Transcoding DivX -- how to configure / what to install?

[Spartan]

All, I have been struggling with this for a week now. Is there a clear concise write-up somewhere of what to install to achive DivX / Xvid / AVI playback on an MVP?

So far I have installed ffdshow, but when I select my .avi from the MVP, TRANS2MVP always crashes on me. The MVP then resets itself (displays connecting to server...) and jumps back to the main menu.

Here is the contents of the Trans2MVP.exe-native.log:

Code:

20:31:50.125    INFO    Log started
20:31:50.125    VERBOSE    Will try to use ffdshow...
20:31:50.125    INFO    TRANSCODING: e:\TVSHOW~1\THEOFF~1\THEOFF~1.AVI
20:31:50.125    INFO    TARGET: E:\TV Shows\MVP000DFE00293D.mpg

Any ideas? What am I missing? :confused:

[sub]

Try unchecking the 'force ffdshow for transcode' setting to see if it make any difference.

[Spartan]

Try unchecking the 'force ffdshow for transcode' setting to see if it make any difference.

Hmmm -- I thought that I had read somewhere that ffdshow was required to transcode divx. Oh well, I can't keep all of this straight.

I'll try that setting when I get home from work tonight -- unless there is a way to try w/o a MediaMVP...

[sub]

ffdshow is not "required". You can use ffdshow if you want to manipulate the video (resize, change brightness etc), but this component does seem to cause problems for some people. I'm not sure why. It worth trying this to see if it helps.

[Spartan]

Hmm -- even less in the logfile now:

Code:

17:22:34.216    INFO    Log started
17:22:34.216    INFO    TRANSCODING: E:\TVSHOW~1\THEOFF~1\THEOFF~1.AVI
17:22:34.216    INFO    TARGET: E:\TV Shows\MVP000DFE00293D.mpg

[sub]

Is your E:\ drive physically attached to you machine or is it a network drive?

[Spartan]

A physical drive (the RAID 0 drive in my sig)

On a side note, when I was running this on my test box, I got the exact same results. (Text box had the .avi on a regular IDE drive)

[sub]

Sorry, I dont know.

[Spartan]

^bump^

Anyone else? I know there are others out there that can view avi over mvp. Please share your config! I'm desperate!

[groover km]

I don't have the answer, but I can maybe contribute to your troubleshooting process (I too am trying to get divx/avi's to play predictably and consistently) with a bit of history...

I have loads and loads of divx's of old tv shows, and (I've never understood why personally) they are all encoded at different aspect ratios, bitrates, etc. When I first added my MVP to my setup I read the advice from Hauppauge that "to play fullscreen, aspect ratio needs to be 640x480 or 320x240". So like a good little bunny, I set of reencoding them all to 320x240 (learned very quickly that_my_machine wasn't fast enough to play 640x480 without a/v sync issues); pretty much everything I reencoded played fine over the mvp with a cpu usage of around 35-40%.

Now, I haven't encoded all my .avi's (what a boring job that is), so I find that I typically have (4) scenarios with gbpvr:

1) File plays fine, fullscreen and in sync - typically these are the 320x240 files IIRC.

2) File starts then crashes out back to the menu and / or contacting servers as you describe, but if I am 'quick-on-the-draw' with the pause, I can stop it crashing out - and I watch the timeline and the time to transcode a second > one second. Pretty obvious what's going on here - it's playing faster than transcoding, hence crash. (I have increased the preplay delay to 6secs, which for me is the midpoint between building a transcoded buffer, and the family hopelessly stabbing at buttons in a "it's broke" kinda way). I can usually (80%) leave it to transcode most/ all the file, then press play.

3) File does not start and crashes out as you describe; I _think_ this is an extreme case of (2), or maybe something to do with AC3 audio, or... I dunno.

4) Very occasionally, just plain weird performance - I have a file that is 24fps and plays back at 29.97fps under gbpvr, but plays fine under mediamvp....??? Don't know what that's about, but I only get weird stuff with one or two files.

I think my solution lies somewhere between my horsepower and the properties of the files I have - although I would_love_ gbpvr to play all my files flawlessly, I don't think of it as a gbpvr issue.

So, I am currently considering:
- Reencode everything to 320x240 (yawn)
- Reencode to mpeg2 (+: never have a prob with mpeg2; -: harddrive real estate)
- Archive to DVD (double yawn)
- Upgrade the box (requires_substantial_WAF)

I don't know if this will help you with your question - YMMV as they say - but I wanted to share what I have found.

Let me know how you get on - good luck!