1,500 CD's duplicated now WMV video file hangs.

[longedge]

The first time I have a problem with an application is a couple of weeks after our 'subscription' expires so I can't raise a ticket. I wondered if anybody else has had a similar problem?

I have a 640x480 .wmv video which is about 81MB encoded by Adobe Premiere Elements WMV3 codec (WMP v9 VC-1 Simple/Main) and the metadata is as follows -
Aud : DeviceConformanceTemplate:L1
Vid : DeviceConformanceTemplate:MP@ML
Aud : WM/WMADRCPeakReference:32767
Aud : WM/WMADRCAverageReference:6232
Aud : Windows Media Audio 9.1
Aud : 96 kbps, 44 kHz, stereo 2-pass VBR
Vid : Windows Media Video 9.

My application played the video perfectly on all the machines I tested it on and I have just finished duplicating/printing 1500 CD's. I've now been approached by one of my colleagues who says the video doesn't play. Sometimes it plays so far, sometimes not at all, sometimes audio without video or with video apparently paused.

The same file if accessed by exploring the CD plays perfectly in Windows Media Player (from the CD) and this has now happened on 2 laptops. They are new'ish Toshiba Satellite Pro machines running MS Windows XP Pro SP3. They have Intel Pentium T2370 1.73 GHz processors and have 2GB memory.

Any ideas?

[holtgrewe]

longedge
If memory serves, WMP9 had problems where the video would occasionally 'hang'... I didn't have time to research it, but I remember it being a problem. hth.

[longedge]

longedge
If memory serves, WMP9 had problems where the video would occasionally 'hang'... I didn't have time to research it, but I remember it being a problem. hth.

Thanks for that Holtgrewe - is that within AMS or just generally? I've not heard of this before and so far it's only happened on 2 Toshiba laptops which both play the video perfectly in Windows Media Player.

[holtgrewe]

Longedge

I may be way 'off-base' here - I found this on the MS web-site; but that's nothing unusual... I certainly don't want to mis-lead you.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...px#generalplay

[longedge]

OK thanks, I don't think that applies in this case as the video plays without any problems in WMP. However it's given me one thought, I'll do an update of the laptops tomorrow and see what Windows Update comes up with.

Any other suggestions would be welcome - at the moment I've got egg on my face with £700 worth of media that we can't be sure will play and I'm hearing "So your Autoplay Media Studio isn't as good as you said then" - you're only ever as good as your last project

[John_Klassek]

Yes, we had similar issues with some WMV files, and our only solution, as I recall, was to re-encode the WMV files.

It's essential to test your projects on CD on a variety of machines prior to duplication. One introductory WMV played fine on some PCs, but gave a black screen on other machines. If I recall, I think I then used Windows Media Encoder instead of Adobe Premiere CS3 for the final output, used a different bitrate, and the issue was resolved.

Hope this information is helpful.

John

[longedge]

Yes, we had similar issues with some WMV files, and our only solution, as I recall, was to re-encode the WMV files.

It's essential to test your projects on CD on a variety of machines prior to duplication. One introductory WMV played fine on some PCs, but gave a black screen on other machines. If I recall, I think I then used Windows Media Encoder instead of Adobe Premiere CS3 for the final output, used a different bitrate, and the issue was resolved.

Hope this information is helpful.

John

Thank you for that John.

Just one thing, did you also find that the same file ran OK in WMP from the CD when it caused problems in AMS?

[rhosk]

Have you thought about using FLV, George? Probably a little more versatile format as it only needs flash installed (98% of PCs).

[longedge]

Hey Ron - long time no see

Yes I hear what you say and that'll be my preferred method from now on. I hadn't previously ever had a problem with wmv's and I'd finished the whole 1,500 run when it was brought to my attention.

I still can't work out why on the same laptop the video plays using WMP but causes problems via AMS. I though perhaps a .dll, .ocx or something that needs an update?

Does AMS use WMP components to function?

[rhosk]

It 'could' be a specific codec issue, but that doesn't explain it playing fine in WMP. Moreso maybe being an advanced codec that the ActiveX can't cope with.

I remember APMS Version 5.5/6 plug-in had to have an upgrade to keep up with the technology. I don't have the 7x series.

Also, long shot... what version of IE is on the problem computers? Not that I have a solution there either, but more for troubleshooting - especially if it's version 8.

[longedge]

I won't be seeing my colleagues who have the problem again until next week, but first thing I'll do is a Windows update on their machines and see if that has any effect.

[IdeasVacuum]

Perhaps it is a codec issue whereby WMP is using the correct codec and AMS is not. Or even, AMS is using the correct codec and WMP is not, but it so happens that the codec used by WMP gives a better result. I get the impression that the AMS video object is hooking into WMP. So, to force AMS to use the right codec (once that has been established), you could include the codec on your CD and always install it.

I must admit that I like to avoid WMV files because they do tend to be troublesome and quality issues are tricky too. Rather than flash, which can be bulky, I use AVI. TechSmith offer an excellent AVI codec.

[John_Klassek]

We've just finished a project which features around 40 Flash tutorial videos. We chose Flash/SWF over WMV because of the quality screen capture Camtasia Studio 6 is able to produce. I think the biggest SWF was around 31Mb at 640x480; most were from 5Mb to 14Mb.

However, we used WMV for the two "talking head" tutorials at the beginning of the project. This was because we had to assume that the novice using the software may not know how to install the latest Flash player (even though we made that pretty clear).

WMV format is pretty universal, and yet in our early development, we discovered scenarios where the WMV would play okay from the HDD project, but fail when burned to CD. Thus we had to find the balance between the final WMV size versus quality. I think when we encoded the final output using Windows Media Encoder, every CD on a whole range of PCs and laptops played perfectly.

I really don't think APMS is at fault when trying to play an embedded WMV, even though it might play OK in Windows Media Player. The factors to consider are, that 81Mb is quite a lot of "read" for an optical drive, and I can only presume that, as I've experienced, the spin-up and read capabilites from optical device to optical device varies; the encoded bitrate really needs to be considered (at 256k it worked fine, but at 512k [as I recall] the overhead was too great for the optical drive to buffer); and we really need to consider the lowest reasonable denomiator nowadays which is really around 1.4Ghz CPU.

Hope this information is helpful.

John

[longedge]

Hope this information is helpful.

Yes thank you John ( et al.). I've learned a valuable lesson!

I've just got to undertake damage limitation as best I can while promising myself to do better in future

[Mark]

Hi Longedge,

Sorry about your project. I'm not sure what the problem could be especially since it seems to work on most computers and then fail on the two Toshiba laptops.

Does AMS use WMP components to function?

Just a quick note on this. Internally in AMS we use DirectShow interfaces to display videos. Unless, of course, you are using the MediaPlayer plugin object, which I'm assuming isn't the case.

mark.