The VideoLAN Forums

Hi there,

I recently encountered a strange problem in VLC. I encoded a video with the xvid encoder and stored it into a matroska container. While watching it i saw some serious playback errors if the scene goes dark (see examples below). I first thought it was an encoding error (wrong key-frame estimation) but it was not. When storing the exact same video stream into an AVI container VLC has no problems playing the stream at all.

I've prepared 2 test-files (they are both 2.8 MB big (sorry for that)). They hold an 20sec example. When playing them with VLC (0.8.5) you'll notice the errors in the Matroska file while the AVI file is played back perfectly. In DShow players you'll see no difference.

Matroska file (here you'll notice the scene actually never goes dark)
AVI file (should play prefectly)

I'd like to repeat those two files contain exactly the same video stream.

Is this a preference error on my side? (allthough i changed nothing in default preferences) or a bigger problem?

cheers

I'd like to repeat those two files contain exactly the same video stream.

Is this a preference error on my side? (allthough i changed nothing in default preferences) or a bigger problem?

This is NOT a problem with VLC and the problem does manifest itself differently with other players. Yes! the problem does revolve around the transitional effect IE. fade to black, script and fade to picture. Your avi shows blocking while the transition occurs and the MKV file does not show the script. Depending on the player. But when I strip MKV the file plays correctly everywhere, something your AVI won't do either. When I remux the file with a much newer version of the Matroska libraries the file is also correct everywhere. This suggests that you may just have very old versions of everything and need to update. No problem in finishing it here with newer versions of various libraries so this is NOT a VLC problem.

You are absolutly right.

I just remuxed it with the matroska tools and its playig in VLC results in perfect playback.

The first mkv file was muxed with VirtualDubMod 1.2.10.2 b2542. Which is the newest release but pretty old though.

Thanks a lot for your help.