XviD Playback and Overlay/Renderer Issue.

[LeonMcNichol]

I'm not sure what I did wrong, but I know I did it. When I try to play back XviD video now, I get blank screens. (Either part of the desktop shows through or the zoomplayer display is only there.) I can correct this, if I mess with the Player's Settings (choosing a different renderer or force overlay mixer) or if I change forced color in the decoder. (This of course causes an instability and explorer crashes.) This of course is a recent thing and I can't figure out what I did wrong. I can do a temp fix, but I like to be able to test files in other media players, including WMP. Does someone know what I did wrong? I know a couple of days ago I messed with my settings in zoomplayer to figure out my MPEG2 play back problem, which in turn was caused from installing Nero6. Which I uninstalled and reinstalled Nero5.5.

I'm using Nic's build 07-16-03.

Oh and since we are on the subject of playback, when I open an xvid file in virtualdub and press play, I get distorted video. Visible blocks that look like specs or a bad filter. Kind of like what it would look like if you used neirest neighbor for resizing. Of course this doesn't show when you seek or press preview to play as well as if you convert the file. I'm just curious about this and the b-frame decoder lag problem. What causes those things.

[LeonMcNichol]

This is rather annoying, but I've narrowed it down to can't view back YV12 in XviD. For some odd reason. This because if I leave it default or force YV12 I get a blank screen. I don't know why I can't view it anymore. I must have installed something or messed with a setting that disabled this. FFDSHOW does not work either, I get the same thing.

I have a Radeon 7500 64MB video card. If that'll help.

[Gazza]

Try de-selecting yv12 in ffdshow and re-testing. I'm not an expert on video cards but maybe your card doesn't handle yv12 too well. Maybe you need to consider a driver update?

I have had vy12 de-selected for months now as it puts too high a load on my video card and processor.

[unmei]

i have a radeon 7500 64mb as well and i use the catalyst driver 6.13.10.6166 dated 15.aug.2002 (a year old!) - no problems with YV12 at all, never had...radeon is just a baby in these things :)

"I have had vy12 de-selected for months now as it puts too high a load on my video card and processor."
...are you kidding or do i just misundersand you ? if your card can overlay VY12 it will take _less_ processing power, since no colorspace conversion is needed (all mpeg-4 codecs store in YV12 space)

i just did the FFDShow test :
YV12 : ca 38 % CPU
YUY2 : ca 46 % CPU
RGB32 : 72% CPU
-postprocessing & all filters off
-testfile 640x480 25fps xvid
now with soft SSA
(will not output YV12 but YUY2, probably because VSfilter overlays the the subtitles in this plane)
YUY2 : 68%
RGB32: 97% and framedrops like hell, ca 12 fps remain

sorry i cant help with the issue, but the advice not to use (VY12 even tho you could) is just contraproductive. Only switch to another colorspace if you cannot resolve the problems otherwise. YV12 is a must if your card supports it (and my R7500 can, so yours should be able too ;)

[LeonMcNichol]

After a few uninstalls/delete/reinstalls of both ffdshow and xvid and playing with a few settings, I found out that I can get ffdshow to play xvid yv12 if it's check, but xvid will not. (Leaving it unforced and forcing yv12.) Plus, I noticed that Windows now is slow trying to read the files. Such at for details, properties, and thumbnails. The sad thing, it worked before and for some odd reason, it's now working now. That's what I want to know. What did I do wrong? What did I install that caused this? Nero6 maybe? ><

I've reinstalled the original video card drivers from the disc, but I guess I could give an updated drivers a shot. I'll get them when this download is finished in about 1.5 hours and see what happens. *sigh* This is agrivating. I don't want to reformat. I have too much stuff on the HD and not enough cdr/time to do this. ><

[LeonMcNichol]

Originally posted by unmei
sorry i cant help with the issue, but the advice not to use (VY12 even tho you could) is just contraproductive. Only switch to another colorspace if you cannot resolve the problems otherwise. YV12 is a must if your card supports it (and my R7500 can, so yours should be able too ;)

The thing is, it did. I don't know what stopped it from being able to. >< I can use YV12 now with ffdshow, but now I can't use it with xvid's built in decoder. This is flusterating.

*mumbles*Why do i always get problems with things?

[Gazza]

unmei,

I agree that vy12 is the preferred option as you don't need to worry about translating between colorspaces. However, when I selected vy12 in the past through ffdshow the result was a 'half speed' video and maxed out processor. The fix was to de-select yv12 and go with another colorspace. I haven't tried recently though. Maybe there is something else I need to do within ffdshow to get vy12 to work properly?

[unmei]

Originally posted by Gazza
Maybe there is something else I need to do within ffdshow to get vy12 to work properly?
i wouldnt know of anything special, im not fiddling with FFDShow.

ususally i have the postprocessing on automatic or off. Others, puh... dunno..Xvid decode with libavcodec, IDCT: Xvid. No tabs checked (ie no further processing)
in misc, i have workaround bugs on autodetect + xvid/divx qpel bug. but i dont even know if this is ok or i should turn them off :D

[Selur]

Also try some older graphiccard drivers,..
And try another movie with another resolution,...

[LeonMcNichol]

Well, I grabbed the latest drivers on ati's site and installed them. This seemed to have fix my problem. I no longer need to force a different color conversion to get xvid to work. I still think it was something to do with a setting I fudged up somewhere along the line, because this only happened to me within the last 2 days. (Which, incidentally was about the time I uninstalled nero6...) Like I said, it used to work. *shrugs* Oh well, guess it's fixed and I no longer have a problem. Thank GOD. Thank you people too, for helping me. I really appreciate it. :D