Errors running two movie objects back to back (white screen and audio problems for 2nd video)

[David McFarlane]

Movies make life difficult for any experiment software I know.  Often 
the problem comes from the movie files, not necessarily the 
experiment software.  Remember that how a movie file works in Windows 
Media Player or any other software tells you nothing about how that 
file will work in E-Prime.  So first you need to find out whether the 
problem pertains to your movie files, or to E-Prime.

I would start by making a simple E-Prime program that does nothing 
but play my movie files, in Sequential order.  Then I would try 
running in Random order.  If all my movie files succeeded under those 
conditions, then I would incrementally change my test program (or 
actually, a copy of my test program) to make it more and more like my 
experiment program, hoping to sneak up on the culprit that breaks my 
experiment program.

Oh, I would also use the Codec Config utility that comes with EP2.

Just some general troubleshooting advice there.

-----
David McFarlane
E-Prime training 
online:  http://psychology.msu.edu/Workshops_Courses/eprime.aspx
Twitter:  @EPrimeMaster (https://twitter.com/EPrimeMaster )

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At 3/31/2014 04:35 AM Monday, Katie Jankowski wrote:
>I created an EPRIME task for an fMRI scan (timing is sensitive) but 
>I am having troubles running my video stimuli. In each trial, 
>participants view a fixation cross (text slide, 12000ms), a block 
>introduction (text slide, 2400ms) , video1 (movie object, ~12000ms), 
>and video2 (movie object, ~12000ms). Since I am using a block-design 
>fMRI task, not event-design, I want to treat Video1 and Video2 as 1 
>block. Thus, they are displayed back to back.
>
>
>Each video stimuli includes both audio and visual information. The 
>durations of each video are variable (approximately 11000ms-14000ms, 
>some 11500ms, others 13500ms, others 12000ms, so I included a 
>duration attribute [VidDur1] and [VidDur2] for video1 and video2. 
>respectively). The the final "block" (video1 and video2 combined) is 
>always 24000ms.
>
>
>I am having several issues running the movie files. Video1 runs 
>well, but video2 has both visual problems (blank white screen) and 
>audio problems (starts about 2s into the clip, then after about 2s 
>starts from the beginning at 0s, then runs through the audio but 
>ends early). I think my problems might be related to preloading the 
>stimuli, but I don't know what to do. I have been emailing support 
>for about 2 weeks without coming to a solution, so I thought I would 
>ask the google group. I have also looked on the knowledge base, but 
>I have not found a solution.
>
>
>Currently, pre-release for video1 is set to 5000ms and pre-release 
>for video2 is set to 0ms (but I have also tried 5000ms for video2 
>with similar results). Start and stop position are 0, stop after is 
>set to "yes", stop after mode is set to "nextonsettime", end movie 
>action is "none", duration is "[VidDur1]" and "[VidDur2]", and 
>timing is "event". Under experiment properties, "flip enabled" is 
>selected and both "display" and "sound" under "devices" are selected.
>
>
>I would greatly appreciate any advice!
>
>
>(As an aside, if I set "duration" to 12000ms for video1 and 
>"duration" to 12000ms for video2 (instead of relying on an attribute 
>to represent the duration, I have the same problems. If I set the 
>duration to "infinite" for video1 and "infinite" for video2, only 
>video1 runs, regardless if "stop after mode" is set to "offsettime" 
>or "nextonsettime".)

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