AVISynth quality issues

[RehpiceD]

I wrote a simple AVS script and played back my Decrypter-ripped Progressive PAL .d2v file with Windows Media Player. In comparison with playing the VOBs the picture looks terrible. There is a brownish hue to the material and all dark colors are missing. As I said, the VOBs play fine.
Is this a quality issue with AVISynth, the Mpeg2.dll, or Windows MP? I am planning a conversion to NTSC I need to know before I feed CCE.
I am using AVISynth 2.52 and the only Mpeg2Dec3.dll plugin gives me picture. Other Mpeg2Dec.dll versions return “Unrecognized exception in line….” – that is where I load my video.

[adam]

Dark colors are missing? It sounds like more of an overlay problem. In media player make sure you have hardware accelleration set to full. It also might be called Video accelleration depending on the OS you use.

If you are only running mpeg2dec than I doubt its actually messing up the source. It really sounds more like a display problem rather a decoding one. Try loading the AVS into CCE and previewing it there to see if it decodes correctly. After loading the AVS double click on it to go to the settings area. Then under input files, click settings. Then click on the file one more time to open the preview section. This is an often overlooked function in CCE.

If you want to run other versions of Mpeg2dec than you need to use an earlier version of Avisynth. I believe there is only one mpeg2dec.dll which runs in Avisynth 2.52 and if you are getting any picture at all, then you must already be using that one.

BTW, Avisynth 2.08 is more stable than 2.52, though can be slower with some sources/settings. You may want to start with that version first to try to problem solve this.

[RehpiceD]

Thanks Adam.

I realize instead of saying "dark colors are missing" I should have described the picture as washed out, there are no dark shades, nothing is black, similar to what you see if you turn the contrast down to minimum and turn the brightness up on a TV set.
The file plays the same way with VirtualDubMod.
I tried CCE preview and got an error: "Couldn't find appropriate video codec for 'YV12'"

[mh2360]

Try ConvertToYUY2() at the end of your script...

[RehpiceD]

Thanks, I accidently removed the ConvertToYUY2() line when I tried to simplify the script. Now it loads in CCE but I get the same exact picture quality.
Any ideas?

[adam]

Try reverting back to Avisynth 2.08 and the older Mpeg2Dec3.dll. Like I said, its much more stable and with a DVD source there isn't much difference in speed.

I'm curious, what happens if you load the vob directly into VirtualDubMod? Or is that what you did? If so then its definitely a display problem and not a problem with avisynth.

[RehpiceD]

I just loaded the VOB in VirtualDubMod directly and it playes perfectly. I will try AVISynth 2.08 now.
What do you mean display problem?

[adam]

I meant something wrong with your video card. In other words, I wasn't convinced Avisynth was causing the problem. For instance if you turn off hardware accelaration, or if it doesn't work properly due to a driver conflict or something, then overlay doesn't work properly and you get strange visual effects when you try to play something like an mpg. The colors seem to drop out and you may, for example, be able to see through the picture and see the icons on your desktop.

[RehpiceD]

Turned out that my MpegDec.dll version was incompatible with AVISynth 2.52 or something else. I found a newer and faster version, at Nic's here: http://nic.dnsalias.com/MPEG2Dec3v110.zip and it works like a champ.