MPEG4 codec problem

[kris3]

Hello, I'm new to this forum and a digital video newbie, so I guess I should post here.

Ok so I realised this problem when I tried to encode to H.264 using adobe premiere pro cs3. I got a corrupt mp4 file which I could play in VLC but all I could see was a grey image. I downloaded this Sherlock Codec utility and this is what I get:

"MainConcept(Adobe2) MPEG Video Encoder - The driver file for this codec was not found. This probably means the codec was not uninstalled properly"
-Codec Name: MainConcept(Adobe2) MPEG Video Encoder
-Driver: C\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Premiere Pro CS3\ad2mcevmpeg.ax"

and I get the same results for the MainConcept (Adobe2) H.264/AVC Decoder AND Encoder, and also for the audio decoder and encoder.

So I checked the codecs in the device manager, and there was this codec "MS MPEG-4 v1,2,3 driver 4.00.0.3688" that was not working properly. after browsing MS site for a while and not finding anything about it, I downloaded this MS MPEG-4 VKI codec somewhere else, placed the MPG4C32.dll file under system32(it was missing, but not the mpgds32.ax file that came with that codec too), and back to the device manager, and hey, it is ok now, it tells me the codec is working now. But it's not. I still get the same error in Sherlock, and I still can't encode correctly with premiere.

I'm totally lost, and as you see I'm really a newbie, so I'd appreciate any help I can get.

How can I fix that broken codec that seems to be causing the problem? Is that MS MPEG-4 VKI codec reliable, as it does not come from MS support site?

btw, I read in another thread the DivX codec might cause this, and a reinstall might fix it. I did it and it didn't do anything

so, any ideas?

big thanks in advance (and sorry for the long post)

[celtic_druid]

MS MPEG-4 is different. It isn't even technically MPEG-4. Maybe try the repair function of Adobe's installer. Really though if there was a problem with the MainConcept/Adobe encoder filter, then it should just have refused to decode. Possible that the filter is just locked to certain apps so Sherlock is reporting that it isn't installed correctly.

[kris3]

thanks for your reply. yes, premiere does let me encode, and I can play back the clip.. a bad clip. so that's what is strange. I did a full clean reinstall, even running the adobe clean up tool just in case, and still the same problem. :/

should I remove that MS MPEG-4 codec? or maybe replace it with another one? (as you see again, I don't really know what I'm doing here)

I don't really understand what you say about the filter.. how do I check if it's locked, as you say?

thanks again

[celtic_druid]

Well there isn't really much point in MS MPEG-4 since ffdshow can encode/decode it.

I was just saying that sometimes directshow filters will be locked to certain apps. For instance Nero filters used to only work with Nero apps and I think WMP. If you renamed graphedit to recode.exe they would work with it, otherwise not. Now if you were to check these filters some apps probably would have reported them broken, but they worked exactly how they were meant to.