video cues won't play in test screen (resolved)

[graput]

Trying to build a show with video play back in SCS 10.8.2. I'm using windows XP with NVidia GeForce 8600GT card, on a single screen.
The video cues are all MPEG-2 video, with no audio tracks, and were edited using Nero Vision 10. None of the video cues is longer than 60 seconds. The bit rates are variable, between 800 and 4700 Kbps.
I selected DirectShow for playback in the General Options. In the Editor, when I hit "play" in the test preview window, the progress cursor runs, but the test screen stays black.
I'm not familiar with DirectShow. Does this codec have to be installed separately or is it part of SCS? The clips play correctly in the VLC and QuickTime players.

[Mike Daniell]

DirectShow is the Microsoft-supplied multimedia framework for playing video files and other media files, although SCS only uses DirectShow directly for video files.

There is another video playback option you could try, and you can download this from http://www.showcuesystems.com/download/scsmm.zip. This zip file contains just one file: scsmm.dll. Extract this file and copy it into the same folder as scs10.exe. Now whenever you start SCS it will find this 'plugin'. In General Options you can now select SCSMM from the drop-down list for 'Video Playback Library'. Functionally, this option is similar to DirectShow, ie fades are not available. Previously, SCSMM was only made available to users who were experiencing particular problems with video playback, but I'm now publicly releasing SCSMM, although it's not yet included in the SCS download itself.

Also have a look at the Toubleshooting section in the Help file where there is a page on Video Problems, and the Forum topic Tips on Video Cues.

MPEG files seem to be the most common source of playback problems, so can you convert the files to AVI or WMV (if none of the above helps)?

[Mike Daniell]

Grant has advised that after installing the K-Lite Codec pack and converting all files to AVI, the videos now play correctly.