DivX Woes

Littletinyman

Hi - not really sure if this should be on this board, but I'll fire ahead regardless:

Ever since I got a replacement hard drive and re-set up all my stuff, any DivX's I play suffer from occasional skipping. I've tried both 3.11 alpha and 5.02 codecs, and both Windows Media Player and the DivX Player that comes with the 5.02 bundle. The stuff that's different from before is as follows:

- New hard-drive (it was suggested to me that it might be running in PIO mode but I can't seem to find where to change this in the BIOS - edit: I can disregard this theory now as I've found this setting in Device Manager and it's using Ultra DMA Mode 5)
- Upgraded detonators (from 40.72 to 41.09)
- Upgraded monitor drivers/colour profile thingy (just started using the proper ones instead of the plug in play, highly irrelevant I suspect but anyway..)

I just tried playing a DivX off a CD there to check the hard drive theory, and the same thing happens.

So, any suggestions? I'm pretty much stumped, short of reinstalling the VIA 4-in-1 drivers [ edit: this didn't work either ] which I'm about to do.

pickarooney

Have you installed the DivX 4.12 bundle? This contains (hacked) codecs that are not present in DivX 5.x Interweb/kazaa should have it, if not, I can mail it to you. If that still doesn't work, install GSpot, which will tell you what video/audio codecs are needed to read any AVI/DivX file.

Inspector Gadget

...I have an old 400MHz PII here (am typing this on it) running Win2K and I find DivX movies skip on it occasionally when playing in Media Player 7. By using Media Player 6.4 (Start -> Run -> "mplayer2" -> OK) they run flawlessly.

Maybe this will work for you?
Domhnall.

GUI

me and me m8s are big into divx..
and by FAR the best superior quality is obtained in divx by using the 4 player called "the playa"
the tricks are this..

turn the screen res down to 640x480@16bit colour.
launch the playa..
and then open the movie
go full screen
after 2 seconds..aspect ratio should be perfect
and flawless divx

pickarooney

BSPlayer kicks the Playa's arse, in fairness - supports subtitles,
winamp plugins (try DFX :eek: ), has handy one-key shortcuts, and doesn't hog virtual memory like The Playa.

Littletinyman

Thanks for the advice guys, unfortunately the same thing happens under DivX 4.12, even when using The Playa and scaling my colour depth and resolution down.

I'm just fiddling about with GSpot here, and the two DivXs I'm using to test this the whole time come up with the same codec 'details', here's what it says:

Format: DivX 3 Fast-Motion, 4CC:DIV4

GSpot has found DivX ;-) MPEG-4 Fast-Motion, which is installed on your system, is a 'primary' match, and based on that, the video for this file should play fine.

DirectShow is apparently also able to play this file as well (see 'DirectShow Renderer', below) though it has selected a different codec, the DivX Decoder Filter, whose primary 4cc (DIVX) does not match the file's 4cc (DIV4). This is because the codec claims to be able to decompress 10 other formats besides DIVX, and this format is number 5 on that list.

This is usually not a problem, but under certain circumstances there may be a performance (quality) issue

Anything amiss there?

Oh and also, just so you know, I'm not trying to view DivXs on a rickety old machine - I'm on an AMD XP2100+, 512MB RAM and a GF4 Ti4600.

pickarooney

Just to clarify the problem - is it frame skipping or audio skipping?

Just for a laugh, try renaming the file with a .divx extension and see does the playa handle it any differently.

Littletinyman

Both. About once every five minutes, the audio and video just skips forward maybe a second or so. And no - changing the extension to .divx didn't work

GUI

pickarooney
u got a url for that player thanks
im interested :-)

tribble

Just BTW - what's the spec of your machine?
(an obvious one but WTF)

And what did you format your hard drive as?
NTFS has problems with fragmentation BIG TIME
(though seen as how you got the same problem using CD-FS this probably aint it)

b

GUI

you can rule out ntfs man
it stores data more efficently then fat32
it uses 64kilobyte clusters..

i know what your talking about access time ..
but the problem usually due to hard drive timings,insufficent configuration/tweaking of video card driver

i might get divx hardware decoder card to
benchmark it against software decoding..

software decoding runs perfect for me though.

Littletinyman

There's a thought - that's something else that's changed since I got the new HDD... it's formatted as NTFS whereas the old one was formatted as FAT32. My system spec, as I said earlier, is:

AMD XP2100+ @ 1.733ghz
512MB PC2700 DDR RAM
GF4 Ti4600

I'm hardly underpowered

pickarooney

GUI_XP - oddly enough, www.bsplayer.com will get you it

Littletinyman, don't have much clue what else it could be, I'm afraid. Is this happening with all DivX files, or with a couple?
I realise it's hard to say for sure without sitting through 20 hours of films and going "was that a skip, or one of those fansay special effects?". For the two sample files you were talking about, what bitrates are they encoded at, and what size are they? You never know, I might even have the same files and can test them on my setup...

leeroybrown

Considering that a DivX will generally be written to the HDD in one file write it should be spread pretty optimally for NTFS. I doubt a good defrag will make much of a difference.

NTFS should perform slightly better than FAT32 overall. The only real reason to run FAT32 now is the lack of Linux write support for NTFS.

Its more than likely something else.

Littletinyman

Pickarooney - unfortunately I don't have many large DivX files to test it on, I'm just using two to test it which is far from ideal I know; I lost a lot of DivX's when I had to get my hard drive replaced. They skip in different places all the time though, which suggest that it isn't the file, or could that happen with a bad encode too?

The files I'm using to test it are a DivX of The Matrix (578MB; 459kb/s) and a CS video that I very much doubt you have (http://nhw.vigilante.net/fragwhore.htm) which is 98.3MB and 1102kb/s.

kmb

HI, What motherboard do you have as i had the same problem with a abit kg7 raid using 2*30 gig drives as raid but once i broke system up all was ok,stutters were gone and i also had 512ddr ram with 1800xp and all updated drivers .

Littletinyman

I've an MSI KT3 Ultra2 - I don't think it's the mobo though because it worked fine before I got my replacement hard drive and set up everything again.

drrnwbb

bsplayer has a new url: http://www.bsplay.com/

dw

pickarooney

For what it's worth, I have the same copy of The Matrix, and it hasn't skipped either time I watched it, so it's not a problem with the file(s). Does the hard drive light come on whenever it's skipping?

Littletinyman

Pickarooney - it's worth quite a bit, it's confirmation that something really IS wrong with my setup

The hard drive light flashes intermittently constantly throughout DivX play, and doesn't deviate from it's normal 'routine' when one of the skips happens. My CPU usage does go flying up tho:



Does this ring any bells or suggest anything to anyone? I'm suspecting that I've got some weirdass codec conflicty shite going on at this stage

OSiriS

Just a quick question, how how exactly did you install the codecs, in what order?
A while ago I ran into trouble completelyout of nowhere with colour being completely messed up. I read on a forum somewhere that the recent codecs actually delete the hacked file from your machine, so once you have 5.01 installed you should install 3.11 over it. Worked for me anyway.
Maybe you've tried this already though ...

Littletinyman

The problem was present after an install of the DivX 5 bundle on a recently installed WinXP Pro, and I've done so much dicking around with different versions that I'm sure I must have installed 3.11 over 5 at some stage - I'll try it though.

Asok

it isnt your mobo safe to say because i`m having the same problem on my pc with divx's i encoded they skip few secs mobo is an asus as73333 i think all updated drivers and codecs etc xp2000 only 128 ddr ram,thing is though when i bring them home they play fine on my brothers pc which is lower spec so tbh i`m confused but if i figure it out i`ll post it

Littletinyman

Sounds like the same problem... a codec screw-up rather than a hardware problem. If i figure it out I'll post as well

pickarooney

That's true about the later divx installation deleting the earlier ones - when divX was more undergorund they incorporated a hacked microsoft codec, and when they became a more commercial entity, they were obliged firstly to remove it from later installations (4.x) and then include something to delete the hacked codec in divx5. If you can take the trouble to reinstalle verything from scratch, install them in a last-one-first sequence, and then install the Nimo codec pack on top of it. Do this before installing WMP 7, as I think it includes some codecs that WinXP prefers. I don't run Win XP myself, but I've seen it do all sorts of bollocks with its preferred file handlers.
Just a note on the sudden CPU surges - are you running any background processes which may cause this (e.g., Kazaa, eMule, Anti-virus updates, even SETI) ?

livEwirE

SOLUTION:

Uninstall and divx players/divx codec bundles you have on your system and restart.

Install the following:


NIMO CODEC PACK http://www.btinternet.com/~nimosiro/
DIVX POWER PLAYER - search on google


All problems with divx playback should be resolved...!

Littletinyman

Originally posted by livEwirE
SOLUTION:

Uninstall and divx players/divx codec bundles you have on your system and restart.

Install the following:


NIMO CODEC PACK http://www.btinternet.com/~nimosiro/
DIVX POWER PLAYER - search on google


All problems with divx playback should be resolved...!

I tried that, same thing happens

Pickarooney - alright, but I have no need or desire to install WMP7 seeing as XP Pro ships with verison 8

Winters

very qucik and hopefully easy question:
Is it possible to get DivX to play all the .avi's & .mpg's insted of just the selected few? It annoyed me having to have like 3 differant players to play all the mpeg's, avi's and mov's ... I want to use DivX too as its better quality

Inspector Gadget

Winters:

DivX itself is simply a codec, or coder/decoder - it handles the compression of data (in this case, video) for when it's being stored or transmitted, and then its decompression when being viewed later. (As it happens, the DivX codecs we use now are developed from what was pretty much a hacked MPEG-4 codec). Some codecs are "decode only", for IP and copyright purposes, which should mean they're called "decs", I suppose, but people still call them codecs anyway.

What we call "DivX movies" are actually AVI files (Audio Video Interleave, otherwise known as Video for Windows in ye olden days), where the video portion of the file is encoded (or compressed, depending on your choice of terminology) with a DivX codec. AVIs can also handle a variety of other types of compression, as all they are is simply a filing system for any video or audio stream of your choosing (provided it's got a fixed frame rate). The codec required to play an AVI audio or video stream is identified by what's called a "FourCC" code embedded at the beginning of the stream (FourCC codes for DivX include "DIVX", "DIV3" and "DIV4", depending on the DivX version)

Now, MPEG, in its various numbered guises, is a collection of video and audio codecs, as well as a file format that will carry the "streams" of audio, video and whatever other data you wish to add to them. For example, VideoCDs use MPEG-1 video and audio, DVDs use MPEG-2 video and audio, and MP3 is simply a contraction of "MPEG-1, Layer 3" - in other words, it's an MPEG file with just a Layer 3-compressed audio track in it.

Then comes Quicktime. Quicktime is a proprietary file format, and like AVI it can play host to audio and video encoded with a wide variety of codecs. If your player can understand the Quicktime file format, and has a suitable codec for the formats used, it can play the movie. Windows Media Player, for example, can play some Quicktime files (such as those encoded with CinePak) but cannot play others (such as those using the Sorenson Video codec) as no suitable codec is available for it. On the other hand, Quicktime ships with most of the codecs available (most decode-only) and as such should be able to play most Quicktime files out there. I understand that the Quicktime file format bears striking similarities to MPEG-4, but that's neither here nor there, I guess...

(...and, naturally, Quicktime codecs are incompatible with Windows Media codecs, and so on, for IP purposes :rolleyes: )

At the end of the day, it all boils down to money. While there's still competition in the multimedia market (say, audio/video/teleconferencing), each player will want some sort of edge; something that requires their tools for it to work. Quicktime (Apple) have it (to an extent) with their protected codecs, such as Sorenson Video 3 and QDesign Music Audio, and Windows Media (Microsoft) have it (to an extent with their Windows Media Audio/Video, and for the moment at least never the twain shall meet. Of course, there are then some others that are almost completely incompatible with everything else (RealMedia, for example) but their importance is dwindling these days.

The nearest thing I can recommend to a "one size fits all" player is MPlayer, which works on many Unix systems including Linux. It supports a raft of different formats including all of the above (see http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/info.html for the list, and the home page is at http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/). Otherwise Windows Media Player (or Winamp3) will play most of them, except for more recent QuickTime files and MPEG2 files (unless you've installed a Software DVD Player such as PowerDVD to install the necessary MPEG-2 codecs)

[edit]And when it comes to quality, apart from it being subjective to begin with, you have to compare two files of like size with the same content (say, a 300MB DivX vs. a 300MB MPEG that both contain the same video and audio at the same frame rates and resolutions) to draw an accurate comparison. In addition, while you can recompress a file, say converting an MPEG to a DivX, the fact that a lot of data has been thrown away from the original source video to make the DivX means that you'll be encoding the "artefacts" left by the DivX compression with the MPEG codec, meaning you'll have two sets of noise, one introduced by each encoding phase, and as such the quality will suffer even more. If you don't have the original source media (either a good quality compressed copy, such as a DVD Rip or a DV camcorder) or an uncompressed (or losslessly compressed) video source, you'll lose quality in the end, and you're better off sticking to the format you've got. Just my 2c, of course...[/edit]

Hope this helps,
Gadget

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~macbain/Downloads/DVD-to-DivX/DivFix.exe


try that file, on the divx.. strip the index, then rebuild it.. see if that helps any?

don't suppose your cpu would be overheating?

parasite

ummm ... maybe try media player 9 :eek: