Movie Codec Issues

[sparkofice]

For some reason most of the movies that I have are in .wmv format or have some nifty divX codec in them.

Whenever I use iriviter to convert a .wmv movie, the whole movie goes black and white and there are basically no moving frames. Just chop chop. Sound is pretty good though.

Whenever I use iriviter to conver an divX codec baby, the same thing happens.

Is there a program that would convert the divX codec to the standard codec that iriviter can read and convert to x5? Is there a simple fix?

How do you spell iriviter?

[HiMDforMe]

spelling bump: iriverter (iRiver converter?)

[BlueHawk]

Sounds like you are missing some codecs (DivX or XviD at least, and possibly some older WMV codecs). You should try running mencoder from the command line and see the errors popping out. You can go to the mplayer site to get some codecs. You may also need to hunt around the Internet for other codecs (that aren't freely distributable).

[sparkofice]

Missing codecs for what? The x5? The movies converted play fine on the computer but once trasfered to the x5 it goes all crazy on me.

iRiverter. Hah, should've known.

[JonnyBoy]

What version are you using? I know when I used .14 to do some RealPlayer movies they came out choppy and black and white, just like what you're describing. Try installing the version right before it and convert.

[sparkofice]

Ok, I did just that! I used version .13r-something and well. . . it wouldn't convert. It would just sit there and say, "gathering information."

Meh, nevermind, I reinstalled .14, converted the same video clip and it came out black and white and choppy on my computer too. I guess mencoder is the problem? Any help here though?

[BlueHawk]

As I said before, I think there is a problem with the video stream conversion. Iriverter/mencoder needs a codec to decode the incoming video stream and then the XviD codec to encode the outgoing video stream. Since I'm on Linux, I can't advise too much on the exact things you need to do on Windows without having a Windows box in front of me. It probably wouldn't hurt to download the latest XviD codec.

But running mencoder manually will tell you all sorts of things about what it is doing and that would help with debugging.

As for the converted movies playing fine on the Windows box and not fine on the X5, it means that you have a useable codec on the Windows but the X5 only has one codec (the XviD) and it isn't happy with video format.

I'm out for the rest of the weekend so hopefully other people can help with this.

Cheers.

[sparkofice]

Hmm, I'll look into that. I checked out the mencoder website (mplayer/something) and they seem to have lots of codecs up for download. Tonight I'll grab all of that and install them. Hopefully that'll fix my problem.

[dfkt]

You should be fine as long as you have XviD, ffdshow, and maybe DivX, installed. And WMP9 or 10 to get the latest WMV/ASF codecs.