video issue... H.264

[Dave Cruickshank]

I'm having an issue, and I'm not sure if it's me or not. I've searched this forum for an answer to no avail, so I'll pose the question here.

I've used SCS quite a bit, but haven't really pushed it's video capabilities till now, and I'm having some problems.

I have 5 videos that I want to string back to back. All of them are H.264 Mp4's at 1280x544 resolution.

Each one of them plays just fine in SCS and outputs properly to my output source (HDMI). However, when I try to string them together (each with an auto start time of 0 seconds after the previous item).

When the first item ends, the next one starts to play. But only the sound comes through. No video. If I stop it, and play it by itself... it works fine. But it doesn't seem to play properly in sequence. I've tried delaying the start of the next item to .5 seconds after the previous one ends, but the same problem.

I'm using the latest K-lite Mega codec package, and the newest SCS Pro release.


Now... as I try it again... it seems to work fine.

Any ideas what might cause the instability?

[Peter Jackson]

HI
Not sure what causes this, maybe Mike will be able to tell , but I found that if I did any tweeking to any of my video files while setting up during the rehearsal this was happening to me until I restarted SCS and then like you said all worked fine, but I had to do it everytime I made an adjustment.
PJ

[Mike Daniell]

When the first item ends, the next one starts to play. But only the sound comes through. No video. If I stop it, and play it by itself... it works fine. But it doesn't seem to play properly in sequence. I've tried delaying the start of the next item to .5 seconds after the previous one ends, but the same problem.

When the end of a video cue is reached, SCS hides the display window unless another video cue is playing or about to play, so it could be a timing issue in SCS. Which video playback option do you have selected under General Options / Permanent Options?

[jmgordon]

Have you tried setting the auto start to 0.0 secs BEFORE the end of the previous cue? I have just tried this in my current show file, which Mike knows has been causing me problems on my laptop. In my case I have 6 video cues started manually, but I have just tried the auto start method, without an external screen, but I can see the result in the small panel. Cueing after the end produced a blank result, whereas cueing before worked.
Another thing to consider when answering Mike's question of which video playback option you have selected is the max number of video files to pre-open. I found that using the default of 5 caused a significant black gap of 1.3 secs when starting the second and subsequent cues (which over-write the running cue); reducing it to two files made it workable, whereas pre-opening only one made the video playback unstable.

Malcolm

[Dave Cruickshank]

Your replies have been MOST helpful. I will continue to experiment with this. Reducing my pre-open to 2.

Is there a difference between Direct Show and WMP? I apologize for my ignorance... I'm not well-versed in digital video, and this is a relatively new-to-me application for SCS... (displaying movie trailers, and commercials before the start of a feature motion picture at a small local independent movie theater)

Is there any way to get .mov support within SCS?

[Dave Cruickshank]

Note: I just tried the WMP video playback option, and that definitely did NOT work at all... It crashed hard.

[Mike Daniell]

You could try 10.7.6 which has just been released. As well as containing a new video DLL, there is now a Troubleshooting section in the SCS Help. The "Video Problems" topic describes the differences between the video playback options, and also includes tips on resolving playback issues.

[Dave Cruickshank]

You could try 10.7.6 which has just been released. As well as containing a new video DLL, there is now a Troubleshooting section in the SCS Help. The "Video Problems" topic describes the differences between the video playback options, and also includes tips on resolving playback issues.

That's great, Mike. I will do that. Thanks for your ongoing support of a great project.