Problems with Panasonic encoder. Black and White output?!

[mgilmoreca]

I captured a color animation(cartoon) and encoded it with the Panasonic encoder. Part way through the mpg the it turns from color to black and white. The avi playback is fine, but once you encode it it gets messed up. Someone has already suggested I upgrade to the latest version of the VidTools, which I did. My question is how do I fix my avi files so I can encode them to mpg? Is there a simple (free) avi editor I can use to remove the corrupt frames? Any suggestions? Recapture is not an option for me.

Thanks in advance,

Mike

[CableCat]

use another mjpg decoder

[This_Idiot]

Mike, it sounds like you are suffering from "evil frames" (as they have become known). This is where you get a corrupt (or field-reversed) frame which throws the encoder out.

You don't say what hardware/software you are using. Either Uleads MSPro or Adobe's Premiere are the best tools for getting down to frame level, neither of which is cheap. If you keep your eyes open on VideoGuys you often see an upgrade bargain, or some of the online auctions (ebay etc) seem to regularly sell Ulead MSPro (full edition) cheap.

[mgilmoreca]

Thanks for all the replys. Sean (sean@magnuminvestments.com) on VideoCD (http://greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a.tcl?topic=Video%20CD) suggested I use a different mjpeg decoder to deal with the "evil frames". He suggested the Morgan Multimedia MJPEG decoder which has a free full use version that expires on Apr. 1, 2000.

I set it up on my other machine so there was no confusion of which codec to use by default. Panasonic stand alone decoder doesn't seem to have a feature to choose the decoding codec you want to use. Anyhow, I encoded the avi per usual using the Panasonic encoder on my other computer and it worked! I haven't had time to judge the quality of the decoding, but since I can't recapture this stuff anytime soon, it'll do. If you need the Morgan Multimedia MJPEG decoder go here: http://www.morgan-multimedia.com/

It's cool to play your avis on a machine that doesn't have the Matrox Marvel G400 hardware decoding. It's slow and jerky, but neat, since you don't have the hardware.

Thanks for all the help. Rock on.