AVI Freezes up

[surffx]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for taking the time to read my long post. It will include a lot of details to help me fix my problem.

I am not new to video editing but I just do it for fun and can’t really afford expensive equipment. Right now I am using Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 on a Dell Dimension 3000.

I have never run into this problem before on any other of my older machines but when I try to play and AVI file it keeps freezing and unfreezing and the CPU usage goes up to %100.

This happens in Premiere and Windows Media player and VLC media player so I have determined it is not the program. I have the Panasonic DV codec loaded and DMA is enabled on my hard drive.

NOW HERE IS WHERE I THINK THE PROBLEM LIES. It does not happen with EVERY avi file but most. When I compare the one that works with the one that is choppy I noticed in the properties page that the good one says cinepak codec and the choppy one says DVcodec. So I guess this is a codec issue.

I have never had this issue before normally I just install windows XP and install premiere and off I go. But on this machine I can’t seem to play AVI files that come in the DV format.

Is this a hardware issue on a codec issue?

Thanks for the help

[jagabo]

Start by getting rid of Panasonic DV Codec, it's full of bugs. Try using Cedocida instead.

[surffx]

Thanks jagabo! I will give that a shot this afternoon and let you know.

[surffx]

Jagabo, sorry but that did not work.

Wow 81 views and only one reply, anyone else have any ideas. This thing is kicking my butt.

Thanks!!!

[jagabo]

I didn't really think that would fix your problem but I wanted to get it out of the way first. Are you sure Panasonic DV Codec is really removed? I seem to recall it's hard to get rid of. You may have to go into the Windows System32 folder and delete the PDVCODEC.DLL.

What media players have you tried playing the DV file? If you haven't tried VLC you should. It has it's own built in codecs and doesn't rely on Directshow system installed codecs. If VLC plays the file smoothly that means the problem definitely revolves around a bad DV decoder on your system. You can use GraphStudio to determine exactly what decoder is being used.

[surffx]

Thanks again jagabo, I will try these steps this afternoon and keep you posted.

[jagabo]

By the way, there are two video systems in Windows: Video for Windows (VFW) and DirectShow. Different codecs are required for each. (Actually, VFW codecs can be accessed from DirectShow via a wrapper, but not the other way around.) I'm pretty sure Premiere Pro uses VFW to read and write video files. Media players usually use DirectShow or their own internal A/V file readers. So problems in Premiere may be unrelated to problems in media players.

[surffx]

Ya, the problem happens in both Premeire and Windows media player. I'm pretty sure I tired VLC too, but I recently reformatted/reinstalled the whole computer to try and fix this problem but that did not work.


So I will install VLC and try that this afternoon and let you know if that's any different.

Maybe it's not a codec issue at all, but some sort of hardware issue.

[surffx]

I did search for PDVCODEC.DLL in system32 and it was still there so I deleted it (thanks for the tip).

Next I tried VLC...are you ready for this?

When I first played a clip using VLC the problem was there. Then if I played the same clip again it is now fixed.

On top of that if I go back and try it with Windows Media Player it doesn't work (we already know that) then if I open it up in VLC it has the problem the first time I play it, but if I try it again a second time it works with VLC. Is it switching codecs the second time around?

Now how do I use GraphStudio to change the codec?

[jagabo]

Very strange behavior. It doesn't sound like simply a codec problem but rather a DirectShow issue. Or a combination of problems.

Have you updated your graphics card to the latest WHQL certified drivers?

Are you sure it's an AVI file? Anybody can rename a file with .AVI as the extension. That can sometimes confuse players (though they're usually pretty good at determining the real container by looking at the structure rather than the extension). MediaInfo or GSpot can tell you the true container.

To use GraphStudio: start the program. Drag an AVI file onto its window. It will build a graph automatically. Try pressing the Play button. This is the same as playing a video with WMP. If that doesn't work correctly (restart and rebuild the graph if necessary) right click on the video decoder and select Properties. From there you can tell exactly which filter it is (filename), select any options, and see the state of all the input and output pins. You can delete a filter by selecting it an pressing the Del key (or right clicking and selecting delete). Insert another filter by selecting Graph -> Insert Filter. After inserting a filter you connect the pins with a drag and drop from the output pin (on the right side) of one filter to the input pin (on the left side) of another. If you right click on an output pin and select Render Pin it will preferentially use any filters currently in the window. For example automatically building a graph from a DV AVI file will usually give you QDV.DLL as the DV decoder (it comes with Windows). If you delete that filter from the graph and add Ffdshow Video Decoder, then right click on the Avi Splitter's output pin and select Render Pin ffdshow will automatically be used instead of QDV.DLL.