vplaying imported videos often result in crash

[vorius]

Many videos I attempt to play through the Imported Videos end up crashing SageTV, where I get a Windows message that the program has been terminated due to an error and gives me an option to send Error Report to Microsoft. Once I click ok/cancel on that SageTV is shut down.

But, it's not a problem with SageTV.

I then tried running the same video with Media Player Classic and that too crashes in the same exact spot as SageTV did. It always crashes the same part of the movie if I try it again.

The ONLY thing that works flawlessly is VLC player (or is it VNC? I forgot). It plays every movie that crashes SageTV/MPC without a stutter.

So what is different between what VLC does and what SageTV/MPC do? Is it some codec that is different? How do I tell?

[vorius]

Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this? I find it so odd that it works fine in VLC. How can I tell what the difference is so I can fix the player that SageTV & Media Player Classic use?

I cannot watch any movie file through "Imported Media" with SageTV because it will crash the whole app at some point during the film.

[nielm]

VLC used it's own internal decoders for video/audio decoding.

Sage, MPC, Windows Media Player use decoders installed on the system, one of which is causing the crash, possible because it cannot handle some minor invalid data in the movie.

Figure out what filetype it is (Sage tells you in detailed info), figure out what decoder you have installed for this file type, and upgrade, or replace it.

[ke6guj]

Sounds like a codec problem. IIRC, VLC has all its codecs built in so it is not using any of your installed codecs like xvid or divx. Sage can be set up to either use your codecs or to use its built-in mplayer codecs.

But, I thought that MPC had its own built-in codecs as well. edit: OK, just codecs for some basic MPEG, VCD, SVCD stuff. Looks like everything else needs and installed codec.

I'd try changing this setting, mplayer/use_for_all_mpeg4_playback= , from false to true or vice-versa, and see if it makes a difference. If it was set to false, Sage was using your installed codecs with the original media player, and if was set to true, was using mplayer with its built-in codecs as its newer media player.

edit: So, it does sound like a bad codec installed. YOu can use gspot to do some good analysis of the codecs needed for the video.

[vorius]

OK, still not working.

I installed GSpot and opened up a sample file which would cause SageTV or Media Player Classic to crash at a precise time. It said the codec was xvid and it was using a DivX codec. So I did a google search and found a xvid specific codec (the one which came at the top of the results when googling "xvid codec"). Then I ran GSpot again and it was still using the DivX, so I went ahead and uninstalled the DivX codec. Then I ran GSpot again and now it shows it is using the new xvid codec.

Now I tried running the same file but it still is crashing at the same exact time- in both SageTV and Media Player Classic. I tried rebooting my machine and again, same results. Keep in mind this is not limited to one video file but many, and it always crashes in them at the same exact time. (but the specific times will vary file to file-, just that it will crash over and over for the same file at the same time)

So what should I try now? Do you think that property mplayer/use_for_all_mpeg4_playback= might help ?

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by vorius

So what should I try now? Do you think that property mplayer/use_for_all_mpeg4_playback= might help ?

Try it. It should use mplayer to do the playback, and that has its own codecs, IIRC.

Have you tried those videos on a different computer? To see if it is something with your computer or not.

Or maybe it is a problem with your creation of the imported files, maybe try another program to create the files.

[vorius]

ok its fixed now

i was noticing that some icon would show up in the lower right whenever i played the video- it was for FFDshow. and when I opened it I saw it managed its own list of file types and which codec to use. I saw under xvid it was using some libavcodec so i changed it to the one i downloaded, and it works great now!

thanks