MCEBuddy

Hello.  After scouring the internet for hours and trying many different solutions (and not having much luck - dCut gives me an error and DVRMSToolBox hangs on the conversion) for compressing shows to make more room on my hard drive, I was very pleased to discover MCEBuddy.  It has great features without being overly complex.  I installed it and tried it out, and it seemed to work great - converted in a few hours, which seemed decent.  Plus, even though it took a lot of processing power, I was still able to use Media Center without any problems.  However, when I tried to play back the file, it had bands of yellow overlayed in it (permanently - they never moved), kind of like a yellow filter over some sections.  Also, every several seconds the video would pause for an instant, and then skip ahead to match the audio, which did not skip.  This was using the H.264 recommended profile.  I then did DivX and WMV, and they both played back exactly the same.  I selected another file and used H.264, and it also had yellow bands, but it did not skip.  Do you have any idea what could be causing this?  I am anxious to archive some shows, as my hard drive is filling up rapidly.  Thanks!

Here's some more information: I looked at the yellow band closer, and while there is one big vertical one about 1/3 from the left that stays there, the other yellowish sections appear to be related to the actual image, but offset, kind of like the static ghosts that one would see on analog TV from multi-path interference.  Also, they look slightly different in Windows Media Player vs. Windows Media Center, though they are present in both.  I hope this helps.

And yet more information: I moved the converted file to another machine - no yellow ghosting.  I converted a file on the other machine, and it played fine until  moved it back to the original machine, and it played the same as the ones converted on the original machine - with the yellow ghosting.  However, I play Divx files all the time on it, and I have never had a problem.  So it's some sort of combination of how the files are encoded with the setyp of that particular machine. 

I had the bright idea to try it in a different player (besides Media Player and Media Center which both behaved the same).  VLC played it back the same way until I turned off the hardware YUV->RGB conversions.  Then it worked.  Is there a way to do this in Media Center?  Or a different way to encode the files so this won't be a problem?

vander1:

I had the bright idea to try it in a different player (besides Media Player and Media Center which both behaved the same).  VLC played it back the same way until I turned off the hardware YUV->RGB conversions.  Then it worked.  Is there a way to do this in Media Center?  Or a different way to encode the files so this won't be a problem?

Firstly it sounds like your video card won't convert the colourspace correctly.  So You'll need to disable YUV playback under ffdshow.

1. Run Start-Programs-ffdshow-Video Decoder configuration
2. Go to the Output configuration setting
3. Disable all YUV output settings as so:

You may wish to enable the High Quality YV12 to RGB conversion option as well.

If the above doesn't work, right now I'm trying a different deinterlacer and this may resolve your issue as well.

Could you try the following?

1. Open the C:\Program Files\Tyrel\MCEBuddy\mplayer\mencoder.conf file in notepad

2. Find and replace all instances of pp=md with pp=fd

3. Save the file and try a re-code

Lastly, if that doesn't work you can try removing the scaling in the file (eg. scale=:-2) as its the scaling that also performs the YUV<−>RGB conversion.  Though this might do some un-fun things to the aspect ratio.

Derek 

Hi Derek, thanks for the quick and thorough reply.  Changing the ffdshow settings worked for Divx and H.264 which use the ffdshow decoder.  In fact it was unchecking the YV12 option that made it work.  However, the WMV videos still had the problem.  I also tried encoding with pp=fd (which I assume uses ffmpeg instead of mencoder).  That did not have any effect, as in, if I checked the YV12 box the yellow ghosting came back.  I also tried encoding using the WMV (no resize) preset, which had the scale:-2 option like you mentioned above.  This did fix it.  However, i found that the scaled version actually looked better because the unscaled video was very pixelated (everything looked like little squares), even though it was higher resolution.  Because of that and the file size, I will probably stick to the scaled version.  On another note, contrary to what I've read, fast forward/rewind and skipping both work on the WMVs, so it would be nice to have the option to use that format.

As far as the skipping, it seemed to be only encoded versions of that particular DV-RMS file that skipped a bit during the beginning, though the original DV-RMS file did not.  So it's not a big problem.  Is it possible that there are bad edits in that video that aren't getting de-interlaced properly in the encoding? 

Now the next question: why is my video not converting YUV->RGB correctly?  It is an MSI NX8500GT-TD256E, which I just got a few months ago.  I confirmed that it was the card by switching to the internal Intel 950 chipset graphics, which worked fine with the WMV file.  I even updated the NVIDIA drivers to the latest version and it did not fix it.  It seems like such a current graphics card shouldn't have problems like this.  Any ideas? 

vander1:

Hi Derek, thanks for the quick and thorough reply.  Changing the ffdshow settings worked for Divx and H.264 which use the ffdshow decoder.  In fact it was unchecking the YV12 option that made it work.  However, the WMV videos still had the problem.  I also tried encoding with pp=fd (which I assume uses ffmpeg instead of mencoder).  That did not have any effect, as in, if I checked the YV12 box the yellow ghosting came back.  I also tried encoding using the WMV (no resize) preset, which had the scale:-2 option like you mentioned above.  This did fix it.  However, i found that the scaled version actually looked better because the unscaled video was very pixelated (everything looked like little squares), even though it was higher resolution.  Because of that and the file size, I will probably stick to the scaled version.  On another note, contrary to what I've read, fast forward/rewind and skipping both work on the WMVs, so it would be nice to have the option to use that format.

As far as the skipping, it seemed to be only encoded versions of that particular DV-RMS file that skipped a bit during the beginning, though the original DV-RMS file did not.  So it's not a big problem.  Is it possible that there are bad edits in that video that aren't getting de-interlaced properly in the encoding? 

Now the next question: why is my video not converting YUV->RGB correctly?  It is an MSI NX8500GT-TD256E, which I just got a few months ago.  I confirmed that it was the card by switching to the internal Intel 950 chipset graphics, which worked fine with the WMV file.  I even updated the NVIDIA drivers to the latest version and it did not fix it.  It seems like such a current graphics card shouldn't have problems like this.  Any ideas? 

The reason why WMV still has the issue is that ffmpeg is not used as the codec for that format, it's native Windows Media Player, so your YUV-RGB issue remains.  If you want WMV with no yellow bars on your system you need to remove the scale:-2.  Can't have both (scaling converts RGB to YVU when transcoding).

Yes, you can skip with WMV, a typo on my behalf. I'll update the config guide.

Not sure about the missing beginning unless you are using commercial skipping.

I don't know why your particular video chipset/driver is not converting YUV->RGB correctly.  I just know some do have this issue.  The joys of graphics drivers. You could try another code pack, though ffdshow is pretty good.

Personally I'd go H.264 anyway (as its simply better than WMV) and then you have no yellow bars.  I survive with just skip and no FF/RW but maybe you use your system differently.

Cheers

Derek