MP2 Black Screen (1 Viewer)

[Alan Honeyman]

I decided to watch a TV series and fired up episode 1. I got a black screen. When I stopped it and tried to start it, it asked if I wanted to continue from where I stopped. So it had been playing, just not showing a picture. I clicked on episode 2 and it played normally. When I used Plex to play episode 1, it played normally, so there was no obvious problem with the file. This happened last night with an episode of another series where all episodes bar 1 would play happily in MP2.

Have other seen this behaviour? Is there a solution?

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.

Have other seen this behaviour?

Yes.

Is there a solution?

Yes. Simply stop playback and start again playing episode 1. Normally the episode should play then with picture.

This does not mean this is no issue. This only is a workaround but it helps in most cases.

The root cause of this is to find somewhere deep inside the DirectShow system of Windows. What exactly went wrong nobody knows. Sadly it happens every now and then.

 

[ge2301]

I do not face such issues with MP2. I had once black screens for all mpeg2 codes videos and the root cause was an issue with the LAV codec. Do you have a codec pack installed? They are known to cause issues and should be completely removed. All necessary codecs come with the MP2 installer.

 

[Alan Honeyman]

Stopping playback and restarting does not solve the problem.

I have not installed any codecs.

 

[HTPCSourcer]

I've seen this phenomenon here before. In that case even stopping and restarting the client app doesn't help but a reboot of the computer is required. This makes me believe that the trouble is somehow linked to the client's network interface.

 

[Lichloathe]

Not sure if this is valid for MP2 but with MP1, I get this phenomenon sometimes and find a suspend/sleep and wake cycle seems to fix it.

 

[Alan Honeyman]

Suspend/Sleep/Wake enabled me to view one of the episodes which I couldn’t previously but not all episodes. The idea of an affected network, if true, must be related to MP2 because other players are not affected.