Strange problem playing videos stored in my computer

I just discovered this problem. I make video files using Corel VideoStudio Pro X2 and save them as MPEG (.mpg) files and store them in My Videos folder in my computer. I upload these files to YouTube and they ALWAYS play normally without any problem. (As of this moment, I have 75 videos in YouTube).

Today, I was trying to watch them in my computer using Windows Media Player 11. Some of the files are playing normally (both audio and video part), but in SOME only the audio is playing but no video (black screen). These are ALL made in the same way, saved in MPEG format, made by the same software ... basically they are all same kind of files. They, of course, are playing in Corel (the software used to create them) and also in another media player called Final Media Player.

I tested WMP in various ways ... played other videos with it and also DVDs (both commercially made and home made by me using the above named Corel software). Everything seems fine. So why it is not playing SOME of my video files created exactly the same way as others?

I tried to research in the mind boggling land of "Codecs". I, of course, don't understand much of the technicalities of the Codecs, Decoders and stuff, but I discovered an utility called "Sherlock" created by a Microsoft MVP engineer. With this amazingly easy to use utility I printed out a 11-page long list of audio and video codecs installed in my computer, in case some Codec Expert wants to know if I have a particular codec installed in my system. The utility says if a particular codec is damaged or out of date, it will notify me in RED. There is not a single red in my 11-page long list!!! Since the list is long, I am not including it here. If any expert in this forum wants to see it, I can e-mail it to him/her.

Any thought anybody?

is there any differences in the compress/format/encoding used to create these files?
mpeg is just a contain. if it is encoded using an incompatible codec, windows media player won't play it.

Thanks for replying. I don't know the answer to your question. The Corel software offers a number of file formats for creating a video file. I ALWAYS choose MPEG Optimizer. My camcorder (JVC Everio) creates the video clips in MPEG format. I have discovered that if I choose MPEG Optimizer the video files are created very fast and they come out very nice and plays very well in YouTube. A couple of times, for the sake of experiment, I created Flash files (.FLV). They take a long time to be created (though the file size is very small) and they don't completely fill YouTube's player. So I don't make .FLV files anymore and I know they don't play in WMP.

Please feel free to ask more questions. I shall try to answer as best as I can.

get gspot: http://www.headbands.com/gspot/

open gspot, click options, export, enable export.

then, open the file (where it says path) and it will generate a txt file in the same directory as the video file with the same name.

Copy that and post here, it will say what codec you need.

Hi thrillhouse:

Thanks a lot for your suggestion. I did exactly as you suggested. I am posting one result below:

FILE_NAME FILE_NAME_WITH_PATH FILE_SIZE CONT_AUDIO_STREAM_COUNT CONT_BASETYPE CONT_BYTES_MISSING CONT_INTERLEAVE_ALIGN CONT_INTERLEAVE_PRELOAD CONT_INTERLEAVE_TIME CONT_SUBTYPE CONT_TOTAL_BITRATE VIDEO_ASPECT_CONVERT_AVI1 VIDEO_ASPECT_CONVERT_AVI2 VIDEO_ASPECT_CONVERT_CVD1 VIDEO_ASPECT_CONVERT_CVD2 VIDEO_ASPECT_CONVERT_DVD1 VIDEO_ASPECT_CONVERT_DVD2 VIDEO_ASPECT_CONVERT_SVCD1 VIDEO_ASPECT_CONVERT_SVCD2 VIDEO_ASPECT_CONVERT_VCD1 VIDEO_ASPECT_CONVERT_VCD2 VIDEO_ASPECT_SOURCE_MATCH VIDEO_ASPECT_TYPE_NTSC VIDEO_ASPECT_TYPE_PAL VIDEO_BITRATE VIDEO_CODEC_NAME VIDEO_CODEC_STATUS VIDEO_CODEC_TYPE VIDEO_DAR VIDEO_DURATION VIDEO_FIELDS_PER_SEC VIDEO_FRAME_COUNT VIDEO_FRAMES_PER_SEC VIDEO_H264 VIDEO_MPEG2 VIDEO_MPEG2_3X2 VIDEO_MPEG2_BFF VIDEO_MPEG2_I_L VIDEO_MPEG2_PPF VIDEO_MPEG2_PROG VIDEO_MPEG2_TFF VIDEO_MPEG4 VIDEO_MPEG4_BVOP VIDEO_MPEG4_GMC VIDEO_MPEG4_NVOP VIDEO_MPEG4_QPEL VIDEO_PAR VIDEO_PICS_PER_SEC VIDEO_QF VIDEO_SAR VIDEO_SIZE_X VIDEO_SIZE_Y AUDIO_BITRATE AUDIO_BITRATE_TYPE AUDIO_CHANNEL_COUNT AUDIO_CODEC AUDIO_CODEC_STATUS AUDIO_MPEG_STREAM_ID AUDIO_MPEG_SUBSTREAM_ID AUDIO_SAMPLE_RATE EndOfRec

Is this what you wanted to see? I cannot read anything from this text document.

But I could clearly read the results window in GPot when I opened a video file. I tried with about 5-6 files that are NOT playing in WMP. The results are all same. Here are some info that a layman like me could read:

Container:
DVD "VOB" format
MPEG-2 Program Stream << {1 vid. 1 aud}
Sys Bitrate: 10080 kb/s VBR

Audio:
Codec AC3 CBR
Status Codec Installed

Video:
Codec MPEG2 Name MPEG-2 MPG2
Status Codec Installed

Please let me know what to do next. As I thought Codecs are already installed.

I have already found out that MPEG-2 Decoder is also installed in my computer. I verified that by using Microsoft Windows XP Video Decoder Checkup Utility.

Please reply soon.

Thanks.

ok, try playing it in vlc www.videolan.org

if you cant see the video in vlc they might be damaged.

Hi thrillhouse:

All the videos are playing in VLC perfectly. I knew they would. Because they all play perfectly in Final Media Player. None of the video files are damaged. They, of course, play perfectly in Corel -- the software used to make them.

To change gear, do you have any opinion about MediaInfo (http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en)? It is very similar to GSpot. It retrieves info about video files. But is it any better than GSpot in any way? Somebody suggested I download that software to troubleshoot my problem. How many software can I download for one small problem? As you can see I have other media players. So this problem I raised is virtually for my academic interest only. I can live without WMP not playing some of my files.

Another thought that comes to my mind is should I uninstall then re-install WMP? Is it not true that when a software malfunctions, sometimes re-installing it corrects the problem? I have a feeling that probably my WMP is damaged, though it is playing other video files and all audio files perfectly without any sign of any problem.

Please let me know if you have any other thought on this matter. But I refuse to download more software to troubleshoot the problem. As I said, I can live with this small problem.

Thanks for you input.

mediainfo is great but it will give you about the same thing. Try reinstalling wmp if you must view the movies on there but if they work with another player I wouldn't worry about it.

Thanks, thrillhouse.

I am surprised no Moderator or the Global Moderator of this forum jumped in to reply to my post yet. May be they are all busy solving other people's problems.

I can view my videos on my computer by various other means, but I am a life-long learner. I want to KNOW why WMP is not playing some of the identical video files (so far as the codec issue goes). I have downloaded and installed MediaInfo also. It gives a lot more technical data about the video files than GSpot. But unfortunately, I don't know how to read them or interpret the meanings of them. I'll try some other forum.

Thanks again to you for at least trying.

Edited by Shoban Sen, 17 May 2010 - 10:19 AM.

I am surprised no Moderator or the Global Moderator of this forum jumped in to reply to my post yet.

This is a voluntary forum.

If you were paying for advice, you might have some cause for complaint, otherwise
you will just have to wait, until someone can help, as do we all, from time to time.

the only reason that one player would play it and another would not is that it was encoded to something that player cannot read.
if you select optimum output on your encoder it will select the best encoding for that particular video.
maybe if you changed that to some set standard that you know works with windows media player instead of letting the program choose.
granted the time involved in creating each video will vary with the compression needed to get to that standard.