Color errors when playing an AVI video on VLC media player

[avz10]

I captured nearly 60 VHS cassettes with VirtualDub using a JVC HR-S8960 which has a Time Base Corrector with Digital Noise Reduction, did some basic cutting in VirtualDub and eventually had approximately 300 clips! (There were a lot of duplications, as I made a separate series per child). I used the Lagarith codec to compress. This was hours and hours of work. I have grouped them in separate groups and want now with different AviSynth scripts to improve the quality as much as I can. (This was my second attempt-I made an error of some sort a previous time and the quality was very bad.)

Unfortunately, I did not check the audio-video sync and they are out in quite a large number of clips. After researching, asking, etc; I found that the easiest way to solve the sync issue is to play a clip in VLC and with the shortcut "J" or "K" find the difference. The value that I got, I would then load in VD and saved. I corrected quite a few clips, eventually encoded them with TMPG and played on TV. The results were quite good.

I am currently working on my laptop as we are moving and I am in a different part of the country. I therefore do not have my best equpment, but still ufficient. Space is a problem. All the clips are stored on a 1 TB external drive. When I practiced, I copied some clips on to the hard drive of the laptop, played on VLC and then saved also on the laptop, then sent the corrected clip to the hard drive. No problems.

My laptop:
Fujitsu Lifebook s760
Windows 7 Professional (x64) Service Pack 1 (build 7601)
2.13 gigahertz Intel Core i3 M 330
Multi-core (2 total)
Hyper-threaded (4 total)
3892 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory

Last night I started in all earnest. I deleted my current copy of VLC and installed version 2.1.1 (x64). Playing a video, made the colors change every few milliseconds. I changed to 2.1.2 (x32), then also changed to some of the older versions who did not want to play the clip due to the Lagarith codec. I tried a number of clips. All made the same error. Unfortunately, I do not remember what previous version of VLC I was using.

I use this clip as an example:
General
Complete name : C:\Users\User\Videos\1a. Projek Des 2012\1986\troue 1.avi
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
Format profile : OpenDML
File size : 2.14 GiB
Duration : 5mn 54s
Overall bit rate : 51.9 Mbps
Writing library : VirtualDub build 32842/release

Video
ID : 0
Format : Lagarith
Codec ID : LAGS
Duration : 5mn 54s
Bit rate : 50.4 Mbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 5:4
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Standard : PAL
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:2
Bit depth : 8 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 4.861
Stream size : 2.08 GiB (97%)

Audio
ID : 1
Format : PCM
Format settings, Endianness : Little
Format settings, Sign : Signed
Codec ID : 1
Duration : 5mn 54s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 64.9 MiB (3%)
Alignment : Aligned on interleaves
Interleave, duration : 40 ms (1.00 video frame)
Interleave, preload duration : 500 ms

Examples:
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii62/avz10/2013-12-13032336_zps4e79510c.jpg (http://s261.photobucket.com/user/avz10/media/2013-12-13032336_zps4e79510c.jpg.html)

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii62/avz10/2013-12-13032536_zps0bc93395.jpg (http://s261.photobucket.com/user/avz10/media/2013-12-13032536_zps0bc93395.jpg.html)

I do not want to change over to RGB at this stage and I suppose the problem lies with the color space. Is there another color space that I need to change to before I can play it in VLC? I do not think MPC has this easy shortcut ability.

Is there anyone that can help?

[nhakobian]

To me, this looks like a decoding error. Maybe the Lagarith decoder in that VLC version is a little buggy?

Have you tried MPC+HC with LavFilters? While both VLC and and LAVFilters use libavcodec for decoding, maybe its a bug that has been already fixed?

[foxyshadis]

I guarantee that's a chroma decoding error. The green frame is U=0, V=0; the blue frame is U=255, V=0, and I also see bright orange and magenta frames. The good news is that it won't affect your conversions with TMPGEnc at all, as long as you aren't re-encoding the video in VLC. It's annoying, but it's relatively benign.

I can verify the problem, I'll post a bug to their tracker.

[avz10]

Yes, it is the annoying factor that irritates me- I try to sync the lips, but then the color keeps on changing. I suppose I will get used to it. VLC hasn't perhaps got a black and white setting?

[RocketJet]

If you don't want to see the colours, go to:

Tools - Effects and Filters - Video Effects

and set Saturation to zero.