FLV color pixelation - color loss / green & magenta blocks

[marklar]

Problem: FLV color pixelation - color loss combined with random green & magenta blocks in *SOME* flv videos.

Please note that I am able to play *MOST* FLV videos in full color in VLC 9.8x (and a home-compiled GIT built 1.0 v ) and most / many FLV videos look great, but there are a portion of videos in which the color is pixelated oddly: saturation is off, and flourescent green and bright magenta blocks are scattered around the screen.

In prrior exchanges onthe forum it had been said that it is known that Flash Video performance is known to be reduced or slower than in previous versions... but I was uncertain as to what that implied.

flash video playback issues in 9.8a vs 8.6i - and instructive look at the "overhead" using two very different PPC macs : Leopard Dual 1.25 GHZ G4 W/ Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB and 2 GB RAM, and Tiger 400 Mhz PowerBook Titanium w/ 8 MB ATI Rage Video and 512 MB RAM

Oddly enough, the “problem” videos play at a normal speed, and, if I open the Extended Controls and reduce Saturation to zero the the blocks dissapear and the videos are otherwise fine in Black and White.

I was starting to believe that this was a function of either the videos being poorly encoded, or the age of my machine...but at the same time, the videos when played inside the web browsers via the flash player plugins from Adobe (gen’s 9 & 10) looked fine...

So for a while I thought it was just the way the videos were encoded, or perhaps just the age of my machines... But what has prompted this post is that I had been able to successfully watch some of the same problematic videos on a 2001 400 MHZ G4 Powerbook Titanium using version 8.6i, and by putting that on the dual 1.25 GHz G4 (with Radeon 9800 128 MB card and 2 GB RAM) also had success...so the failure is definitely in the “slowdown” of the software in the 9.x releases.

the fact that a 400 Mhz G4 with an 8 MB graphics card and 512 MB mem can play these files fine with 8.6x puts into perspective the overhead / slowness of the 9.X.x versions!!!!

Also note, that as of now, that mPlayer also exhibits similar pixelation with the same “problem” videos - so then I wonder, is this a *SPEED* issue, or is it the way these more modern players are trying to decode / handle the video???? Does the 8.6x versions(s) use a different library to decode FLV?

any thoughts? should I file a bug?

Thanks in advance!

PS: Is the FLV a "container" format that poses more problems then is worth using--should I try to convert the videos to mpg or avi or ...? Is there loss to the conversions (like going from AAC to MP3) or is it just repackaging the video content in a friendlier "container"?

Cheers!