White space instead of AVI video

[Emily]

I am at my wits end because AVI files do not play on test PC (PII, 64meg Ram, Windows 98SE 4.10.222A). Instead of AVIs playing there is just white space.

The AVI file are 300meg, 150meg, 100meg and 25 Meg, and were edited with edited to be 300 x 240 in Premiere on high spec PC.

But when burned to CD the project plays well on the production PC, but when the CD is taken to the test PC all the AVIs fail to play and there’s only white space where they are supposed to play.

In order to find out the cause of the AVI playback failure I copied a *.dav file to the testPC where the AutoPlay produced CD does not work, and renamed the extension to .avi. I then double-clicked this file and had no problem viewing it in the Windows Media player.

So what is going on, why is there white space instead of a video clip?

Thanks for your help

Emily

[a6106a]

Re: White space instead of AVI video

Emily:
You are probably running into a CODEC problem.
There are various versions of AVI (10 that I can say for sure).
Each one other that those with "no compression" require a software piece called a CODEC to interpret and decode them. If it exists on your production PC but not on the test PC, that's likely the problem.

[Emily]

Re: White space instead of AVI video

Originally posted by a6106a:
Emily:
You are probably running into a CODEC problem.
There are various versions of AVI (10 that I can say for sure)... If it exists on your production PC but not on the test PC, that's likely the problem.

Thanks Buffalo,

Yes you are correct about the codec as cause for malfunction were it not for the fact that I have copied all Cinepak (TM). dlls from the production PC over to the lower spec test PC (Dell, PII, 16 Meg ram), I have uninstalled and re-installed window's multimedia video codecs, I have changed the monitor and the graphics card ...

And I have also tested the CD-rom and copied the burned CD to the testPC, and still the same result: The (visual basic?) runtime of AutoPlay fails to initialize the .dav files.

After copying the CD to the testPC hard-drive, and renaming the *.dav file extension to *.avi, the testPC delivers a flawless playback in the testPC's stand alone windows media - so is this not evaluated and affirmation that the correct codec is there, but what is not is there is the Autoplay runtime initializing the codec or initializing the *.avi file to be decoded and run within the AutoPlay presentation?

Would it not follow that I have set up a buggy condition, or maybe, is there a malfunction in Autoplay under certain circumstances, given that the the CD plays flawless on seven other PCs including low-end Cyrix2, 266 with on board graphics 4 Meg.

I need a solution - it's the bosses PC where it won't work, and I won't be able to persuade him to have faith in the AutoPlay methods if it does not play on both of his PCs irrespective of how well the CD would do anywhere else.

Emily

[Bryan]

Re: White space instead of AVI video

You might try a workaround as follows:
I just downloaded and am working with a set of programs that were mentioned elsewhere in the forum that seems to work pretty well.

The dowload is from Rad Video Tools, programs Smack and Binker. The program converts avi's and other media to an exe file
which you can set to execute instead of using the video open command. I had been trying to get a Divx compressed avi to play.. but you needed to load the divx codecs on the machine and then reboot... to play the video which I did not care for.

the player which executes seems to run fine, the only thing is that with the free ware version the video file shows their bink video logo at the end of the video and the license is quite expensive to remove the logo.

Regarding your bosses machine.. I cant think of any reason your video won't play if you can open and play it from the windows player.

[Bryan]

Re: White space instead of AVI video

the website is Radgametools.com

[Mark]

Re: White space instead of AVI video

Hi,

Just because Windows Media Player has specific CODECs installed does not mean that the "system" has the correct CODECS installed.

A user in the past had problems playing AVI videos on his machine. He sent me this note, saying that it solved his problem:

"Somehow, someway, something changed a setting in my system.ini file. In the [mci] section, my avi line read: avivideo=mciavi.drv. I edited it to read avivideo=mciqtz.drv thus invoking the ActiveMovie ocx control like it should. Now everything works just fine."

You might try making the above change, if you decide to, be sure to back up the system.ini file.

mark.

[Emily]

Re: White space instead of AVI video

Thank you all very much, changing the .ini file makes all videos play.
I am very grateful for your help. Thanks very much
Emily

Originally posted by Mark:
Hi,

Just because Windows Media Player has specific CODECs installed does not mean that the "system" has the correct CODECS installed.

A user in the past had problems playing AVI videos on his machine. He sent me this note, saying that it solved his problem:

In the [mci] section, my avi line read: avivideo=mciavi.drv. I edited it to read avivideo=mciqtz.drv thus invoking the ActiveMovie ocx control like it should. Now everything works just fine."

mark.

[Bryan]

Re: White space instead of AVI video

Here is a link that discusses how windows uses two different players to display multimedia. The player that you are testing with windows media player is a different player than the native media player that is in the operating system.

Thus according to the article, there may be a problem with the native media player in your bosses machine, which will not show when you use windows media player.

The link is:

http://www.indezine.com/products/powerpoint/ppmultimedia.html

Bryan.