display videos

[jarvis24]

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?

[aurelie Dommes]

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

[jarvis24]

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.

[aurelie Dommes]

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

[jarvis24]

Thanks so much for the helpful update Aurelie.

-Blair

[bsmith82]

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.

[jarvis24]

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).