xvid conspiracy, help

[chilledinsanity]

Alright, I've done many tests now to establish proof that I'm not crazy. I am currently using Nic's build for 1/11/02. It has given me superb quality before, however I'm still interested in trying out more recent additions. I tried using Koepi's build and there was color bleeding, painfully obvious keyframe marks, sometimes pixel bleeding, and just crummier in general. I originally thought it was just that build, but now I'm pretty sure something else more sinister is going on. I recently re-installed Windows XP (my only OS at the moment) after a clean format of my hard drive and decided to install Nic's LATEST build (as of about a week ago) and got the EXACT SAME problem! I ended up having to revert back to the 1/11/02 build to get my movies looking good again.

Now most recently, I decided to install 3ivx to do some testing and it caused my Xvid playback to turn to craptastic quality. Once I uninstalled the codec, everything went back to normal. Can someone explain to me what the hell is going on? This isn't a subtle difference for anyone who can detect visual quality. I notice this stuff right off while casually watching something, not after staring at the image intently. I've tried this on multiple players (WMP, Zoomplayer, BSplayer) and have set the xvid playback settings to default every time I change something, but it seems to make no difference. Any advice would be apprecitated, I hate having to cling on to this seemingly magical build of Xvid.

[gldblade]

Are you using newer builds to playback movies encoded with older builds? Or are you saying that movies encoded with newer builds are of bad quality?

If you're trying to playback older movies, maybe Nic's build from 1/11/02 had a bug that made it incompatible with newer builds (i.e. a problem that got fixed later on)?

I don't know about 3ivx, but I've experienced the phenomenon also.

[Animaniac]

Don't use 3vix. It hijacks the DirectShow graph and decodes everything even when you disable it.

[chilledinsanity]

I haven't tried encoding with newer builds yet, I've gotten scared by what they do to my old ones. That's a good point though, I should run some tests. Since almost all my movies are encoded with the older build. If this is the case is there some way to maybe "update" them to be compatible with the newer builds or do any of the newer builds have backwards compatibility?

[chilledinsanity]

Okay, I ran a test using Kopei's latest build. I made a videoclip of a small sample that I had already made using the older Xvid build. The newer one played fine. As expected, the older one displayed mad artifacts. However, with the newer build installed, I had Virtualdub save a specific frame from both clips as a bitmap. When I compared them back to back, they look EXACTLY the same. This makes me think that all isn't lost with my older videoclips and that there might be someway to get them to play correctly. Since everything looks fine in Virtualdub, would the playback filter be the problem that I might be able to remedy?

[Sirber]

Try FFDShow. It's always working (when it's working correctly ;) )

[chilledinsanity]

Okay, I tried FFdshow with the newer build and it solved the more glaring problems, specifically the color bleeding, but it still doesn't have the quality levels the old Xvid codec does when playing stuff back. Similarly colored things look much blockier and I can still tell where keyframes are, although it's not as obvious. Any suggestions on specific settings to use or something else to try?

[Selur]

just a commend, sorry:

"Don't use 3vix. It hijacks the DirectShow graph and decodes everything even when you disable it."
B$hit,.. works fine on all my systems, got 3ivX/DivX/Xvid and ffdshow installed and I can switch between them without a problem,...

[kastro68]

Go to Miscellaneous page in ffdshow, there is a section that says WORK AROUND ENCODER BUGS. Try ticking "Autodetect", or one of the other options.

[kilg0r3]

You might also try playing with the varios idct routines. especially simple, xvid, normal.

[gldblade]

B$hit,.. works fine on all my systems, got 3ivX/DivX/Xvid and ffdshow installed and I can switch between them without a problem When I installed 3ivx, all of my XviD movies became really grainy. At first I thought it was extra "detail," but I came to realize that something was very wrong.

I uninstalled 3ivx, and my encodes becames nice and crisp. I reinstalled 3ivx because I was skeptical, but it happened yet again.

It was a long time ago, however, and it was before ffdshow showed up. Maybe things have changed?

[mf]

For color bleeding:
http://mf.onthanet.com/3ivx/

I wanted to make a 3ivx shamepage of that page, but I stuck at 2 screenshots. Still enough shame for 3ivx not to use it ;).

[RadicalEd]

Originally posted by mf
For color bleeding:
http://mf.onthanet.com/3ivx/

I wanted to make a 3ivx shamepage of that page, but I stuck at 2 screenshots. Still enough shame for 3ivx not to use it ;).

actually that looks more like the strange problem that xvid's qpel causes in the 3ivx, divx 5.05, and ffdshow (only when xvid workarounds is checked) decoders.

divx 5.05 decoder (http://www.geocities.com/radicaled0/divx.txt)
xvid.dll decoding (http://www.geocities.com/radicaled0/xvid.txt)
:o :\

[mf]

Originally posted by RadicalEd
actually that looks more like the strange problem that xvid's qpel causes in the 3ivx, divx 5.05, and ffdshow (only when xvid workarounds is checked) decoders.

divx 5.05 decoder (http://www.geocities.com/radicaled0/divx.txt)
xvid.dll decoding (http://www.geocities.com/radicaled0/xvid.txt)
:o :\
It does look similar yes, however my ffdshow settings in the "lavc" screenshot were defaults (no xvid.dll decoding), with a very old ffdshow build, which didn't have qpel workarounds. So I'd say this problem lies with 3ivx.