P2 Viewer Playback Problem

[gbonny]

Thanks to this wonderful forum I have set up my HVX workflow and solved many puzzles ... almost!

I can see saved my HVX200P HD clips in the P2 Viewer, whether from a P2 card in my PCMCIA slot or from a virtual P2 card. Thumbnails and file information display in the left window, metadata appears in the right window.

But when I select a clip and press play, the Cur. and Dur. numerical displays update, the timeline shows a grey bar as long as the clip, but nothing happens in the P2 viewer monitor, nor does the playhead advance.

Possibly related to this problem, when I try to convert my MXF clips with AspectHD, the log file reports:
"Format not available (P2 viewer missing?)"

I am stumped. Any suggestions?

[THoff]

It sounds like your P2 Viewer installation is broken somehow. I would uninstall it, download the latest version (https://sec.panasonic.biz/sav/sec-cgi-bin/p2viewer/dlp2v.cgi?mylang=EN), and reinstall.

[aj_newman]

I'm guessing that you can play SD clips ... but not HD clips.

In which case, your PC is behaving exactly like my own 'outdated' PC.

I'm just waiting for the 'Accitdental' 8 core 24 hour availability of the MacPro to become a real advert and my problem should be solved.

All the other 'try for free' programs that I downloaded failed to play HD clips too. I think there are graphics extension that are built into the HW of the P4 chips.

:violin:

Best of luck,
Antony

[gbonny]

THoff: I have uninstalled and reinstalled P2 drivers, P2Viewer (ver 3.0.1.4) and Cineform AspectHD, in that order, but continue to get the same result. No HD playback in P2 Viewer, and HDLink won't convert MXF to AVI.

aj newman: I'm using a brand-new Intel Core2 Quad CPU and a Quadro FX1500 graphics card. I tried the Raylight free demo and that DOES seem to work, at least I can import mxf files to Premiere Pro and scrub the clip in the timeline. But playback (with the spacebar) turns the monitor black except for a little red "x" in the upper corner - perhaps that's just the demo?

I paid so much for camera, system, software, graphics card - Sure would prefer to get it running! Have just shot test footage in each format: 480, 720 1080, all at different framerates, same story with each.

Still hopeful someone has another suggestion.

[THoff]

Try updating your video card drivers with the latest WHQL-certified drivers from the NVIDIA website. The fact that neither P2 Viewer nor Premiere Pro can display video points to a hardware video overlay that isn't working. That doesn't explain why Cineform doesn't work.

Also, you're not running under Vista with the Aero interface, are you? That disables the hardware video overlay, which is required by virtually all video playback / editing tools.

[gbonny]

My FX1500 is running the latest WHQL certified driver:
ForceWare Release 90
Version: 91.36
Release Date: August 14, 2006
WHQL Certified


I'm running under Windows XP Professional.


Premiere Pro plays back avi files of all formats without a problem.Could I be missing codecs for the DV50, DV100_1080 and DV 100_720? Or should those have been loaded with the P2 drivers?

[THoff]

Installing P2 Viewer does not give Premiere Pro the ability to play DVCPro50 or DVCProHD. It will never be able to work with those files without some help from third-party tools like Raylight, Cineform, or the Adobe/SeriousMagic DVCProHD Decoder.

But that doesn't explain why you can't get video to play in P2 Viewer. Try this: right-click on the Desktop, select Properties, click on the Settings tab, click the Advanced button, then Troubleshoot, and reduce the level of hardware acceleration by one notch. Click OK, and try P2 Viewer.

If it still doesn't work, reduce the hardware acceleration level another notch and repeat.

[gbonny]

Thanks for all the suggestions, THoff, but I'm afraid... I took hardware acceleration down a notch at a time, four notches down and there's still no playback in the P2Viewer. As before, I can view my clip thumbnails on my P2 cards, both real and virtual, and clicking on the clip thumbnails brings up their XML info, which I can edit, but still no playback. Bizarre.

I have Aspect HD installed over Premier Pro, and the demo version of the Raylight Plugin installed - the Raylight plugin DOES seem to work in Premiere Pro with my 1080i footage - though it adds DVFilm watermark to my previews.

[Mika R]

Hi i have the same problem on my desktop. THe p2 viewer wont let me play the clips(1080i 25p)nothing happends, i can see the thumbnails and the xml info but nothing in the vivewer .
I borrowed a laptop (HP amd dual core something:) and everything worked just fine, i could play the clips in the p2 viewer ! So there must be some kind of hardware issue here? But i really dont know where to start.

[mvb]

Thanks for all the suggestions, THoff, but I'm afraid... I took hardware acceleration down a notch at a time, four notches down and there's still no playback in the P2Viewer. As before, I can view my clip thumbnails on my P2 cards, both real and virtual, and clicking on the clip thumbnails brings up their XML info, which I can edit, but still no playback. Bizarre.

I have Aspect HD installed over Premier Pro, and the demo version of the Raylight Plugin installed - the Raylight plugin DOES seem to work in Premiere Pro with my 1080i footage - though it adds DVFilm watermark to my previews.

These sound like DirectX or DirectShow problems. Sorry but I don't know what is going on.

However until your problems are resolved you might get the free version of DVFilm Maker which will play back MXF files (albeit without sound). Both Maker and Raylight operate completely outside DirectX and so they are somewhat immune to display card/motherboard/system software issues.

You have to purchase Raylight to get rid of the watermark.

[gbonny]

Mika R: The P2 Viewer also works on my laptop, even though that's just a Pentium M 1.7 GHz with 512 Mb of RAM with a ATI Radeon 9200 graphics card. I'm curious about your desktop machine on which you CAN'T get the P2 viewer to work. Perhaps we share a similar hardware setup.

mvb: Actually playback isn't my main concern: the inability to convert MXF to AVI is my main bottleneck in my HXF to Premier Pro workflow. I bought Aspect HD to solve that, but it looks like for me (at least for the moment), Raylight will be the workaround. Thanks for the suggestions: I will review my DirectX setup.

I have an open ticket at CineForm and I'll post any information I receive from them that might shed light on the problem.

[THoff]

Try running DXDIAG (the DirectX diagnostic utility), go to the Display tab, and check whether DirectDraw is working correctly. Direct3D isn't being used for video work, but it better be working as well.