Question re viewing video clips?

[mart]

Excuse my ignorance - but I have often been irritated when I have first viewed a clip I have bought, by blue/red/green stripes running vertically down the screen and a kind of flyscreen effect top and side. Also, the clips are black and white.

Then, and this may be normal or I may also be wrong, they seem to disappear on further viewing, they come out in colour and it all seems like it never happened.

What's the deal here? Can someone explain this strange phenomenon?

 

[MistressValerie1]

I find that when I view a clip for the first time with Windows Media Player, there is often some slight distortion or jerkiness, which disappears on subsequent viewings. I don't know what causes it 🙂

 

[Celtic_Emperor]

I think it might have something to do with the file either being compressed and upon the first viewing after being unzipped is distorted in the way you are discribing, or its a buffering effect. As Val says, the more and more you watch it, the less and less a problem this should be.

If it doesn't go away, then it could very well have nothing to do with WMP, but rather the VHS or Beta cassette the movie was recorded on. Because tickling video producers are not known for using high-quality recording devices (or props or anything really) they probably don't use digital discs. Because VHS and Beta are completely analog and are magnetic, some distortion may have occured during production or in the process of converting the film to a digital medium.

 

[mart]

Yeah, it must be something like this. It is not just with WMP but also with Realplayer that this happens, so it must have something to do with the decompression process.

 

[Celtic_Emperor]

Yes, if every program is playing the clip back the same way, even after multiple viewings, then its an internal error with the actual film when it was transfered.

 

[mart]

Strange business. Yesterday a number of the clips that I played were clear and in full colour. Today, some of these are black and white again, with these two vertical lines running about 2 inches apart, one bluish and the other green/red.

There are also horizontal lines running close together at the top of the screen. File types make no difference, and there is the same phenomenon in both Realplayer and WMP.

Besides this, there are areas of red and green, like dancing on the surface.

 

[asutickler1]

What OS are you running?

 

[mart]

What OS are you running?

Windows XP

 

[MistressValerie1]

This might sound strange, but have you defragmented the hard drive lately? My media players often act weird when the drive needs defragmenting.

 

[mart]

This might sound strange, but have you defragmented the hard drive lately? My media players often act weird when the drive needs defragmenting.

Uhhh...! Sure. What does that mean (scratches head perplexed)?

Could you just give me a few hints as to go about that and I'll give it a bash. Hope it doesn't fragment my computer...

 

[MistressValerie1]

First, you should back up all of your data just to be safe.

In Windows XP, if you have never defragmented before, you should check the integrity of the disk. Go to Start-> Run then type exactly what appears in the "Code" box below:

chkdsk c: /f

then click OK. When the black DOS box pops up, type in Y then press Enter, then reboot and let it check the disk. (It may take a few minutes.) The computer will then restart.

Then, to defragment, delete any unneeded files from the Recycle Bin and any temporary Internet files, then while disconnected from the Internet, temporarily turn off your antivirus realtime scanner. Then go to Control Panel-> Performance and Maintenance-> Rearrange Items on Your Hard Disk to Make Programs Run Faster and then click "Defragment" on the dialog box that pops up. Defragmenting may take a long time. If you have less than 15% of your hard disk space free, it may not defragment completely. Don't forget to turn your antivirus scanner on when you are finished 🙂

I like to defragment my hard disk about once a month to keep it tidy. The "chkdsk" part is optional but doesn't hurt. The reason for turning off antivirus while defragging is that some AV programs can interfere with files being rearranged by Windows.

Best of luck,

 

[mart]

Thanks very much for all that help. I have done it and my computer certainly is faster. But the original problem perists. What did happen during the defragmentation process is that I got an SWFlash error message , that I needed to istall this vital program. Now, I checked that out, but the program is in fact on the computer. In looking in a forum about this, I saw the question about the error message, but no answer.

Perhaps this has something to do with it. If I can't get it to work, I shall just wait another two months when I get my new computer - a Mac this time from America and hopefully without all these little German quirks.

Anyway, you are always extremely helpful in these sort of situations. Thanks again.