When playing a WMV file kills your video . . .

[Seeker47]

Instantly. Kablooey ! As in: totally black screen you can't get out of, no response from mouse or keyboard, only option is to reboot Windows. So, what might do this ? (I have a couple theories, below.) This happens rather infrequently, only with some .WMV files, but the net effect is to make me quite wary about playing .WMV files on this older laptop. I can't recall the problem cropping up when playing .AVIs, .FLVs, .MPGs, or other file types. This laptop does not have WMP on it, but it does have recent issue VLC and Gom Player, which are supposed to be self-sufficient and able to handle WMV files. So, I don't know why this should be a codec issue, unless there are a plethora of WMV codecs in use now. I need to confirm the playability of these .WMV files on other computers, but I don't think I've found any yet that give the same results across different computers. The laptop only has 512M of Ram (the max. it will take), running W2K Pro SP4.

I may have seen some crashes like this on a desktop machine, when trying to play some Hi-Def clips where the video card was much too underpowered to handle them . . . but this was too long ago for me to recall the details clearly. One might hope that the hardware / software would just gracefully decline to play something, rather than crash the system. But I'm reasonably certain that the last few instances of this did not involve Hi-Def videos.

[redwudz]

That sounds a bit like Windows Explorer crashing when it can't read the format of the video. But that more often happens when it's trying to generate a thumbnail from a problem video. Does Gspot or Mediainfo show anything different about those files? I know it's hard to get much info from a WMV file. But if you can identify something in common, that may help.

And there are a lot of varieties of WMV around.

[Seeker47]

That sounds a bit like Windows Explorer crashing when it can't read the format of the video. But that more often happens when it's trying to generate a thumbnail from a problem video. Does Gspot or Mediainfo show anything different about those files? I know it's hard to get much info from a WMV file.(

And very hard to get info from files you no longer have. When I had that happen with one of these, I quickly got rid of it. But when it happens again, I'll try to take a closer look.

[Seeker47]

Just before at least one of those system crashes, I recall seeing a quick message flash from either GOM or VLC, that mentioned overlays. Might that be a clue ? I'm also thinking that the WMVs that did this may have been made in WMP-10, whereas I only had version 9 installed.

Other crashes happened so fast there was no time to see anything but the whole screen going black. I will save the next one of those I come across, for analysis.

[redwudz]

I've had the black screen when I adjusted the video card out of range, but no lockup. I know some game programs can adjust the video display, so not surprising the OS can do that also.

Overlay is a possibility, though more often you see that on a secondary display. It usually doesn't cause a full black screen unless you have playback set for full screen. And it shouldn't cause any lockups, just no picture.

But what you describe seems to be a systems crash. A BSOD without the blue screen. If you could read the exact error text before the lockup, that would help. But it would probably just say the program did a prohibited operation or tried to access a non-existent memory location.

My usual 'cure' for WMVs is to use AviSynth to open them in Virtual Dub and convert them to another format. Or just toss them into the recycle bin.

[zoobie]

try putting wmp on it...VLC doesn't play them well & your gom player may be funked

[Seeker47]

I have to revisit and somewhat revise this thread. While still infrequent, this sometimes happens also on my Shuttle XPC (which has an Intel Extreme 2 video chip, and I presume the supposed 256M. of video memory is actually of the shared-from-system-memory variety), and though it is most typically seen with .WMV files, I have also on occasion seen it with the odd .AVI or .MPG video. Still trying to identify some common trigger.

But what you describe seems to be a systems crash. A BSOD without the blue screen. smile.gif If you could read the exact error text before the lockup, that would help.

I think that is probably what it is. I think the super-brief error message was only on the laptop, and even then only in a few cases.

try putting wmp on it...VLC doesn't play them well & your gom player may be funked

I have both of these on the Shuttle as well, in addition to WMP-9. There is nothing wrong with the GOM, it functions normally. On the Shuttle, I always open a .WMV first in WMP, and several of these system crashes have occurred there.

I may need to investigate with Media Info or GSPOT and post the results here, as Redwudz suggests, and I could do that. But might this be a clue ? In the two most recent examples with WMVs, I've looked inside the files and what they seem to have in common is "Windows Media 9 Professional. WMFSDK Version 10 needed." Say What ?! I did a quick Google search on it, which was inconclusive. Could this be some API that is standard in XP, but absent in my W2K ?

Some other problem WMVs had mention of WMP-10 or WMP-11 inside.

Despite the video-killer result when played directly, these last two did render well into good-looking videos, via ConvertX . . . . Go figure. I've also had some video-fatal clips -- not all of them WMVs -- that I could put onto a USB thumbdrive, and if my Oppo player could see them, it could probably play them. Whatever that means. (Doesn't it suggest that the video file was not corrupt ?)

I'm wondering if such videos would play on a system with a real video card that has a decent amount of its own memory on it. Hopefully soon I'll have a chance to find out. And I'm wondering: Is this a codec thing, an HD thing, or something else ? I've had a few clips that were described as being "HD", but only because someone considered 640 x 480 or 720 x 480 to be HD. (If compared to a lot of very low-res junk out there, I suppose it is.)

[minidv2dvd]

do you have wmp 11 installed? if not that may be the problem. you wouldn't have the latest wm codecs installed.

[Seeker47]

do you have wmp 11 installed? if not that may be the problem. you wouldn't have the latest wm codecs installed.

D'oh ! I'm sure that must the answer, in regard to several of the .Wmv examples I've run into. For the time being, I had taken to looking inside each file, to pre-inspect the codec info. Usually -- but not always -- if it said WM-9 video / audio, there was no problem. (The exceptions might have said "WM-9 Professional.") If it mentioned WM 10 or ll, that was one for me to avoid playing. G-Spot was also helpful in warning me off of an .Avi that was Divx-5, which I don't have: it flat out told me "Codec Not Installed." But it reveals zilch when the file is .Wmv or .Asf.

Would I absolutely need to move to WM-11 (which might not even be compatible with my W2K), or might something like this

http://www.microsoft.com/DOWNLOADS/details.aspx?familyid=A503FF93-D1B2-4DAA-A0D2-3E33F...displaylang=en

do the trick ?

Finally, I'm guessing that the reason ConvertX does not croak when processing these files -- even though I can't play them without killing the video -- is that its FFMpeg-based library has what it needs to handle them. Just recently, I saw a Tools item update here for some player that is FFMpeg-based (SMPlayer ?). Does that suggest it may have the means to play such files on this computer, as is ?

[MOVIEGEEK]

WMP 9 is the highest you can use with W2k,download WMF 11 SDK:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsmedia/bb190309.aspx

I would reinstall WMP 9 first,it might be corrupted.

[Seeker47]

WMP 9 is the highest you can use with W2k,

Thanks. Yes, I thought I recalled something to that effect . . . .

download WMF 11 SDK:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsmedia/bb190309.aspx

I'll take a look at it, but all I see in the brief descriptions on that page are mentions of DRM and managing licenses (both things I steer well clear of), or software development, which I don't do.

[MOVIEGEEK]

WMF 11 SDK also installs the latest codecs.

[Seeker47]

WMP 9 is the highest you can use with W2k,download WMF 11 SDK:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsmedia/bb190309.aspx

I tried to do this, but it proved to be a dead end. When I went to install it, it halted with a message that it requires XP with SP-2, which leaves me out of the picture. Someone else raised the question of whether there could be an incompatibility with my video drivers. That sounds a lot more plausible to me, but there would be no cure for that either. This is an older computer, and already has the last video drivers that were released for its built-in video chip. The amount of video memory could also be involved.

I was hoping that WMP_HC might be of some help. It did add support for RM and Matroska, but does not address the issue with WM-9 "Professional" (which, I'm sorry, but is not the same thing as regular WM-9, whatever it happens to be), WM-10 or 11 format video.