Video clips make program crash

[Vinson, David]

Unfortunately this does look like a codec problem, we had similar unpredictable freezing performance using videos, which we eventually solved by (1) experimenting with a range of different codecs, and (2) removing all the extra video junk and using a clean reinstall of E-Prime.  In our case once we found a suitable codec that worked in E-Prime with our hardware, we didn't have to touch Codec Config. In fact once I stopped messing with Codec Config things went easier for me (ie, trying to change my codecs rather than trying to get E-Prime working with codecs it doesn't like).

We also preload videos before they are displayed, and incorporate more breaks than we usually would between sets of trials.  I am not sure whether this makes any difference but both seemed to reduce the incidence of freezing behaviour before we found a more stable codec configuration & we have kept both in place where possible.
*Our videos are all <10sec.

Suggestions - for trimming we have started using "Solveig MM AVI Trimmer + MKV" freeware

http://www.solveigmm.com/en/products/avi-trimmer-mkv/

This is a very simple editor that crucially does not do any re-encoding/decoding

Also if you are standardizing volumes, a possible alternative might be to split the audio and video tracks then standardize the audio levels using an audio-only package.  This does require combining the audio and video back together again which could cause its own range of problems.

Or, a different thought - if all you are doing is adjusting the volume of the audio for the videos, it might be possible to do this using the volume controls?  Such things are incompletely documented when it comes to video, but in many cases there are aspects of Movies that work the same as SoundOut.  In which case you could specify your desired Volume (Volume Control = yes) for each of the clips based on values you determined beforehand.  If this works it could allow you to avoid use of an extra codec step.  See reference guide section on SoundOut and see if it works for movies....

good luck!
david

________________________________
From: e-prime at googlegroups.com [e-prime at googlegroups.com] on behalf of Hans Schroder [hans.stuart.schroder at gmail.com]
Sent: 13 June 2013 22:27
To: e-prime at googlegroups.com
Subject: Video clips make program crash

Hey all,
Our team has perused some of the group responses on issues with video files, but none seem to address the problems that we're experiencing. We are dealing with two codecs: XVID and tcs2 (camtasia).
We are ripping a total of 12 one-minute video clips from various movies (e.g., Matilda, Harry Potter) using AoA DVD ripper and using Camtasia to standardize the volumes (we couldn't find a program that clipped videos AND allowed us to standardize volumes).
Basically our task presents these 1 minute clips with an ITI of 10 seconds between each clip and presents some startle probes to the participants. Our problem is that the program crashes after playing some of the videos randomly, and it's been difficult to assess why it crashes at all.
We've run our task on both Windows XP and Windows 7 and both have crashed.
-In Windows XP, the program always seems to freeze on the last frame of video clips with an XVID or tcs2 (camtasia) codec - it doesn't seem to matter which codec it is.
-In Windows 7, the program froze in between video clips
We've tried playing around with the E-prime CodecConfig, but a lot of the error messages we've been getting say "Filter is not DMO", but we're unsure what that means.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "E-Prime" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to e-prime+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to e-prime at googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/e-prime/9982538b-8290-441a-8a6d-7c2f3082a860%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "E-Prime" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to e-prime+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to e-prime at googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/e-prime/FF03E5D2D749E346871F8C07E0496D1F579716E1%40AMXPRD0112MB584.eurprd01.prod.exchangelabs.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/eprime/attachments/20130617/3b92c6f8/attachment.htm>