x264 produces gray frames at the end of a video.... why??

[Zhelkus]

While encoding AVI files into x264, at the end of the videos I've been getting gray frames. And these aren't few, some of them accumulate up to 20 gray frames at the end.

Why is this happening?

[foxyshadis]

How are you encoding them, and how are you decoding them? That can make a huge difference.

[Zhelkus]

I'm using MeGUI which also uses Avisynth. On avisynth I'm accessing the AVI file through directshowsource. I'm using sharktooth's x264 "HQ Insane" profile set at 450 kbps.

[alanzeratul]

Myabe your source files are wmv coding with VFR?..and you might use "convertfps" in AVS.

[foxyshadis]

DirectShowSource causes all sorts of bizarreness.... For me, it'll sometimes repeat a scene faster and faster (dropping more frames from it each cycle) before ending in grey. Any way you can convert it to, say, a lossless avi?

[jvrobert]

I've noticed this as well, though for me it's at the beginning of the video. There'll be blips of several gray frames on and off for about 2 seconds, then it plays normally.

Seems like it started happening with a recent version of x264, but not sure. I'm encoding HuffyYUV encoded AVI files, and it worked fine until a few days ago.

[Zhelkus]

Hmmm... I was also thinking that the cause could be directshowsource, but my source file is an AVI encoded with x264(single pass, quantisizer=0, my approach to lossless video) and I'm running extra filters in the script file that won't work if I use avisource.

I could also rip every frame into a folder and use imagereader. But that would be like blowing up a 40MB video file into a 300MB folder merely consisting of JPGs. And I hate to resort to that, cuz I've done it before.

[Zhelkus]

I'm running extra filters in the script file that won't work if I use avisource.
Scratch that. I was wrong. I finally got what I wanted but the problem was never fixed. I simply re-encoded the files into AVIs with a lossless encoder (Alparysoft) and then used avisource. Basically a workaround.

Pitty about the directshow bug. What's even worse is that MeGUI uses directshowsource as a default when creating AVS scripts.