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Thread: display videos

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Oct 2007
    Posts
    13

    display videos

    I’m trying to run .avi video files and after collect responses (RT).
    My .avi files are 3 – 4 Mo.

    The videos simply show a black sphere in a white background. The sphere move slowly or rapidly.
    When Direct Rt runs the videos, we observed a big deterioration in the video quality. There are “jerks”, the sphere stop to move, jump, stop and restart to move. These jumps are not visible when I play the videos in the Windows Media Player.
    There is also degradation in quality of the pixels and the resolution of the videos. The videos have been made in 1280*768, and we set in the DirectRt style file this resolution 1280*1024. When Direct RT plays the videos, contrary to Windows Media Player, the edges of the sphere are not round any more, but blurred…
    Do you know how to avoid these degradations ?
    Thanks.
    Best regards

    Aurelie Dommes

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Oct 2007
    Posts
    13

    display videos : another problem

    We have another problem, which is different from the precedents.
    In fact, we have 2 videos.

    V1 (3.23Mo) and V2 (4.22Mo).
    The video V1 “bug”, and the video V2 doesn’t bug.
    The bug is :
    When we just display the video V1 in Direct RT (eg. in the Time column we put 1200ms), it works.
    But, when we ask to answer to a question during the display of the video V1 (eg. “Is the sphere moving slow or fast?”, we put in the time column rt:18,25), Direct Rt bug : the video V1 is not displayed, and a black screen comes. A second window of Direct appeared.
    The other video V2 doesn’t bug like this.


    The video V1 that bugs have this codec : Xvid MPEGP4 format
    The video that doesn’t bug V2 has this codec : indeo 4
    Are these codec the reason of the bug ?

    Thanks.
    Best regards

    Aurelie Dommes

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Oct 2007
    Posts
    13

    Complementary information:

    We tried to understand the bug about which I spoke to you in the precedent message.
    We test and run the session with the two videos V1 and V2 on another PC, with a Dell D620.
    And it works!! We had no bugs! The videos run. We had only the first degradation about which I spoke to you in my first message, the “jerks”, the sphere jumps sometimes, stop, and restart to move.
    In fact, the video V1 bugs with our first PC, a new and big PC, with Graphic Card NVIDIA 8800 GTS SLI.
    I send you the error message and a view of the black screen that is displayed when Direct RT bugs.
    Have you an idea of our problem?
    Thanks a lot
    Aurelie Dommes
    Attached Images Attached Images
    Attached Files Attached Files

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Posts
    3,328
    Could you zip and send a test folder including the two videos, an input file and style file. I'll test it here and see if I can reproduce the results. Send the zip file to support@emp...com.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
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    3,328
    Try running "mplayer2.exe" from the Run command on the Windows Start menu. If you run the videos from this version of the Windows Media Player, does it better characterize what you are seeing in DirectRT?

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Oct 2007
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    13
    We run the two videos with this version of WMP (mplayer2.exe) on the computer that makes the bug (the one which has a big Graphic Card, NVIDIA 8800 GTS SLI). The videos run well with WMP.
    With Direct RT, we still have a "bug" . The video 1 (i.e. 10V1, with this codec: Xvid MPEGP4 format) is not displayed. Direct RT bugs and stops running the session. A second window of Direct RT opens: a black screen (I sent you a copy of this black screen in the precedent message, with the error message that is associated).
    The other video (10V3, with this codec: indeo 4) doesn’t bug like this.
    We don’t understand why Direct RT bugs on this computer when it runs the video 1, and doesn’t bug on a smaller computer (Dell D620).
    Thanks,
    Aurelie

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Posts
    3,328
    Just out of curiosity, have you played with using a colour.txt file to control how many bits DirectRT uses for its display? It uses 16 by default which can affect the playback quality of some videos. From the user's guide:

    Video Quality Trick
    By default, DirectRT runs in 16-bit colour mode. It does this because it gives the program a little extra boost of speed. This is great for text and images but not so great for video. If you're using video and you want the video to look its best, you'll want to run your session in full colour mode (24 or 32-bit).
    To do this, create a simple text file called "colour.txt" (yes, the u is necessary and copy it to your experiment folder (i.e., the same folder as your input file). In the text file, simply type the number of colour-bits you'd like DirectRT to use. You can use the values 8, 16, 24 and 32. If DirectRT finds your colour.txt file then it will know you want a custom colour depth. If you use 24 or 32 then the video should play in full colour and look really nice. Your system may only support one or the other (i.e., 24 or 32 but not both) so you may have to try each, or check your display settings to see what is allowed.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Oct 2007
    Posts
    13
    We finally managed to solve the problem by creating a new video. We recreated the video that bugged (VI) in the same codec that the one which was correctly displayed (V3, codec indeo 4).
    We think that there was a problem of compatibility between Direct RT and the graphic card of our PC (NVIDIA 8800 GTS SLI).
    With this new video, with the good codec (indeo 4), there are no more bugs!
    Thanks for your advices
    Aurelie

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Posts
    3,328
    Thanks so much for the helpful update Aurelie.

    -Blair

  10. #10

    graphics cards

    Blair, do you have ideas about what graphics cards work best with Direct RT? We are having similar problems and trying to find a graphics card that will help us display video with Direct RT.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Posts
    3,328
    It's probably not an issue about the graphics card so much as the codecs installed on the machine. There is a freeware codec updater package you can download from www.download.com called k-lite. I have found it very useful in helping machines to play videos that were previously having trouble. You can also visit their website at http://www.codecguide.com (See also: http://www.codecguide.com/faq.htm). Note though--because it's freeware, be careful not to click on any advertising links that say "download now!" for other software. For most of the files you want you need to scroll down. Typical file name will be something like K-Lite_Codec_Pack_670_Full.exe when prompted by Windows to run or save it to disk. But to answer your question directly, I like ATI cards. But pretty much anything nowadays is fine for playing video--they vary more in their 3D capabilities. As a general rule though, do try to avoid video controllers that are simply chips on the motherboard of the system (as opposed to dedicated graphic/display cards).

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