Video playback question
 

Being a rabid TV fan, I've started acquiring a large collection of TV shows on my computer. Some of these files, when I play them, display very frequent flashes of various colours and lines. This makes the viewing less than pleasant. I've tried installing new codecs, and this doesn't aid the problem. Could this just be the file being of poor quality? Any suggestions?

My video card is a ATI Radeon 9700 Mobile (128MB), if that helps.

Well, that depends a lot on how you're "acquiring" them. If you've downloaded them, chances are they're just poorly captured, so you're SOL.

If you didn't download them, we'll need more information. Do the same TYPES of files always give the weird flashes? (ie mpg vs. avi) Is it always in the same program? Do you have the latest drivers? How did you capture and compress the files?

But I get the impression they're downloaded. Call it a hunch.

They are downloaded, yes. Living without cable is a downer.

All of the files that flash use the Xvid codec. I guess I'll have to try getting other formats or find a better xvid codec. Thanks for your help, though.

XviD is good, but you might have a bad release or conflicts with another decoder. Plenty of the codec packs cause more problems than they solve.

Try uninstalling XviD. Run the player again. Keep uninstalling XviD/DivX codecs until the player says it can't render the file. Then install a fresh, non-beta copy of XviD from <a href="http://www.koepi.org/XviD-1.0.3-20122004.exe">here</a>.

If it still fights we need to walk your codec tree and see who's in charge.

Worked like a charm. Thank you very much, cyrnel.