on both passes and mux with mp4creator and it should work (with ISO decoder off actually).

And congratulations for "finding" that iso decoder option...I told you about it...

DeXT · 25th April 2002, 21:02

@Chibi: this SDL.dll error message is at the LOG file generated by wmp4player (sorry I don't remember the exact file name). Open it and you'll find the error message, provided you have the SDL.dll in the same directory as wmp4player.

shahmat · 25th April 2002, 21:24

@Chibi Jasmin: Okay, my bad, I just misunderstood you. When you said "iso encoder" I thought you meant the XviD codec settings (which isn't in any of the codec menus I looked at, of course). I didn't play around with the player debug stuff (as I thought I didn't need it) and I didn't see it in there the first time through. As for the h263, the guide said to use modulated for the second pass; however I have been using h263 (also per the guide) for first pass so I thought that's what you meant. Thanks for the additional clarification. I'll try it tonight and see what happens.

Shah Mat
Lord of the Land Of COnfusion (LOCO)

neo_sapien · 29th April 2002, 08:37

I just downloaded the newest WMP4player (the one that doom9 added today), then downloaded a sample mp4 clone wars trailer, disabled "Use ISO decoder", and it now works perfectly, except zoom and full screen. Those don't work.

when "Use ISO decoder" is enabled, I get a css-like shitwindow. It looks like a q3 engine game when it crashes, all sorts of little icon-like things all over the place.

So no b-frames on wmp4player yet, correct? Do qpel and/or GMC work? I'm going to pick up some mp4 tests now.

neo_sapien · 29th April 2002, 09:28

Okay, I did 4 tests:

Test 1:
B-frames, GMC, Qpel
Psychovisuals at normal
DivX 5.01
1-pass quality based
AAC audio (AACMachine)

WMP4player won't play it

Test 2:
GMC, Qpel
Psychovisuals at normal
DivX 5.01
1-pass quality based
AAC audio (AACMachine)

WMP4player won't play it

Test 3:
GMC
Psychovisuals at normal
DivX 5.01
1-pass quality based
AAC audio (AACMachine)

WMP4player won't play it

Test 4:
Psychovisuals at normal
DivX 5.01
1-pass quality based
AAC audio (AACMachine)

WMP4player will play it

All tests were run with "Use ISO decoder" unchecked. That settles that, I guess. No MPEG-4 tools, but psy works.

Chibi Jasmin · 29th April 2002, 13:23

Quote:

Originally posted by DeXT
@Chibi: this SDL.dll error message is at the LOG file generated by wmp4player (sorry I don't remember the exact file name). Open it and you'll find the error message, provided you have the SDL.dll in the same directory as wmp4player.

Okay, thanx :-)

DeXT · 29th April 2002, 15:25

Quote:

I just downloaded the newest WMP4player (the one that doom9 added today), then downloaded a sample mp4 clone wars trailer, disabled "Use ISO decoder", and it now works perfectly, except zoom and full screen. Those don't work.

when "Use ISO decoder" is enabled, I get a css-like shitwindow. It looks like a q3 engine game when it crashes, all sorts of little icon-like things all over the place.

So no b-frames on wmp4player yet, correct? Do qpel and/or GMC work? I'm going to pick up some mp4 tests now.

Zoom and Full Screen works fine for me, with or without the ISO decoder. For full screen you'll have to press Alt+Enter since the menu item isn't implemented yet.

About the ISO decoder "garbage", remember this decoder is MUCH slower than the internal (divx) decoder, so I think this just means you don't have enough machine to play it in ISO mode. Wmp4player tends to output garbage when that's the case.

About B-frames, Qpel and GMC, well the internal (divx) decoder only supports Simple Profile I think, so any Advanced Simple Profile feature is not supported. The ISO decoder may support it, though (haven't tried it), buth with a severe performance penalty of course.

neo_sapien · 1st May 2002, 17:18

Not machine enough? In that case, DVD 2.0 standalone players with the capability to decode MPEG-4 ISO are going to be rather expensive.

Athlon XP 1500+
512MB PC266 DDR RAM Mushkin Basic
Geforce3 Ti200
WinXP Pro
120GB RAID 0 array (2xIBM60GXP)
Audigy Platinum

And etc etc. Everything is consumer state of the art minus 6 months.

DeXT · 2nd May 2002, 00:16

Well I think you haven't got enough machine to play with the ISO reference decoder in real-time, and no one can, since this is an un-optimized code which is only suitable for tests. So you'll have to wait for a good, optimized ISO implementation.

BTW in everwicked I saw the new version (0.9.3.10) uses XviD decoder instead of OpenDivX, so it's faster and also support more Advanced Profile features. I'll try to download and compile ASAP.

neo_sapien · 2nd May 2002, 08:48

Yeah I know, just acting a bit indignant. My bad. Would an XviD decoder support DivX 5.01?

Chibi Jasmin · 2nd May 2002, 10:44

Quote:

Originally posted by DeXT
Well I think you haven't got enough machine to play with the ISO reference decoder in real-time, and no one can, since this is an un-optimized code which is only suitable for tests. So you'll have to wait for a good, optimized ISO implementation.

BTW in everwicked I saw the new version (0.9.3.10) uses XviD decoder instead of OpenDivX, so it's faster and also support more Advanced Profile features. I'll try to download and compile ASAP.

Great, can't wait for your binaries!

24th April 2002, 23:40	#1 \| Link
shahmat X-Coding DVDs since 1999 Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: The Land Of COnfusion Posts: 21	Anyone else having a problem with WMP4Player? I've downloaded this thing from both Doom9 and Rarewares and each time it crashes. I don't think it's the MP4 file I encoded, as when I encoded and muxed it there weren't any problems, but every time I open it in WMP4Player, the thing crashes, usually taking down wmp4client.exe first. Checking the log, the only problem I see is something like: 16:34:49.647-plugin-3: Can't find export point in plugin SDL.dll So I'm guessing something's screwed up with the Simple DirectMedia Layer. I've run this program on two separate Win2K machines and a box running WinXP Pro. Does anybody know what's going on or is everybody else's version of WMP4 working just fine and it's only me that's having problems? Shah Mat Lord of the Land Of COnfusion (LOCO)

25th April 2002, 14:50	#7 \| Link
shahmat X-Coding DVDs since 1999 Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: The Land Of COnfusion Posts: 21	Hmm... @DeXT: I should have said this earlier but I forgot. I am using an XviD encoded video stream rather than DivX 5 (gave me all kinds of muxing problems when I forgot to change the FourCC), and as far as I know, XviD doesn't support B-frames yet. I encoded everything as per Doom9's MP4 guide, so anything you see on there is what I did (except subtitles...) As I said before, I tested this and got the same error ("Client Session Crashed") on three separate machines, although each was using Win2K or derivatives (XP). Could this maybe be a Win2K incompatibility? I tried using the Win98 compatibility and got the same errors... Would have attached the system dump info when it crashed, except Windows wouldn't let me copy it. @neo-sapien: you're lucky, I don't even get the window. Occasionally it won't crash outright, it'll just sit there with the green "play" button lit up but nothing happens. If I play just the AAC audio track, it works fine, however, but video usually always crashes it... Oh well, guess I'll just have to use XviD AVIs till MP4 is into late beta/RC stage... Shah Mat Lord of the Land Of COnfusion (LOCO)

25th April 2002, 16:57	#10 \| Link
Chibi Jasmin Registered User Join Date: Oct 2001 Posts: 800	I'll tell you a third time: It does not work with XVid containing anything else than h263 quantizer....if you chose modulated it alternates between h263 and mpeg matrix depending on quantizer....choose h263 on both passes and mux with mp4creator and it should work (with ISO decoder off actually). And congratulations for "finding" that iso decoder option...I told you about it... Last edited by Chibi Jasmin; 25th April 2002 at 17:05.

2nd May 2002, 00:16	#18 \| Link
DeXT Registered User Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Spain Posts: 307	Well I think you haven't got enough machine to play with the ISO reference decoder in real-time, and no one can, since this is an un-optimized code which is only suitable for tests. So you'll have to wait for a good, optimized ISO implementation. BTW in everwicked I saw the new version (0.9.3.10) uses XviD decoder instead of OpenDivX, so it's faster and also support more Advanced Profile features. I'll try to download and compile ASAP. Last edited by DeXT; 2nd May 2002 at 00:29.

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25th April 2002, 06:36	#2 \| Link
neo_sapien Registered User Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: USA Posts: 249	Mine isn't working either. The video window appears, but it just stalls on what appears to be the first frame.

25th April 2002, 08:48	#4 \| Link
neo_sapien Registered User Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: USA Posts: 249	the movie was encoded with DivX 5.01, and I have the DivX 5.01 codec installed.

25th April 2002, 11:30	#5 \| Link
Chibi Jasmin Registered User Join Date: Oct 2001 Posts: 800	Current WMP4Player only plays movies encoded with DivX5(.01), if no b-frames, no gmc and no q-pel options were used...also you can try turning debug/iso encoder on/off...for me it works iso decoder turned off... XVid on the other hand works fine, but only if h263 matrix is used...this is still all alpha software, don't forget that! BTW: You have the sdl.dll in the player's dir?

25th April 2002, 11:39	#6 \| Link
DeXT Registered User Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Spain Posts: 307	@shahmat: this SDL.dll error is perfectly normal. When you run wmp4player it starts looking at all the dll files in the current directory, searching for plugins. SDL.dll is not a plugin, so that's what this error means. I think your problem may be due to either a) a wrong MP4 encoded stream (perhaps it's a DivX 5.01 fault, perhaps you are using unsupported features such as B-frames or GMC?), or b) some kind of incompatibility between wmp4player and your system. Wmp4player is still very early beta and it may not work properly on all configurations. @kastro & neo_sapien: wmp4player does not make any use of the system installed codecs, it has its own mpeg-4 decoding engine. So this has no relation with this problem. I'd suggest you to use a XviD encoded video which seems more compatible with the current tools.

25th April 2002, 15:13	#8 \| Link
Chibi Jasmin Registered User Join Date: Oct 2001 Posts: 800	shahmat: well, xvid movies only work here, if muxed with mp4creator and using h263 quantizer....mp4creator screws frame rate if it's not integer. That's how far I got. DeXT: What is normal about the sdl.dll error? I never had it...

25th April 2002, 16:52	#9 \| Link
shahmat X-Coding DVDs since 1999 Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: The Land Of COnfusion Posts: 21	Okay, here's a little update. I played around with it some more and I found a setting on the help menu (debug tab) called "use ISO decoder" which actually gave me a video window! The bad news is that the video was horribly garbled, little green blocks everywhere (ever watched a DVD rip without pulling off the CSS first?). So that was a no-go. However, without another player to compare it to, I don't know if the problem is in the player's decoder or if something got screwed up while the video was being muxed into the MP4 stream. The original XviD AVI looks fine, and I don't think it's the audio stream at fault, because I muxed the AVI into a separate MP4 without the audio and had the same problem. @Chibi Jasmin: used the h263 on first pass, Modulated on the second pass, just like the guide said. Still didn't work. So that's where I'm at right now. Any new ideas? Shah Mat Lord of the Land Of COnfusion (LOCO)

25th April 2002, 21:02	#11 \| Link
DeXT Registered User Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Spain Posts: 307	@Chibi: this SDL.dll error message is at the LOG file generated by wmp4player (sorry I don't remember the exact file name). Open it and you'll find the error message, provided you have the SDL.dll in the same directory as wmp4player.

25th April 2002, 21:24	#12 \| Link
shahmat X-Coding DVDs since 1999 Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: The Land Of COnfusion Posts: 21	@Chibi Jasmin: Okay, my bad, I just misunderstood you. When you said "iso encoder" I thought you meant the XviD codec settings (which isn't in any of the codec menus I looked at, of course). I didn't play around with the player debug stuff (as I thought I didn't need it) and I didn't see it in there the first time through. As for the h263, the guide said to use modulated for the second pass; however I have been using h263 (also per the guide) for first pass so I thought that's what you meant. Thanks for the additional clarification. I'll try it tonight and see what happens. Shah Mat Lord of the Land Of COnfusion (LOCO)

29th April 2002, 08:37	#13 \| Link
neo_sapien Registered User Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: USA Posts: 249	I just downloaded the newest WMP4player (the one that doom9 added today), then downloaded a sample mp4 clone wars trailer, disabled "Use ISO decoder", and it now works perfectly, except zoom and full screen. Those don't work. when "Use ISO decoder" is enabled, I get a css-like shitwindow. It looks like a q3 engine game when it crashes, all sorts of little icon-like things all over the place. So no b-frames on wmp4player yet, correct? Do qpel and/or GMC work? I'm going to pick up some mp4 tests now.

29th April 2002, 09:28	#14 \| Link
neo_sapien Registered User Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: USA Posts: 249	Okay, I did 4 tests: Test 1: B-frames, GMC, Qpel Psychovisuals at normal DivX 5.01 1-pass quality based AAC audio (AACMachine) WMP4player won't play it Test 2: GMC, Qpel Psychovisuals at normal DivX 5.01 1-pass quality based AAC audio (AACMachine) WMP4player won't play it Test 3: GMC Psychovisuals at normal DivX 5.01 1-pass quality based AAC audio (AACMachine) WMP4player won't play it Test 4: Psychovisuals at normal DivX 5.01 1-pass quality based AAC audio (AACMachine) WMP4player will play it All tests were run with "Use ISO decoder" unchecked. That settles that, I guess. No MPEG-4 tools, but psy works.

1st May 2002, 17:18	#17 \| Link
neo_sapien Registered User Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: USA Posts: 249	Not machine enough? In that case, DVD 2.0 standalone players with the capability to decode MPEG-4 ISO are going to be rather expensive. Athlon XP 1500+ 512MB PC266 DDR RAM Mushkin Basic Geforce3 Ti200 WinXP Pro 120GB RAID 0 array (2xIBM60GXP) Audigy Platinum And etc etc. Everything is consumer state of the art minus 6 months.

2nd May 2002, 08:48	#19 \| Link
neo_sapien Registered User Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: USA Posts: 249	Yeah I know, just acting a bit indignant. My bad. Would an XviD decoder support DivX 5.01?