tech help with avi torrents?

[tzikeh]

I have complete seasons of tv shows I've downloaded from torrent sites (HI THERE MPAA COME GET ME), and this weird thing happens.

I burn them to DVD in order to watch them on my DivX player on tv. Every once in a while, one file out of the 11 or 12 on the disk is all blocky and yucky. The rest of the files play just fine. To make it extra weird, the blocky and yucky file plays perfectly on the computer.

Anyone out there know of a way to fix this? Some kind of re-encode or something?

Comments

[barkley.livejournal.com]

Is this one of the Phillips dvd players? If so, you could try the special trick of hitting the menu button twice. (I forget if it's the disk menu or the system menu button) It's been known to clear up blocky playing files that play fine on a computer.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Tragically, no - it's a whatzihoozit. Um...Norcent. But I did just randomly push buttons and "interlacing..." appeared on the screen and then it worked.

What. Ever. At least it's running. :) But thanks for the tip!

[terrio]

Alas, I don't know how to re-encode said files, but if you happen to have a Philips DVP player, start one of the problematic eps, hit the "System Menu" button on the remote, hit it again to exit the System Menu, and the file should now play correctly. (You don't need to hit "Pause" or anything, just "System Menu" twice.) I have no idea why this works.

If you don't have a Philips... I have no idea.

[terrio]

Hee, day late, dollar short. But I'm glad you figured it out!

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

:-D Thank you anyway! And I'm doing this for someone else; I think *they* have a Philips. So your advice may come in handy!

[melina123.livejournal.com]

Are the files causing trouble PAL files encoded at 25 fps? Sometimes the colors on PAL files look all smeary, but if I hit setup and toggle PAL/NTSC/AUTO on the tv type menu, they're fine after.

(For some reason, files from BBC-HD seem to be fine -- I've only had trouble lately with ones from standard BBC.)

Re-encoding

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

I usually just run those files through DivX Converter to convert them to DivX and hope for the best. But I never knew about the Philips menu trick, and I have one so I will have to try that, thanks!

[par-avion.livejournal.com]

The DVD players are set up to play DivX files, but many torrents use Xvid.

"Xvid encoded files can be written to a CD or DVD and played in a DivX compatible DVD player. However, since Xvid specifies three warp points for its implementation of Global Motion Compensation as opposed to the one of DivX, enabling some of the more advanced encoding features can compromise player compatibility. Some issues exist with the default Quantization Matrix used in tools such as AutoGK that create an MPEG-4 stream with Xvid. These produce videos that have unstable playback and artifacts on DivX compatible DVD players." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xvid

Using the Divx converter (http://www.divx.com/divx/windows/author/ -- free trial available) should help. Or you can convert to Divx using a free program like ffmpegx etc.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Huh! Interesting. I found a shorter way, though - hit ... one of the buttons (can't remember) on the remote twice and voila - fixed. The word "interlacing" comes up on the screen and the blockiness is gone.

HOWEVER.

One other problem I've had - with files that play perfectly visually - is the audio slipping out of sync. The episode starts off fine, and then slowly loses sync with the visual. Any ideas on that front?

[par-avion.livejournal.com]

That's weird. I don't know what would make it do that :(

addendum

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

it plays *without* losing sync on the computer.