Operating System Preview MKVs in Windows? (1 Viewer)

[lloydsmart]

Hi. Just a quick query regarding windows and the little icon previews it makes of your videos for you. Basically, I've got a load of avi videos and Windows 7 (and I'm sure Vista) is happy to change the icon of each one to a custom one with a screenshot from the video in it, and it also gives some information like resolution, frame rate, etc. at the bottom of the window when browsing in Explorer.

My problem is that I'm currently in the process of substituting a lot of these avis for high definition mkvs, and Windows doesn't seem to want to do it's preview thing. Does anyone know how I can get this to work? Or is it impossible? Thanks.

Here are some screenshots of what I mean:

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Above is exactly one of the reasons I use the Vista codec pack, everything just works in windows as well as MP

Shark007 has also done one for win7 users.

 

[lloydsmart]

Vista codec pack, eh? Ok, I'll try that, thanks! Only thing I'm unsure about is how to limit the codecs to just windows. Reason being that in my old XP installation I had every codec under the sun installed. It was great in the sense that everything "just worked", but managing them was a nightmare, and getting hardware acceleration going doubly so. In my new Windows 7 beta installation, I've just got MPC-HC, Haali Media Splitter, Real Alternative, QT Lite, plus a few other select codecs installed.

If I installed the Vista codec pack (Win7 version), would there be a way to limit it to Windows Explorer, or is it possible that it would start messing with my other programs and settings?

EDIT - never mind that, I'll just uninstall the other codecs as this seems to have everything I need, including DXVA. Seems almost too good to be true, I'm just gonna keep PowerDVD for now for BluRay playback

Hmm... I've had a look at Shark007's codec pack and it seems fantastic, especially the support for X64 and Windows7, as I'm using both! My only problem now is how to uninstall what I've already got. Any ideas how I can see what's installed, then get rid of it?

Also, I'm not quite sure weather this shark package comes with a DXVA-enabled MPEG-2 plugin, so I'm unsure weather to keep using the one from PowerDVD9, or switch to this one. Anyone know?

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

If it shows up under installed programs, just remove what you can recognise as being codec related.

I also have PDVD for mpeg, I think most people just have the clvsd.ax in their system32 folder, saves installing the whole player.

 

[lloydsmart]

I think most people just have the clvsd.ax in their system32 folder, saves installing the whole player.

That's what I did originally, but when I got a bluray player I installed the full version 'cause there's no support for BR in MP yet. I use the HD_Starter plugin to access PDVD from MP.

I've now installed the Win7 Codec Pack, and it's fantastic! Previews are working in Windows as they should, the only thing missing is the media information for mkv files. If you take a look at the first screenshot from my earlier post, you'll see that when selecting an avi you get info like the resolution and framerate down the bottom of the window. For mkv files all I get is the filesize. Is there anything I can do about this?

Never mind that for now - another, more pressing problem has reared its ugly head. How do I enable DXVA? I've tried everything I can think of, but GraphEdit still says it's disabled and my CPU usage is still high. I have the Nvidia 8300 mGPU chipset, so it should work.

 

[lloydsmart]

Ok, I seem to have DXVA under control now. It was something to do with having to use EVR and not VMR.

Anyway, no sooner do I get that working than yet ANOTHER problem has come up!

I now cannot play XVID video in mediaportal, even though the same files work perfectly well in WMP!

Aaaaaagh! Can anyone help?

Thanks!

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Can you use directshow grapheditor (graphedit), installs under tools

Run mp windowed (alt-enter) and try and play file, now in graphedit, try to connect to remote graph.

Let us know if anything is missing from graph.

Also make sure that ffdshow video decoder config\codecs, that divx\xvid are both set to xvid.
Xvid settings should be left at default.

Does this happen to all your xvid files, or the odd one, then try running them through xvid4psp to fix them.

 

[lloydsmart]

Can you use directshow grapheditor (graphedit), installs under tools

Run mp windowed (alt-enter) and try and play file, now in graphedit, try to connect to remote graph.

Let us know if anything is missing from graph.

Well, I tried the suggested and I'm not having much luck. Graphedit connects to MP when it's successfully playing another file (like an MKV containing AVC and DTS), but when MP throws up the error message about not being able to play my AVI file, GraphEdit has nothing to connect to.

I can, however, graph and play the same files in GraphEdit - no problems. I get a perfect graph, except for the fact that it seems to insist on using VMR instead of EVR:

But Mediaportal still refuses to play the file, giving me the following message:

Also make sure that ffdshow video decoder config\codecs, that divx\xvid are both set to xvid.
Xvid settings should be left at default.

:sorry: Not sure what you mean by this - could you explain please?

Does this happen to all your xvid files, or the odd one, then try running them through xvid4psp to fix them.

It happens to all of them, so I don't think running them through xvid4psp or one of those "fixer" utilities would help, but I'll try it if nothing else works.

I'm fresh out of ideas now. Is there anything else you'd recommend trying? My XVIDs used to play fine, I don't know what's gone wrong. The strangest thing is that they still work perfectly well in other applications, including Windows Media Player, Media Player Classic, GraphEdit, and VLC. Strange!

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Start menu\VCP\32bit tools in there you will see the decoder config for ffdshow video and also a seperate one for xvid decoder, they should look like mine.

 

[lloydsmart]

Yep, both configs are exactly like yours, and so are the x64 settings for ffdshow. I don't know what's wrong.