Canon Digital Camera - Motion JPEG - Won't Play in WMP/WMC

I have a Canon S3IS digital camera which can take movies. The movies show
an .AVI extension and (I think) use an MJPEG codec. After transferring the
movie files to my (Vista) hard drive, their behavior is erratic:

- The movie files *will not* play in Windows Media Player. The WMP error
message is: "Windows Media Player encountered a problem while playing the
file". Clicking on Web Help reveals: "You've encountered error message
C00D11B1 while using Windows Media Player."

- The movie files *will not* play in Windows Media Center; WMC says "Cannot
Play Video - Windows Media Center cannot open the file".

- If I import the files into Windows Movie Maker, WMM appears to play them,
but the preview screen is black.

- GSpot reports that the file is a Motion JPEG, and that "Codec(s) are
Installed".

- The movie files *will* play using Canon's ZoomBrowser EX program (came
with the camera).

Related Info:

- Both WMP & WMC play my .wmv files just fine. I also have one .avi file
from a different source which plays fine.
- The file extension on the AVI files that will not play is .AVI
(capitalized); the file extension on the avi file that will play is .avi
(lower case) -- probably does not matter?

Will appreciate clues on where to look to solve the issue. Thanks.

 

try installing this version of ffdshow...

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=173941&package_id=199421

 

What's the URL that Web Help takes you to?

There's already an MJPEG codec on the system. It should work. PapaJohn's
suggestion might help you replace it if needed though, but that shouldn't be
needed.
AVI vs avi doesn't matter - the system is case-insensitive here.

 

I agree that a fix is better than a work-around... if I take my ffdshow
codec out of the picture, MJPEG files still play.

WMP plays them with pvmjpeg30.dll file in the system32 folder... check that
it's there and try re-registering it in case it slipped a gear.
--
website references are to www.papajohn.org

PapaJohn

 

Zach -- The URL that Web Help takes me to is:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/wi...id=C00D11B1&contextid=111&originalid=80004005

PapaJohn -- the pvmjpeg30.dll file is not in my System32 folder or elsewhere
on my hard drive. I googled a bit for it and there are references to
'pvmjpg30.dll' (without the e), but that is not on my hard drive either.
The main reference is to a site for
Pegasus Imaging and they call it PICVIDEO and they want $39 to download it.
Are you thinking it is something that should have come with WMP Microsoft?

 

John,

Working backwards, I see...

ffdshow.ax is used as the default decompressor on my Vista Home Basic laptop
when playing Motion JPEG files from my Canon SureShot SD750 camera.

I had added ffdshow to that computer to play Xvid files. When I take it out
of the picture, the file is decompressed by pvmjpeg30.dll (PIC Video
Decompressor)... I don't know where it came from as it's not on my Vista
Ultimate system or on my XP laptop.

If I then take that out of the picture also, when I try to open the Motion
JPEG file in WMP or MM6... for some reason Pinnacle's Video Spin starts
going through a setup process. Maybe that's a clue that it brought
pvmjpeg30.dll in when I installed it.

As I haven't installed Video Spin or hardly anything else on my Vista
Ultimate SP1 beta system, the MJPEG file still plays in WMP and MM6... with
no WMP pointer to the video decompressor being used. GSpot's checks and
tests indicates it's quartz.dll doing the decompression.

Codecs need more understanding by average users... I've made it my theme for
this year to study them and provide practical info.
--
website references are to www.papajohn.org

PapaJohn

 

Hear hear!

A key Microsoft dev died (cancer) the same time as another retired the same
as a group of people (pirates, really) were sabotaging the AVI field. It's
messed up now for a reason. I'm trying to help restabilize it, but people
magnificently undid a lot of the work I had previously done to help sort out
AVI's stability as a viable interchange format. =\

 

That's E_FAIL which is sad.

On my clean / pristine system, MJPG plays back fine. You don't need
pvmjpg30.dll to play this. FFDShow does have an MJPEG decoder, but that's
replacing the built-in DirectShow MJPEG decoder that's part of Quartz. If
you open up graphedt.exe (not on your system), you can go to Graph : Insert
Filters : Video Compressors and you should see MJPEG decompressor under
there.

 

Zach,

One of the many things I don't understand about operating systems and codecs
is why, if Quartz.dll is Microsoft's good decoder for Motion JPEG files and
comes with my Vista system, why doesn't Vista manage the codec priorities
such that Quartz is used by WMP and Movie Maker even if ffdshow and PICVideo
codecs are installed and given permission to be used as needed.

It's hard to believe a codec from a third party can step in front of the one
preferred by Vista, and the operating system will accept it without getting
me the user involved. Among Quartz, ffdshow and PICVideo, the most polite
one is ffdshow when it asks if it should be used once, all the time, or not.
The other two don't ask.

On a slightly different subject, when a Motion JPEG file is open in WMP, the
file properties show the video codec when either ffdshow or PICVideo is
being used, but it offers no info about the codec being used when it's
Quartz... why is that?
--
website references are to www.papajohn.org

PapaJohn

 

It's been generally assumed that if you install a codec, it's for a good
reason. That assumption has blown up in user's faces since the advent of
the hideous and embarassingly shoddy world of codec packs.

FFDShow has gotten better. They've made their mistakes too. FFDShow
1.0.0.1 and other early/broken versions are still out there breaking people.
This is why I try to exclusively use the term "FFDShow Tryouts", referring
to the sustained tree that fixes up most of the FFDShow problems.

You're hinting at a much larger problem affecting all of DirectShow as the
field becomes terrorized by incompetent installers and beta or alpha grade
filters. The right people are looking at this non-trivial problem. I'm
trying to coax things back to more "normal", but the rampant third party
codec pack incompetence has really dealt a fairly crushing blow to the
multimedia ecosystem. Having the average user living on the bleeding edge
is causing massive problems. When I look at SP1 crash data and see a third
party codec atop the crashes for almost every multimedia component... that's
pretty depressing.

I haven't looked into that code chain for a while. If it's important, I
could, but I suspect it's an idle question.

 

Thanks... but you don't say why the codecs supplied with the operating
system take a back seat to the 3rd party ones when they get installed. Seems
that stronger operating system management of codecs would be a step toward
resolving things, and would be an appropriate thing to expect from an
operating system..

And what WMP shows for the video codec isn't an idle question... I'd much
prefer having WMP tell me what it's using than to have to check the file
with GSpot or another utility and guess what WMP is using. And I'm using the
pointer in WMP to tell me what Movie Maker is using, as the properties of
the files in MM don't include the codec used.
--
website references are to www.papajohn.org

PapaJohn

 

There is a little bit of progress to report -- I downloaded ffdshow tryouts;
at least the subject files now play in Windows Media Player. Not yet in
Windows Media Center, not yet in Windows Movie Maker.

GSpot showed that ffdshowtryouts added six codecs (4 video & 2 audio) and
went from 233 codecs to 239 codecs.

PJ -- applaud your theme to demystify codecs!

 

You're right, I did not discuss the filter merit system, which is available
for look up on MSDN. That's been around since I believe DirectShow first
existed back (previous to 1996?). Belligerant and bad filters are a *very*
recent phenonemon. The right people are aware of this issue. In the
interim, there's a variety of third party filter management systems
available.

The easiest correct solution is probably not to install random bad software
on a machine. ;-)

This area sucks. The right people are aware of it. It sucks because you
have bad filters being installed by incompetent installers. I was going to
make a comment about the Windows codec management system, but then I
realized that wasn't fair because there really hasn't been a good
(Microsoft) one ever. The right people are aware of this. Don't install
random codecs.

IIRC, it's abstracted out - there's no "DirectShow::WhatCodecAmIUsing();"
method that I'm aware of. Patrick looked into this a while ago, I'll
mention it to him next time we have lunch together.

 

thanks John.... the first of my newsletters in this new series, "About
Codecs - Part 1 of ??", is going out in an hour. It'll commit me to the
learning and additional parts of the series.

 

thanks... I'll search for such filter management systems. In all my years of
working with Movie Maker, I've not come across anything that is a tool for
users rather than programmers.

--
website references are to www.papajohn.org

PapaJohn

 

Right, I'm pretty unaware of any filter management systems that are designed
to be used by an average user. This is not a "average user" area. This is
why the proliferation of bad codecs, filters, and codec packs is so
dangerous. This was never designed to be toyed with by the average user.
The whole system assumes that developers were going to be responsible. =\

 

I have various videos shot with Canon Powershot digital cameras. When I
watch them in WMP11 on Vista Home Premium, I hear sound and see video, but
the video is green! Zach, you say that there is a decoder built in (Quartz),
but I can find no such file. The only additional codec I've installed is
divX (in an attempt to fix this).

Any ideas on resolving this issue?

Thanks,
Davin

 

quartz.dll is in the c:\Windows\System32 folder
--
website references are to www.papajohn.org

PapaJohn (MVP)

 

If you already had video (green or not), you have a decoder available on the
system.

What video card do you have? Is there a driver update available?

 

I have an nvidia GeForce 7600GT running the latest drivers (from 12/2007).

Here is another piece to the puzzle:
If I play the video from within Windows Photo Gallery, it plays with the
correct colors.
If I play the video from within Windows Live Photo Gallery, it plays green.
If I play the video from within WiMP11, it plays green.

Any ideas?
Davin