Display garbled playing MPEG files

[Jimmy Soo]

I am using the Rainbow Runner combo with Mystique 220 on P100 in Window 98, using the latest driver. Able to do video editing with MS Pro 5.2 installed. My problems is using RR Remote control or Windows Media player to play MPEG files at display 600x800 16bit colors cause my computer to hang and display garbled. I have to restart again. Using 640x480 is more stable but still 50% chances of hanging my computer. I have e-mail for support to Matrox but no avail. Anybody in this forum could give some advise?

[Vic]

Does the screen break up and go all pixellated? Sometimes you can see the mouse cursor still moving as a blocky square. I had this on a previous driver version. It went away with a later version.

I can still recreate the problem if I overclock my card too much.

Try a full uninstall of the Matrox drivers then a reinstall.

Vic

[Kevin Culp]

Jimmy,

At what resolution and bit rates are your MPEG files encoded? A P100 is very marginal for full-screen playback of MPEGs. MJPEG plays much better than MPEG on a P100 due to the hardware acceleration of the RRS; but full-screen software playback (with the modest MPEG acceleration that the RRS provides) of MPEG files on a P100 is pushing things a little bit.

You may try reducing the bit rate or sizes of your encoded MPEGs and see if that makes any difference.

All the best,
Kevin

[Jimmy Soo]

Vic: The screen display horizontal stripes of blue & gray lines, no mouse pointer. Keyboard and mouse jammed. I have to reboot the computer. I am using RR210 and driver 4.31 from Matrox website. I have tried clean install that is reformat the hard disk.

Kevin: I agree that P100 may be too slow. Mpeg files is in Pal 352x288 25fps at bitrates 1150 kbits/s for VCD player. Reducing the quality of the final output Mpeg video with compromised quality will defeat my very propose of video editing. Now I notice that setting the Matrox display properties to TV-Out (640x480 refresh rate 50 hz) is more stable for Mpeg playback on my monitor NEC XV17. Could the refresh rate change from 75hz to 50 hz made the display of Mpeg files more stable?

Best regards

[Grigory]

Hi

Did you install anything like XING player or Xing DVD player?

These programs may take control on MPEG playback and try to use overlay mode, which is not supported in olD Matrox products.
I got similar result on Mill II PCI with Xing DVD - freezed screen, no mouse, but usable keyboard. I could not find solution, except starting Media player, go to Options and select all multimedia files to be played with media player itself. This disables Xing (or other) player to substitute internal Mpeg decoder.

Grigory

[Jimmy Soo]

Hello Gregory,

I had used the Xing Mpeg Player before. It uses its codec with jerky result on my P100. After clean installing Window 98 I have MSPro 5.2, Matrox software, MS Office 98 and Adaptec VCD creator software only installed in my 10G IBM hardisk. Got some advise that video editing require dedicated system. While using Adaptec VCD creator the screen also garbled when I try to preview the Mpeg files.

Regards.

[Jimmy Soo]

Hello Gregory,

I had used the Xing Mpeg Player before. It uses its codec with jerky result on my P100. After clean installing Window 98 I have MSPro 5.2, Matrox software, MS Office 98 and Adaptec VCD creator software only installed in my 10G IBM hardisk. Got some advise that video editing require dedicated system. While using Adaptec VCD creator the screen also garbled when I try to preview the Mpeg files.

Regards.