Black distortion/corruption in a movie

[kress]

I recently got my hands on a DivX movie that seems to have some kind of black distortion. Sometimes, during transitions and when characters move in the movie, there's a black corruption (I'm not sure what it's called) and you see black lines/cubes/blocks in certain points in the movie. Here are some screen shots:


Look at De Niro's napkin. It's full of these blocky black lines.


This one is much worse, the entire frame is corrupted.


Look at the man from the right. Check above his head for a lot black blocks.


This is another severe case, look at the right portion of the screen.


Yet another example, this time it's at different locations on the image.

As you might have guessed these captures are from The Untouchables.

The encoding info according to GSpot:

Length: 1:54:53
Framerate: 25 fps
Resolution: 688x288 (2.389:1)
Videocodec: DivX 5
Videobitrate: 1195 kbps
Audio: 5CH AC3, 448 kbps

This black corruption is absolutely annoying. I can't watch a movie like that. None of my other movies do it (and I have a lot of them). So I'm asking, is there anyway to fix this? Re-encoding is not an option since I do not have the original DVD source. I must deal with the .avi files I have at the moment.

Thanks

[Marvingj]

This looks like information that was process and image was corrupted, by possibly bad disc. What kind of source was used? There is no way to fix bad digital pixel because it used numbers & code. Power Fluctuations, Phone lines can affect picture in digital format thats why I still stick with analog as back up.

[kress]

The source is the original DVD. A friend of mine encoded it from his DVD (which is not bad/faulty), when we played his DVD it ran perfectly, no sign of any of the black blockiness you see above. Unfortunately, my friend no longer has the DVD which is why re-encoding is not an option for me. Perhaps it is a bad encoding problem? Can DivFix or DivXRepair fix this? I know for a fact that the digital source (DVD) was not faulty.

[junkmalle]

That kind of problem is usually caused by some incompatability between different version of Divx/Xvid/Mpeg4 codecs. Try removing all your MPEG4 codecs and reinstall only the latest Divx or Xvid.

[kress]

Well, I have never installed any codec packs. The only 3 independently codecs I installed are DivX 5.2, latest XviD binary and AC3 Filter 0.70.

I have tried disabling MPEG4 related codecs with MMCompView, but the black effect still remains.

I'm completely stumped here, it doesn't seem codec related (no codec conflicts because I haven't installed a lot of codecs as it is). It doesn't seem to be source related (the original DVD worked fine). So, I have no idea. To be honest, I've encoded over 200 movies and I have some experience with DivX/XviD, but I never saw a movie with that kind of problem.

Any other solutions?

Thanks in advance...

[junkmalle]

Xvid can be set up to decode Divx files. If it is you can disable that feature by going to Start -> All Programs -> Xvid -> Configure Decoder and turn off the DX50 and Divx settings. Or if they're already off, try turning them on and see if there's any difference.

[kress]

Yeah, I just tried that. First turned these 2 settings off, that didn't work. Then turned them on, that didn't work either.

Any other suggestions? I'm willing to try anything at this point...

[junkmalle]

If you open the file with an editor like VirtualDub do you still see the black spots? Virtualdub doesn't use Directshow so it will eliminate problems there.

Have you tried Divx's player?

I've seen ffdshow cause problems now and then too.

[junkmalle]

Oh, and have you tried playing the same file on another computer? Any different?

[kress]

OK, tried it with VirtualDub 1.4.10 and 1.5.10. Both times it still displayed the black spots.

I have never installed FFDShow.

I haven't tried it on a different computer yet. I'll have to burn it and see how it goes in a friend's computer. I doubt it will work though.

[kress]

OK, tried on my friend's computer, same result as before. The black spots effect is still there.

[kress]

OK, never mind. I just managed to get it working properly.

When I tried it before in BSPlayer, Media Player 9, Media Player Classic, DivX Player, VirtualDub, Zoom Player - it didn't work.

Well, I just tried it in VLC (VideoLAN) and it worked! No black artifacts whatsoever.

I still don't know what could've caused it not to work properly on other media players though.

[junkmalle]

The last things I can think of:

1) Use a fourcc changer to change the fourcc code from DX50 (presumably) to DIVX or XVID.

2) Remove your Divx codec and try installing different versions. Probably more trouble than it's worth.

Otherwise maybe the file was just encoded improperly and the black spots are actually in the file. At least the video isn't irreplaceable...