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Thread: wmv files

  1. #1
    Registered User Tessalicious's Avatar
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    wmv files

    Help!

    I'm finally utterly fed up with not being able to view wmv files properly, and wondered if any of you clever people have any ideas.

    Although I use WMP, on a PC with XP Pro and no obvious problems (as well as a very good graphics card, well it was a year ago anyway), whenever I download wmv files (like the clips of Kevin and Carla from the Blaze website, or that Coldplay video that everyone raved and ranted about) the colours are all wrong, so I can never see what's going on. The majority of the screen - people's skin, some clothes, and some background - is in blocks of cyan with a little detail and outlined in green and other bits are in dark blue, orange, pink or red. In fact, it looks a little like an inversed infra-red picture (the hottest bits are blue).

    Anyone ever had the same problem, or do you know how to fix it?

  2. #2
    Commercial Operator
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    Re: wmv files

    Have you downloaded the latest DIVX Codec?

    Many AVI files take advantage of this format but it's not on many PCs automatically.

    I just tried downloading the K&C clip on this machine as I know it doesn't have it installed and I can't play that clip. Worth a try (just Google for Divx codec)

  3. #3
    Registered User David Franklin's Avatar
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    Re: wmv files

    Is the problem "consistant" or does it only happen with some wmv files?

    It's a bit hard to tell from only a description, but it sounds like either the Red and Blue channels are getting swapped or something is going wrong during YUV->RGB conversion.

    As clevedonboy suggests, getting the right codecs and/or updating to the latest video drivers may be worth a try.

    The other thing I would do is look at the "Performance" tab in the MediaPlayer's options menu. Try turning off hardware acceleration, and/or going into the advanced bit and basically fiddling to see if anything helps. I've had a somewhat similar situation to yours that I managed to fix by playing with these settings.

  4. #4
    Registered User Tessalicious's Avatar
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    Re: wmv files

    Quote Originally Posted by David Franklin
    The other thing I would do is look at the "Performance" tab in the MediaPlayer's options menu. Try turning off hardware acceleration, and/or going into the advanced bit and basically fiddling to see if anything helps. I've had a somewhat similar situation to yours that I managed to fix by playing with these settings.
    Tried this and managed to fix it (at least for now) by stopping the video mixing renderer. If it hasn't solved the problem for all files then I will look into the DIVX Codec too.

    I'd not tried this, for the simple reason that I don't have a great track record of 'fixing' stuff without it all going horribly wrong, so I generally don't try things unless I have a good reason to think it might work, such as advice from people in the know.

    Thanks guys

  5. #5
    Papa Smurf
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    Re: wmv files

    Quote Originally Posted by Tessalicious
    whenever I download wmv files
    Its just a codec problem - go here

  6. #6
    Registered User Beowulf's Avatar
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    Re: wmv files

    http://www.headbands.com/gspot/

    download and install GSpot it tells you Exactly what codec a video or audio file uses. There are some obscure ones out there.. 3ivx etc that are not always easily recognisable and not always included in standard codec packages.

  7. #7
    Registered User David Franklin's Avatar
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    Re: wmv files

    I have to say that I don't think I've ever seen a scenario where the lack of a codec (or even a codec being out of date) caused the behaviour described by Tessa. Missing codec usually means missing video and/or audio, often accompanied by an error message, not video coming out in strange colours. And given there are a lot of different codec formats around, consistantly getting a particular problem in RGB display seems to point to a problem further down the display chain.

    Off the top of my head, I would suspect many codecs produce a YUV image that is then converted by the Windows Media Player to RGB; either in software or by using hardware acceleration on the graphics card. My guess is that it is at this stage that the problem is occuring.

  8. #8
    Papa Smurf
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    Re: wmv files

    Those exact symptoms I have seen many times when playing WMV files, Ive always been able to fix it by installing the latest WMV codec pack from microsoft.

    I dont know why some of you are going on about other codecs - the problem was with WMV files.

  9. #9
    Registered User David Franklin's Avatar
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    Re: wmv files

    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadful Scathe
    Those exact symptoms I have seen many times when playing WMV files, Ive always been able to fix it by installing the latest WMV codec pack from microsoft.
    I stand corrected. The codec model for WMP must be even more broken than I thought. (And coming from someone who worked on OMF, that's saying something!)

  10. #10
    Papa Smurf
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    Re: wmv files

    Quote Originally Posted by David Franklin
    I stand corrected. The codec model for WMP must be even more broken than I thought. (And coming from someone who worked on OMF, that's saying something!)
    Im assuming Windows Media Player 10 fixes it by using the newer codecs anyway, but a vanilla install of WinXP SP2 will give these symptons for some WMV's as its the older WMP (er..v9, cant remember).

    You can keep the older Media Player if you like but it will need the new codecs.

  11. #11
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    Re: wmv files

    If codecs don't sort you out, you could always give the VLC player from Videolan a go. It's a bit rough-and-ready in look'n'feel, but on my machines it plays everything that Media Player can't (which is a lot)

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