Playback in other media players

[Paul Gordash]

The files that GBPVR has generated in the last few versions seem to lock up Windows Media Player. I tired it on Win 2K with media player 9 and XP using media player 10. Both players cannot play back the MPG files generated by my PVR. Media player hangs so I need to end-task it. TMPEGEnc also does not recognize the files (crashes). Nandub gives the error "MPEG Import Filter: pack synchronization error".

Players that will recognize it are GBPVR (of course), PowerDVD, and Nero Showtime.

I tried changing to cosntant bitrate instead of variable bitrate and that made no difference.

This is happening on both my Win 2K box and my Win XP one as well. Anyone have any suggestions on what I can do?

Thanks,
Paul

[sub]

This is fairly common, and usually because of the codecs installed on your machine. You'll find any MPEG-2 file, regardless of whether it was recorded with GB-PVR or not, will cause the same behaviour in Windows Media Player.

Microsoft has a tool which allows you to see what the default decoder is on your machine, and allows to specify if another one should be used in preference. Unfortunately the name and location of this utility doesnt spring to mind, but if you use the search button you should be able to locate it.

[groover km]

Microsoft XP Video Decoder Checkup Utility.

You can get it from the MSFT Download centre.

[Paul Gordash]

What are the odds of having the same "bad codec" on two seperate machines running two different OS's? I'd say slim. Also, many other mpg files play properly, just not the ones generated by GBPVR.

I ran the XP Decoder Checkup and there is no default set. I set it to the Cyberlink (PowerDVD) decoder and it made no difference whatsoever. This tools also doesn't work for my W2K box which exhibits the exact same problem.

If anyone wants to take a peek at one of my recorded files, I can do a one minute recording for debug purposes.

Thanks for the help so far,
Paul

[Paul Gordash]

Sub,

The program is called GSpot. I downloaded it and check one of the files I cannot play. It says it is using the Nero Video Decoder.

Funny thing is I can play older files that I recorded on GBPVR a year ago. That's the part that freaks me out.

Thanks,
Paul

[sub]

What are the odds of having the same "bad codec" on two seperate machines running two different OS's? I'd say slim. Also, many other mpg files play properly, just not the ones generated by GBPVR.

I'd say there is a good chance that MPEG2 files wouldn't play on two machines. The reason I say this, is because Windows 2000/XP/etc dont have a codec for playing MPEG2 files by default. They do have a built in codec capable of playing MPEG1. Note, both MPEG1 and MPEG2 have the extension .mpg, so it can be difficult to tell what you're playing. You have to explicitly install something to enable MPEG2 playback.

There sure is nothing wrong with the way GB-PVR is recording it's MPEG2 files. This hasn't changed in 18 months, so if there was a problem, we'd have heard a lot more about it.

[Paul Gordash]

Well, I figured it out. It wasn't the video rendering, it was the audio. GSpot said it was using a DOLBY_AC3 decoder. I remembered I had to install an add-on AC3 decoder to watch an AC3 encoded DivX file. Once I uninstalled the AC3 codec, all the files began to play again! Yippie! Only sucky part is I can't watch any of my AC3 encoded DivX movies now

Thanks for the help guys,
Paul

[KingArgyle]

If you were using AC3 filter before, you can try and use FFDShow for the Audio as it has an AC3 Decoder as well as a DTS decoder. I've switched from using AC3 Filter to FFDShow exclusively now.