Video troubleshooting
Common video problems
It looks stretched! (or what does anamorphic mean)
This means you're trying to watch an anamorphic encode using a player that doesn't support aspect ratio correction or that VSFilter is trying to extended the image to 4:3 (which it does with the default setting, if you installed it separately - the CCCP version does not do this). Set it to "original" image size and use a player/decoder which supports it to fix the problem.
Many newer MKV encodes are anamorphic which means that the pixels themselves do not have a 1:1 aspect ratio. The videos are resized to the proper PAR, pixel aspect ratio, on playback. This allows encoding without having to resize the source which keeps a lot more detail, especially for 16:9 movies.
To solve the problem, install the pack and use one of the players that comes with it (MPC or ZP).
There is a glitch in video and I have to manually seek for it to start playing!
Most encodes are accompanied with a SFV file. This file contains information which will allow a file to be identified exactly. Start by checking the file. If the checksum fails it means either your file is corrupt or incomplete. Compare the filesize of your file, in bytes, against the original. If the filesizes are the same you can simply ask someone for a patch. If the checksum matches the file, however, you are either using a buggy filter somewhere, or there is a problem with the file itself.
How do I make DivX stop playing all MPEG-4 or DivX files?
To make DivX stop trying to decode things like XviD uncheck "Support Generic Mpeg4" in the decoder configuration's "Quality settings" tab. This will allow you to use other decoders. Making DivX stop decoding DivX in the latest version requires that you completely unregister it. Run
regsvr32 /u divxdec.ax
to unregister the decoder and then
regsvr32 divxdec.ax
if you ever want to use it again.
It looks blocky or generally odd, what do I do?
First make sure that you're using the hardware overlay, sometimes it won't be used because of too little available memory on the graphics card or because another player is already open. This becomes very evident with 100% usage and bad image quality no matter how fast your computer is. This can sometimes be fixed by using a 32 bit colordepth and reducing the resolution on the desktop.
There is another issue in recent DivX versions that makes blocks appear in 5.0.x encoded movies. The solution is to upgrade to ffdshow. If it's a lavc encode and looks bad (colors shifting towards pink) you should also switch to ffdshow.
All colors look completely wrong when playing WMV video!
If you have an ATi video card, this is caused by the driver trying to accelerate WMV decoding and failing. You need to disable it.
- Right-click the desktop and click "Properties".
- Click the "Settings" tab.
- Click the "Advanced" button.
- Here, find a checkbox called "WMV9 acceleration" or something like it. Uncheck it.
- Click OK, and reboot your computer.
- The colors should now be correct.
The image is completely screwed - double, upside down and cut in half!
This is a rather random problem. Sometimes, something as simple as a reboot or a reinstall of CCCP solves it. Try that first, but if it fails a pretty reliable fix seems to be to turn on YV12 output in ffdshow (Start -> Programs -> CCCP -> ffdshow video decoder configuration -> output -> check YV12). Another thing you can try if that doesn't work is switching your graphics drivers. If there's a newer version available, get that, but if not, downgrade one version. If that doesn't work either, try switching output renderers in the player or updating DirectX. If it STILL doesn't work after that, join the IRC channel for further assistance.
NVIDIA Issues
NVidia drivers after 41.09 set the contrast, saturation and several other image settings to absurd values. You can't tweak them back to look like the older versions (and all other graphics cards on the market) either. This can degrade the perceived quality a lot. The various rendering modes in different players can also have a big impact, make sure to try them all. It should also be noted that the VMR modes tend to be distinctly greenish for NVIDIA cards.
Related to the previous paragraph, it seems Nvidia 6800 owners are particularly struck by this kind of problem. Using latest drivers and Overlay Mixer or VMR 7 modes gives washed out colours. The solution is to use the VMR 9 Windowed renderer, although this means having to live with the slight hue shift to green and the smoothness the resizing filter of VMR 9 brings.
If you have a newer driver that you want to keep, you can make the picture become slightly more reasonable by doing the following:
- Go to "Display Properties -> Settings [Tab] -> Advanced [button] -> GeForce xxxx [Tab] -> Color Correction"
- Change the Apply Color Changes [drop down] to Overlay
- Change Brightness [slider] to 100% and Contrast [slider] to 100%
- Click Apply
- Go to "Display Properties -> Settings [Tab] -> Advanced [button] -> GeForce xxxx [Tab] -> Video Overlay Settings"
- Change Hue [slider] to 0 and Saturation [slider] to 100%
- Click Apply
- Click OK and OK again.
ATI Issues
Mainly the WMV9 decoding acceleration one - see above.
Windows 2003/XP x64 and black screen(sound but no video)/grey screen/weird colours
Symptoms: any of the following ones:
- you are using ZoomPlayer, irrespective of having Colors Controls enbled or not
- you have enabled ffdshow's Overlay Control
- you are using any other player that allows you to change the overlay colour values regardless of having enabled that option or not.
When you close the player and start it, or any other player, again, you may experience either a black screen (aka sound but no video), a grey screen or the colours look completely weird.
This is a problem with Windows 2003 and with XP64 themselves. When you close the player, the overlay colour values are set to absurd values (like -100 brightness and so on).
Solution: To overcome this problem, there's not much you can do. First of all, make sure Overlay Control is disabled in ffdshow's Video decoder configuration settings (the Overlay option is unchecked in the list on the left)
1) Stick to only MPC or only ZoomPlayer. Using Zoomplayer and then MPC will give you a black/grey/weird colours screen in MPC. That's why only was emphasized.
If your favourite is ZoomPlayer, then you need to do this: open a file in ZoomPlayer -> open your graphic card's overlay control page and reset the values to defaults as described below in the How to reset to Default Overlay Values -> right click on the video surface -> select Options/Setup -> go to advanced mode by pressing the Advanced Mode button -> select Colors Control in the list -> check Use Color Control Interface -> press the Query Overlay button -> in the Confirmation dialog that pops up select Ok -> press Set Current as Default -> press Manual Save -> press Close. (If you are wondering what this does: each time ZoomPlayer is closed the overaly values are broken, but by enabling the Color Control Interface, the right values that you have saved as defaults are restored each time ZoomPlayer is opened)
2) If you like to switch between players or use other players not supported by CCCP, then you will sooner or later get the black/grey/weird colours screen. Each time this happens, just reset to the default overlay values as described below in the How to reset to Default Overlay Values.
How to reset to Default Overlay Values:
For ATI graphic cards: start the playback of a media file if you have no file playing already -> right click on the desktop -> Properties -> Settings -> Advanced -> Overlay -> press the Defaults button -> use the other sliders to adjust the colours to your liking -> press Apply. (KoD note: someone should write how to do this from within the Control Center)
For NVIDIA graphic cards: start the playback of a media file if you have no file playing already and then see the last paragraph of the nVidia Issues entry for instructions on how to adjust the color controls.
Each time you need to change the colours while playing, you have to use the overlay colour controls provided by the driver of your graphic card as written above.
