why are you using an unstable codec?

[Rockermonkey91]

wasnt everyone noob at one point lol

[devilmaykickass]

wasnt everyone noob at one point lol

There's nothing wrong with being a "noob"...it's rather, thinking you know what you're talking about and calling everyone else somehow wrong when you're the one who's got the problem that you're too dumb to realize you have and fix it. That or you're just lazy so you'd rather bitch and whine others into using what suits your shitty setup so you don't have to do anything yourself.

Either way it's annoying, and has nothing to do with being new.

[Scintilla]

wasnt everyone noob at one point lol

If by "noob" you mean "newb", then yes.
From what I've seen, noob != newb.

[Zero1]

This thread delivers.

i refuse to be as harsh as the rest so just rea dmy post in stead. Avis are better quality than a wmv for one

and mpeg4 is higher quality than an avi, smaller the file, worse it is to view/listen to.

Not meaning to nit-pick, but for the sake of clarity MP4, AVI and WMV are container formats. They store audio and video and in some cases flash animation, subtitles and menus. MP4 I believe is the more efficient of the three in the way it stores it's data, AVI indexes it's file in an old way that results in larger overhead (ie wasted space) and the inability to officially supporty VBR audio (though it works in a round about sort of way). In relative terms MP4, AVI and WMV have little or no effect on the quality (I say little or no due to the way AVI wastes space with it's inefficient storage). These literally just store the video and audio as a single file. The deciding factor where quality is concerned is the compressor used.

Moving on to compressors; MP4 natively supports MPEG-4 SP, ASP and AVC (AVC also officially known as H.264). This to you means DivX, XviD and X264 encodes (These are the names of the compressors/codecs). As for AVI, a majority of people tend to use DivX or XviD, which produces MPEG-4 ASP encodes. Therefore if you encode a video with XviD, you could put it in AVI or MP4 and it would still be the same quality, though the AVI would be bigger in filesize. WMV's native format, as you've guessed is Windows Media Video and Audio. Comes in a few versions, IIRC there is WMV7,8,9 & 10. If you encode the WMV videos in an external app like Virtualdub using the Windows Media 9 VCM, you can gain very good, almost XviD like quality, though it has a tendancy to smooth an image more. If you are encoding using presets in Windows Media Encoder or Windows Movie Maker, it uses basic settings for a fast encode and as a result it sucks. WMV9 VCM can be very slow dependant on settings.

But the gist of your comment was right, assuming an AVI video is encoded with XviD, a WMV with WMV7,8 or 9 in Windows Movie Maker and MP4 being H264/AVC in a MP4 container, then yes, MP4 > AVI > WMV

first off, i used the wrong word, and i'm not taking credit for other people's videos, simply redoing them so they'd actually run( and yes i know WMV format sucks, but at least 90% of the time they work as opposed to 40%)

You can call the process of converting a digital video from one type of compression to another; Transcoding or Re-encoding. If you were simply extracting the video from the AVI in it's unaltered state and placing it in a MP4, MKV etc container, this would be called Transmuxing (muxing is short for multiplexing).

koepi's XviD

installed it, it did better than most but still blew up in my face.

As for the commit about not knowing how to install a codec, yeah what ever, i geuss installing a codec on a WinXP machine is harder than installing Linux on a WinCE device. I know how to install software.

As for bad reviews, is stablity NOT AN ISSUE? How can you rate an unstable video? " Your video crashed but hey you get a 5 anyway?" Would you give a game a good rating IF IT DOESN'T EVEN WORK?

I have never had issues decoding with Koepi's XviD builds, they are generally as stable as, if not more than DivX and FFDshow. It also supports more features IIRC, such as the decoding of 3 warp point GMC. DivX only used to support 1 warp, and I think maybe FFDshow did too. If you have either FFDshow and/or DivX installed, uninstall DivX, and go in and configure FFDshow properly so DivX, XviD and all other variants are disabled, then try XviD.

As for stability, videos don't crash, decoders do. This is most likely an outdated decoder, or multiple decoders conflicting. A likely cause is like the one I mentioned above with GMC, do as I say and uninstall DivX and configure or uninstall FFDshow, reinstall XviD and try to play back my Kenshin vid in my signature, it uses 3 warp GMC (oh noes!) and has caused hassle for people in the past. It's been a good excercise for me for helping people get things working, and they generally do. Give it a go, it's not a great vid, but if you can play it you will be fine.

As for stability, how many people gave Doom 3 bad reviews because their computer was too slow (I'm not a gamer, it could have been a genuinely crap game, who knows?)

i don't post on these boards often, i'm begining to see why. so instead of taking in consideration what i said, you'd rather assume i'm wrong because i'm a noob.

It's not the fact you are a noob that is the problem here. Quite a few of us here enjoy helping people if they show common sense, and the will to learn rather than have answers handed to them on a plate. It doesn't help a cause to go in accusing the majority of doing something wrong where the minority is at fault.

Next time explain the problem, give as much info as possible, symptoms and how you can recreate it. Most times that's sufficient information to troubleshoot something.

in that case i'll post my systems Specs

CPU: AMD Duron 1.2ghz
Ram: 512 mb pc133
GPU: ATI Radeon 7000, 32mb DDR Video Ram, PCI version
Sound: AC97
OS : Windows XP sp2, problems also occured before OS upgrade from WIN 98se
Media Players: koepi's XviD, Windows Media Player 10, Quicktime 6, Divx Player( came with one of the codecs)
connection: Comcast Broadband 4mb/s max, 2.5mb/s typical

if theres anything here that would cause this codec to crash, let me know

and don't say "because your system sucks". it should run on a machine with about half those specs. we're looking more at driver issues, not how up to date my system is.

If you have DivX player, it implies you have DivX installed, or some codec pack. As I mentioned before the support in DivX is not as full as XviD, that is there are features you can use in XviD that DivX won't know how to decode correctly and cause soft crashes. Same with FFDshow, a lot of people just go through the installation with the default options. You should only enable what you need. If you have any codec packs, get rid of it straight away. Codec packs are the most evil thing in existance and are a virtual minefiled. The Nimo pack was supposedly so bad that many people had to format and reinstall.

As for your system specs, I think you should manage video playback fine but it wouldn't surprise me if you suffered slowdown or stuttering during 640x480 res playback with encodes using features such as QPEL or GMC; it's mainly a CPU issue but the graphics card plays a little part in it.

This entire thread screams on thing at me... "PEBKAC"

If you installed any codec pacs in the past, they're screwing with your system and (assuming you were correct in saying you uninstalled them) the best choice is to simply reformat your HDD. There are some serious problems here, and they're not with the codec used to encode. This is a decoding problem and thus it is lurking on your machine.

Well this about sums up what I said. It's not gang up on the newbie here, Some of us are genuinely trying to help.

Posting verbatim error messages, or describing behavior with greater precision than "it locks up", would probably be more helpful than insulting people.

In case you're wondering why people use XviD / DivX:

- It's a de facto standard among anime fans. A cursory glance at fansub bittorrent trackers will tell you that.
- It offers a very good size / quality ratio, although newer codecs (i.e. H.264 implementations) can stomp the heck out of it.
- It enjoys greater cross-platform compatibility than most other codecs in its class, partly due to implementation in the ffmpeg library.

Couldn't have put it better myself.

Oh my god, end the bull shit and just format your hard drive for god's sake.
Since nothing is working uninstalling and installing other shit doesn't seem to help just re-install your os and dont install service pack 2 its nothing but one hassel after another and quite frankly isnt necessary.

Yes, for me at least SP2 broke more than it fixed. It screwed with my emulation and my graphics driver so I decided to format and reinstall XP Pro SP1a and Windows update it, avoiding SP2.

[Qyot27]

Moving on to compressors; MP4 natively supports MPEG-4 SP, ASP and AVC (AVC also officially known as H.264).

WMV's native format, as you've guessed is Windows Media Video and Audio. Comes in a few versions, IIRC there is WMV7,8,9 & 10. If you encode the WMV videos in an external app like Virtualdub using the Windows Media 9 VCM, you can gain very good, almost XviD like quality, though it has a tendancy to smooth an image more. If you are encoding using presets in Windows Media Encoder or Windows Movie Maker, it uses basic settings for a fast encode and as a result it sucks. WMV9 VCM can be very slow dependant on settings.

MP4 also supports older MPEG standards, or at least the utilities I've seen can be used to put MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 into MP4.

WMV also supports what Microsoft calls MPEG4-ISO (I'm not completely sure if it's just one of their MPEG4vXX codecs in disguise or another one they developed specially for WMV), but you rarely find that nowadays. It's also definitely not just a case of a misnamed ASF file, as the version of VirtualDub that could handle ASF files won't touch MPEG4 WMVs with a ten-foot pole. I remember seeing the MPEG4 ISO option in one of the older versions of Windows Media Encoder. The 9 series just allows WMV7/8/9.

Yes, for me at least SP2 broke more than it fixed. It screwed with my emulation and my graphics driver so I decided to format and reinstall XP Pro SP1a and Windows update it, avoiding SP2.

In my case, I'm running on a Pre-SP1 XP Home machine and hardly have any issues (and most of the ones I do have are memory related). My experience with Windows updates led to my reformating and disabling the feature. I hate Windows Update with a passion.

[Scioneer]

learn to build your computer properly

i'm an A+ certified technician so i'm quite sure i know how to build a system. Besides, sometimes you can't really build it the way you truely want, no certification can make up for limited funds. Still i built it to at least be stable, and aside from this divx issue, its as stable as any system running Windows can be.

anyway the memory test checked out ok.

Some of your are helping and i thank you, however others are being arogant pricks. What you don't like me calling you that? tough! If you can't take it, don't dish it out.Take that crap over to SD.net where its welcome.

Reformatting my hd again is not a solution because i no longer have a WindowsXP disc. How can i re-install without a freaking disc.If i can find it, fine, no problem. however i don't believe such an extreme solution is called for. I can find and remove errant drivers with no problems, so i should find errant codecs the same way.

[nynex4]

I have found that the DivX player does not always work so well on slower computers. But once you have the Codec installed you can view the divx movie in windows media player just fine.
The only vid type that i can't stand is Quick time. It makes me want to hurl.

[Scioneer]

Quicktime runs fine for me. Some types of AVI's are a pain to me because you need an intel compatible cpu to run them correctly, which rules out my iMac( though there are ways to get it to work, though its a hassle) and my PDA's.

[BasharOfTheAges]

Well, if you're unwilling to format your HDD, the only thing i can recomend is to use your knowledge to fiddle with registry files to completely erase all traces of whatever codec packs you may have installed, though i have no idea if that would even help.

[Scioneer]

thats seems to be the best idea since i don't have my XP disc( and i'm not going back that that steaming pile of crap 98). Though registrywork is on par with eating broken glass, it's something i can do.

Anyway an update. I got rid of XVid and Divx and i'm now using VLC player. Much better program.