Avi playback issues

[welshy]

Hello all,

Been reading the forum for the last few days.

Got my GB-PVR setup over the weekend. Running the latest version through a WinTV Nova 500 dual card on an XP SP 2.0 dedicated box in the lounge.

Great bit of software btw

Got most of the problems I encountered ironed out, save a small one regarding .Avi's.

From what I have gathered over the last few days, the 500 has built in MPEG hardware Encoding\Decoding. This is great if you have a library of mainly MPEG films. Unfortunately most of mine are DivX or Xvid. When I play a DivX film, I do not get the progress bar, nether can I pause or fast forward the film. I take it that this is due to the film being decoded and played on the fly?

My only gripe with this is, if I stop a film half way through, I then have the problem of not being able to skip to the point I last watched.

Initially I thought this may be a bandwidth problem, since the films are held on my main machine in the other room and piped into the lounge via my wired 100baseT network. So, I copied the film locally and played it - same problem.

Do others suffer from this problem?
Do you transcode the film withing the film library into another format before playing?

I know I could recode all my films into MPEG, but that would take forever (have hundreds of films etc) - suppose it is an option though.

I installed the latest version of the DivX codec's off the net, the rest of the software used is as up to date as I could find - with the exception of the clunky hauppage software supplied with the card.

Oh, also, if I let the film play till nearly the end, I still do no have the ability to pause. So it seems it's always decoding the part just before I watch it.

Suggestions?

Thanks.

[welshy]

Forgot to mention. The media centre is a decend box - P4 3Ghz, 512 mb ram. Radeon 9200 128mb GFX card.

[sub]

If you click on the video with mouse, then try pausing, does it work?

[welshy]

If you click on the video with mouse, then try pausing, does it work?

Sub, thanks fo the reply.

I just use the hauppage remote which works fine with everything apart from DivX (that I've tried anyway).

I'll test it tonight and post the results.

- In fact, I may know where your going with this.

I've noticed that the DivX system tray tool is active when playing DivX films. I've also had a problem upon playing, that if I press a certain button on the remote, the screen will display the Alt+tab Windows switch app box for a second.

Does GB-PVR need mouse focus for the remote to work properly?

[sub]

There is a utility on the divx forum for stopping their tray icon appearing. Its behaviour of stealing the focus causes problems for lots of applications. Alternatively, uninstall the divx decoder and install the xvid one instead - it should play your divx files fine, and doesnt have the annoying tray icon.

[welshy]

There is a utility on the divx forum for stopping their tray icon appearing. Its behaviour of stealing the focus causes problems for lots of applications. Alternatively, uninstall the divx decoder and install the xvid one instead - it should play your divx files fine, and doesnt have the annoying tray icon.

Ah, awesome

I think I'll follow your second suggestion and swap it for the XviD one. Too many things in the system tray is a pet hate of mine anyway.

Many thanks for your help mate, it's appreciated.

[jonb1974]

Or install ffdshow which is what I use. AVI files should be pretty easy to play. If you play in Windows Media Player does it have similar results to GBPVR?

[welshy]

Update:

As suggested it was the DivX system tray tool taking focus. I uninstalled DivX and installed the XviD codec. Problem solved

Thanks for the help