Very Technical -- Corrupted AVI Codec?

2G wrote on 5/16/2005, 5:26 PM
All of a sudden my AVI codec on my XP box has started acting strange. It plays all AVI about half speed. I thought it was a Vegas problem for a while. But I tried Windows Media Player and it does the same thing. This leads me to assume that there is an underlying AVI codec that both Vegas and the media player use. I have another machine on the network, and I verified that the AVI files themselves are fine (plus it fails the same on AVI files that are a year old). MPG files and WMV files play fine.

Here is one of the scenarios: I have an mp3 track that plays about 5 seconds before the video starts up. Audio is fine until the instant the AVI clip hits and the audio garbles and playback slows down. The time clock/frame counter slows down to where it ticks off 1 sec about every 2 seconds.

This has got to be something that's gone south with the AVI codec. Either somehow the orig has gotten overlayed or the codec itself has gotten corrupted.

My question is if anyone has ever seen anything like this? Is there some place in Windows where I can look at and/or find properties for the AVI codec? Is there anywhere in Vegas where you specify or configure the AVI codec it uses?

I'm a software architect. I understand the techie stuff. But this one baffles me. Any pointers will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

2G

Comments

B_JM wrote on 5/16/2005, 6:41 PM
no such thing as an "avi" codec ..
AVI is a wrapper --

what kind of AVI are you talking about?

Because it makes a diff. for the fix ...



B_JM wrote on 5/16/2005, 6:44 PM
for the second part of your question - in windows you use graphedit to view (and can change) the relationship (pins) on how a file gets both decoded and encoded .. very powerful handy app from Microsoft ...

John_Cline wrote on 5/16/2005, 7:14 PM
Do you have a soundcard that has a digital (S/PDIF) input? Is there any chance that the digital input is selected and there is nothing feeding that input? This will happen on my M-Audio 2496 sound card when I forget to switch it back to internal sync.

John

fultro wrote on 5/16/2005, 7:17 PM
Get GSPOT its free drag your AVIs onto it and see what it tells you about what codecs are needed for that particular avi
At the bottom of the GSPOT window get it to simulate a render - it should tell you what is broken
2G wrote on 5/16/2005, 8:26 PM
Thanks for the responses. I'll try to get GSPOT and see what I can learn from it.

The various AVI files I have are a mixture of some DV captures by Vegas, AVI/DV renders by Vegas, some DV captures by SceneAlyzer and some generated video from Adobe After Effects. All have the same problem on this box, but work on the other computer.

Could you explain a little more about the sound card thing? I have a cheapo sound module built onto motherboard. How does the sound card enter into the picture of Vegas interpreting video files? Are you saying that the sound card could be bad? (I haven't touched any config on it since I set it up many months ago).

Thanks again.

2G
John_Cline wrote on 5/16/2005, 8:51 PM
2G,

Nevermind, I didn't read your original post thoroughly. You said that other files play fine, which would not be the case if your audio card was set to external sync on the digital input with no source connected.

John
2G wrote on 5/17/2005, 7:02 AM
I downloaded GSPOT, and unfortunately for me, it seems to think everything is fine. (I wish I could agree with it...) It lists the codec as a DV codec and lists a 'splitter'. When I push the render button, it says it renders sucessfully. I'm going to run GSPOT on the same clip on the other machine and look for any differences in the codecs, parameters, etc it shows.

I guess I need to take a different approach now. What are the possibilities of what could have happened? What are the possibilities/probabilites that a rogue or different DV codec has taken over? (Any known culprits that might do this?) Alternatively, is there any sort of configuration options on the DV codec that could have gotten massaged? I think hardware problems are probably pretty low on the probability list since mpg's, wmv's, etc. still play.

Any good "Sherlock"s out there want to take a stab at this?

Thanks again.

2G
B_JM wrote on 5/17/2005, 8:00 AM
first thing to do is to open task manager while a avi dv file is playing and see what is using cpu resources .... should only be one thing , and for a dv file should not be all that high either ..


does gspot show quartz.dll as the dll playing back the dv file or some other codec ?

if you see explorer grabbing huge amounts of cpu while avi is playing , shut explorer down via task manager ..

see if you have a virus program running , and turn it off temp.

I would also re-reg quartz.dll (which is what plays Dv files in media player)

Install the free panasonic Dv codec and play the dv file using both media player and "media player classic" (download free) - does it play ok then ?

If so - uncheck (as a test) 'Ignore 3rd party codecs" in vegas and see if it plays different ... if ok ... recheck it and try ..

those things above are a start .. anyway ... there are further steps ..

2G wrote on 5/17/2005, 9:17 PM
I really appreciate the suggestions. According to GSpot, in the codec box it has "4CC dvsd" and the name "DVC/DV Video" The "Stat" field says "2 compatible codecs installed" When I click on "Stat", the popup lists two codecs: DV Video Decoder and AVI Draw. It then says that "DirectShow is apparently able to play the file as well".

So no quartz.dll shows up anywhere obvious. Is quartz a good thing or a bad thing? Should the absence of quartz being sending up flares?

You said to re-reg quartz. Sounds like a good thing to do. But how do you do it?

Also, where do I get the panasonic player you mentioned?

Thanks again.

2G
2G wrote on 5/17/2005, 10:29 PM
Performance data... the machine with the failure is a 3GHz. The other machine is a 2GHz. Interestingly that on the 3GHz the CPU goes to about 65% for the duration playing the clip (most of CPU is used by Vegas 6). Then it drops back to 2% when the clip ends. But on the slower 2Ghz machine, it only takes ~45% CPU to play the same clip. It's not pegging the meter on either. But curious that the faster machine is taking 20% more CPU. Also, GSpot gives the same codec info on the good machine. No quartz mentioned on either machine.

2G
2G wrote on 6/7/2005, 9:42 AM
Just a followup to this thread from a few weeks back. I want to document the resolution in case anybody is searching the archives later with a similar problem.

For quite a while I was convinced that the problem was in the way the video file was being decoded since it only failed on one machine. I was heading down the wrong path. I noticed some CPU utilization increase on the bad drive that I mentioned in my earlier post. Over the weekend, I downloaded a disk speed tester and it reported the CPU utilization on the bad drive was 95% where it was ~5% on the other drive. Apparently, the video data was still reading off the hard drive fast enough to keep up with real time. However, the CPU at 95% didn't leave enough horsepower to process the data in Vegas or the other players without garbling. Makes sense now that when I was reading the data over the gigabyte network to my other box, the data was coming in fine, AND I had a fresh CPU that wasn't bogged down at 95% on the other box to process the data and display it. So it displayed fine.

After replacing IDE cables, swapping master/slave switches, and other stuff to figure out why it was pegging the CPU to read, I ended up moving all the data to another drive, blowing away the logical drive partition, and recreating it. Problem went away.

I'm assuming it was a corrupted NTFS primary volume directory that was bad enough to make the CPU churn, but not bad enough to cause a 'failure'. Only concern now is that I don't know what caused it. But at least if it happens again, I won't spend a month debugging.

2G