MPC wont render .avs files

[Cyberpro60]

Today I ventured out of my comfort zone. Based on recommendations posted elsewhere on this site I downloaded and installed HDConverttox rather than use old faithful MeGUI. Almost from the beginning I ran into problems. Essentially, whenever I try to run an .avs file in MediaPlayerClassic, the video just won't play and throws an error.

Set out below is the result I am getting when trying to play even the most basic .avs file including one line with a DirectShowSource to a small test video file viz:

-------------------TEST.AVS FILE ---------------------
DirectShowSource("C:\Temp\Test.mpg")
-----------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------
ERROR MESSAGE
------------------------------------------------------------

MediaPlayer Classic could not render some of the pins in the graph, you may not have the needed codecs or filters installed on the system.

The following pin(s) failed to find a connectable filter.

-----------------------------------------------------------
ERROR DETAILS
-----------------------------------------------------------
C:\TEMP\Test.avs::Avisynth video #1
Media Type 0:
--------------------------
Video: YV12 720x576 25.00fps
AM_MEDIA_TYPE:
majortype: MEDIATYPE_Video {73646976-0000-0010-8000-00AA00389B71}
subtype: MEDIASUBTYPE_YV12 {32315659-0000-0010-8000-00AA00389B71}
formattype: FORMAT_VideoInfo {05589F80-C356-11CE-BF01-00AA0055595A}
bFixedSizeSamples: 1
bTemporalCompression: 0
lSampleSize: 622080
cbFormat: 88
VIDEOINFOHEADER:
rcSource: (0,0)-(0,0)
rcTarget: (0,0)-(0,0)
dwBitRate: 0
dwBitErrorRate: 0
AvgTimePerFrame: 400000
BITMAPINFOHEADER:
biSize: 40
biWidth: 720
biHeight: 576
biPlanes: 1
biBitCount: 12
biCompression: YV12
biSizeImage: 622080
biXPelsPerMeter: 0
biYPelsPerMeter: 0
biClrUsed: 0
biClrImportant: 0
pbFormat:
0000: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 80 1a 06 00 00 00 00 00 ........€.......
0030: 28 00 00 00 d0 02 00 00 40 02 00 00 01 00 0c 00 (...Ð...@.......
0040: 59 56 31 32 00 7e 09 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 YV12.~..........
0050: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 .......

In case you were wondering:

1. Yes, I have downloaded and installed the latest version of Avisynth
2. All the .avs files the don't play with MPC DO play perfectly in VirtualDub
3. OS is Windows XP Professional

Can somebody please point me in the direction of a fix for this problem?

[poisondeathray]

This doesn't address your problem directly, but I would recommend using MPEG2Source() instead of DirectShowSource() for .mpg sources (the latter is not necessarily frame accurate and prone to many issues)

What issues were you haveing with Megui and why HDConvertToX? It hasn't been updated in over a year - the developer has been busy with other things

[Cyberpro60]

With recent updates to MeGUI I have noticed quite a few changes - the loss of a whole host of templates for High Quality X264 encoding being not the least. Also, even using the suggested settings I have noticed MeGUI seems to be delivering far too much compression and overall much poorer video quality (eg my most recent encode of a 12GB HiDef Movie resulted in a compressed version of only 1GB even with a quality setting of 20 and slow encoding). I know have probably done something wrong I know but when Googling for X264 templates I came up with a posting comparing StaxRip.MeGUI.HDConverttox and the latter seemed to be generally recommended. So I thought I would, at least, try it out.

Incidentally, I tried your suggestion using MPEG2Source() instead of DirectShowSource() and got an error message saying there is no function MPEG2Source()! Back to you on that one

[Gavino]

Incidentally, I tried your suggestion using MPEG2Source() instead of DirectShowSource() and got an error message saying there is no function MPEG2Source()

You need to install DGIndex.

Also, the error message shows that MPC is calling up Avisynth correctly. So the original problem probably is to do with DirectShowSource not working because you don't have appropriate DirectShow codecs installed for your source (to render YV12).

Try adding ConvertToYUY2() or ConvertToRGB().

[Cyberpro60]

Thanks for the advice everybody. I reinstalled Avisynth and ffdshow (again) and the problem seemed to vanish and has not reappeared.
I am a little perplexed as to why this didn't work the first time but I am not going to lose sleep over it.

[hello_hello]

With recent updates to MeGUI I have noticed quite a few changes - the loss of a whole host of templates for High Quality X264 encoding being not the least.

It's because they're old and outdated. I think they were last updated in 2008. If you look at the MeGUI presets thread at doom9, you'll notice there's now (finally) a warning regarding using them which has been added to the first post in the thread.
MeGUI has a Target Playback Device option when setting up the encoder which is supposed to do the work of the device-dedicated MeGUI presets. x264's own speed preset should be used to adjust quality/encoding time. If you want the highest quality/smallest size for a given CRF value, use one of slower presets. Most of the time I just use the medium preset, which is the default. Once you've set up your preferred x264 options you can save it as your own MeGUI preset but it's probably a good idea to delete the old ones.

Also, even using the suggested settings I have noticed MeGUI seems to be delivering far too much compression and overall much poorer video quality (eg my most recent encode of a 12GB HiDef Movie resulted in a compressed version of only 1GB even with a quality setting of 20 and slow encoding).

You're possibly doing something wrong, although the size of the source video isn't really an indicator of how large the output will be. Were you resizing down? In theory all encoder GUIs should produce the same output using the same settings because they're using the same x264 encoder (although some may be using older versions).
Before you write MeGUI off, try another encode after resetting the x264 encoder back to defaults (which is also CRF 20). If you want compatibility with most newer devices, select DXVA as your Target Playback Device (it'll change the level to 4.1). That will also ensure the video can be decoded by a video card capable of hardware decoding. x264 doesn't really require the use of "templates" as such. The default settings are quite adequate. For 99% of users (myself included) there's no need to mess with x264's advanced settings. Adjusting the x264 speed preset will automatically adjust the appropriate "advanced" settings accordingly.

If the final file size is still only 1GB than that's all it needs to be. If it's still not the quality you're after then try lowering the CRF value, but before you blame MeGUI, try the same encode using another GUI while also using the x264 defaults. If the output quality is noticeably better (which I doubt) then I guess something is wrong.