Distorted color on playback?

[Nathan1]

My brother had recorded some tv shows for me from his computer and converted them to .mpg. He put them on an external hard drive after he tested them--looked great--and gave it to me. I copied them to my computer and when I play them--whether on my comp or from the external HD--the color is all distorted. Like black and white but color at random parts.

I took the HD with the files on it to work and tried them on the computers there, and they look great. It's just my computer. Any ideas? TIA!

[jagabo]

Go to your graphics card's setup applet and adjust the video overlay settings.

[Nathan1]

Go to your graphics card's setup applet and adjust the video overlay settings.

Any idea where I'd find that?

And it may be worth noting that these are the only videos this happens on

[jagabo]

Go to your graphics card's setup applet and adjust the video overlay settings.

Any idea where I'd find that?

Unfortunately, it varies with graphics card and driver version. From the Display Properties dialog select the Settings tab, the press the Advanced button. Search for video color settings.

And it may be worth noting that these are the only videos this happens on :(

Play the same video in two players at the same time. Is one messed up and the other normal? That indicates a video overlay problem (only one program can use the overlay feature at a time). If they are both messed up you probably have a codec issue.

Note that online players, like youtube.com, don't use video overlay so they won't show the same problem. Quicktime Player also doesn't use video overlay. Try players like WMP, MPC, VLC, KMPlayer, etc.

[Nathan1]

Ok, i played it in WMP and VLC at the same time and VLC looked great, no problems. So I closed both, then re-opened in VLC, and it was still fine. It seems to be only WMP. Any ideas why??

[jagabo]

In the same folder as WMP (usually c:\program files\windows media player) there is an old version of Windows Media Player called mplayer2.exe. Try running that and WMP at the same time -- instead of VLC and WMP. VLC is a little tricky because it can be configured not to use video overlay and it has its own MPEG splitter and decoder. But I'm leaning toward a problematic MPEG2 decoder.