AVIs PLAY without Sound - Perian

[Shakey]

Hi,

I installed Perian a while back to enable me to play certain video types but I have just tried to play some AVI's using Quicktime. Quicktime opens when I double click on an AVI file and it plays in the sense that the length of the movie is displayed and the soundtrack can be heard, but no video is displayed.

Apologies if I haven't explained this very well and please let me know if you need any further information to diagnose the issue. Many thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide, I'm stuck!

[mp123]

I have a similar issue. Only seems to happen with divx AVIs. Video is fine, but upon starting a movie, sound plays for a second, then goes mute. If I skip around in the movie - again the sound plays for a sec then cuts off. Have deleted old codecs, tried completely uninstalling and reinstalling 1.2.3, falling back to 1.2.2 - all to no avail. Running Lion 10.7.1 / QT 10.1. Interestingly, in the file/get info preview window - it plays fine with audio.

[mp123]

I have a similar issue. Only seems to happen with divx AVIs. Video is fine, but upon starting a movie, sound plays for a second, then goes mute. If I skip around in the movie - again the sound plays for a sec then cuts off. Have deleted old codecs, tried completely uninstalling and reinstalling 1.2.3, falling back to 1.2.2 - all to no avail. Running Lion 10.7.1 / QT 10.1. Interestingly, in the file/get info preview window - it plays fine with audio.

...and I just discovered that VLC plays things fine.

[Shakey]

I believe that to be the same for me but cannot confirm right away as my Mac is with Apple at the moment for a repair.

[The_Tick]

We need samples to provide solutions. Not providing samples means we can't fix things.

[ljb82]

Hi, I am having the same problem.. I am not sure how to provide you with a sample? Do you mean a sample of the video we are trying to play or something else... sorry for being a noob knob head!!

[The_Tick]

Ya, just a 5-10 mb sample of the beginning of the file is all we need.

[Shakey]

Hi, Just got my Mac back and happy to send you a sample but like ljb82, I could do with some clear instructions on how to take a 5-10mb section of a video. The only way I can think of is to use a video editing program to cut a section, but then I would be saving the section of video as a new file. I'm not too familiar with this kind of stuff so please bear with me!

[gbooker]

Try searching: http://forums.cocoaforge.com/search.php ... ple&fid=25

[Shakey]

Hi,
Thanks for the link, I have just attempted to create a sample and have uploaded it to 'upload.ffmpeg.org' by selecting the 'upload/' link when I reached the homepage, I really do not know how successful I have been at this so please advise if you need anything else. The file I uploaded is called 'avi-audio-but-no-video.avi'.

[Shakey]

A quick update, I stumbled across a solution! I just installed iOS5 on my Mac and was setting up Photo Stream in iPhoto which was causing iPhoto to crash seconds after opening it. I Googled a solution where I was advised to remove the 3ivxMediaExporter.component and 3ivxVideoCodec.component. I achieved this by doing the following:

1. Open Finder
2. Clicked on Macintosh HD
3. Clicked on Library
4. Clicked on Quicktime
5. Deleted files:
3ivxMediaExporter.component and 3ivxVideoCodec.component

Original link: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/13 ... 0&tstart=0

As it happens I didn't have a 3ivxMediaExporter.component file so obviously I couldn't remove that, I just thought I would include it here for the sake of completion. Anyway, it fixed my iPhoto problem and all this stuff about Codecs reminded me of info I'd read on here so on a hunch I opened a few of my video files I was having issues with, and they worked!

I hope this helps someone else out there as these kinds of problems are a real pain in the arse!

[The_Tick]

Keep in mind the very first item on our support page says to remove that and a few other components. Make sure you check into the rest of those.

[Shakey]

Thanks I will, I think originally due to buy ignorance with the inner workings of computers I was reluctant to mess about with removing stuff, the instructions on that link I posted previously gave me clear idiot proof instructions on the removal process Now I know how to do it I'll look into it.

Thanks for your help.

[mattycourtney]

A sample of an AVI that exhibits this problem is at http://d01.megashares.com/dl/dS84qhx/sample.avi. Audio plays for a moment and is then muted, skipping resumes audio for a moment before it is muted again.

Perian 1.2.3 on Lion 10.7.2 w/Quicktime 10.1 (500.5)

Perian is set to output stereo audio

Code: Select all

Mattys-MacBook-Pro:~ mattyc$ ls -l /Library/QuickTime/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 root  admin  102 24 Jul  2011 AC3MovieImport.component
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  102 26 May  2011 AppleIntermediateCodec.component
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  102 26 May  2011 AppleMPEG2Codec.component
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 root  admin  102 24 Jul  2011 Perian.component

This file plays fine in VLC and also using QuickLook.

[gbooker]

Tried twice to download this file to be met with server failure/limitations. Giving up.

[HWgeek]

http://www.mediafire.com/?c9jshhj10ajhyrp

I just uploaded this sample. It will play on my setup for 1 sec and then go silent, skip forward and starts playing and goes silent again in 1 sec.

I have tried perian 1.2.2 and 1.2.3 both do the same thing.

Running
Lion 10.7.2
/Library/QuickTime/
AC3MovieImport.component
AppleIntermediateCodec.component
AppleMPEG2Codec.component
FLACImport.component
Flip4Mac WMV Advanced.component
Flip4Mac WMV Export.component
Flip4Mac WMV Import.component
Perian.component
XiphQT.component

I will monitor this thread, and hopefully can provide files and or info to help resolve this issue. Thanks!

[gbooker]

Same lousy packetization as in http://forums.cocoaforge.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=24052 I wish people would stop using this lousy file format. Remux it using avidemux or similar tool to fixed the broken file.

[HWgeek]

Thanks for the information -
I read the post that you linked to, where you mention audio frames and timecodes. I have a basic understanding of that, and would like to delve a bit deeper since it seems like there are a fair bit of files that are being created incorrectly.
I'm not an A/V specialist, however could you tell me how you "see" the file being screwed up? I would like to push the information back out in the right places so folks, if they continue to use .avi will at least correct their screwed up packetization.

And yes, .avi should die, but some folks don't understand the difference between a container and the content.

[gbooker]

could you tell me how you "see" the file being screwed up?

In the debugger, I examined the samples being sent to the codec.

I would like to push the information back out in the right places so folks, if they continue to use .avi will at least correct their screwed up packetization.

It's the fault of their tools. Often, they don't know anything about correctly packetizing their samples. Honestly, AVI can never correctly handle AC3 content, so even putting that in an AVI is wrong.