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From: Mark Wagner
Subject: A Record-Setting Round
Date: 20 Oct 2000 00:12:27
Message: <39efc62b$1@news.povray.org>
With 16 of the 24 animations downloaded so far, I've had trouble viewing two
of them.  "invmix.mpg" gives an "unexpected read error" on frame 876, and
the player I usually use only displays the first 300 frames of "soul.mpg".
Is anyone else having problems with these files?

A suggestion for future rounds: Put the number of frames somewhere in the
textfile.  This would make it easier to figure out if the movie is being
shown correctly or not.

Mark


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From: Greg M  Johnson
Subject: Re: A Record-Setting Round
Date: 20 Oct 2000 09:39:46
Message: <39F049DC.5E951B90@my-dejanews.com>
I once firebombed the winning entry in my voting only to find out after the
voting was closed that I disliked it so much because I was missing 80% of it!
It was only that it won that made me realize I must have missed something
everyone else saw.  Perhpas I should have had more faith in the artist.

If you look at my posting here under "Frame Size Creates Difficulty..." 7/24/00
you may find some alternative viewers that may help you until the day we all
agree on a standard format.

Mark Wagner wrote:

> With 16 of the 24 animations downloaded so far, I've had trouble viewing two
> of them.  "invmix.mpg" gives an "unexpected read error" on frame 876, and
> the player I usually use only displays the first 300 frames of "soul.mpg".
> Is anyone else having problems with these files?
>
> A suggestion for future rounds: Put the number of frames somewhere in the
> textfile.  This would make it easier to figure out if the movie is being
> shown correctly or not.
>
> Mark


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From: Duncan Gray
Subject: Re: A Record-Setting Round
Date: 20 Oct 2000 18:45:15
Message: <39f0cafb@news.povray.org>
Mark Wagner <mar### [at] gtenet> wrote in message
news:39efc62b$1@news.povray.org...
> A suggestion for future rounds: Put the number of frames somewhere in the
> textfile.  This would make it easier to figure out if the movie is being
> shown correctly or not.

Sounds good to me - I've experienced a similar problem before, once I
realised it wasn't down to the viewer I was using, I downloaded the MPG
again and it played fine.

Therefore: DG_ALIEN is (meant to be) 1 minute and 8 seconds long; about 1700
frames.

In the future I shall put it in the TXT file also (though I'm not sure when
I'll next enter).

Duncan


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From: Mark Wagner
Subject: Re: A Record-Setting Round
Date: 20 Oct 2000 22:28:47
Message: <39f0ff5f$1@news.povray.org>
Mark Wagner wrote in message <39efc62b$1@news.povray.org>...
>With 16 of the 24 animations downloaded so far, I've had trouble viewing
two
>of them.  "invmix.mpg" gives an "unexpected read error" on frame 876, and
>the player I usually use only displays the first 300 frames of "soul.mpg".
>Is anyone else having problems with these files?


Update: I think that is three that don't play properly.  With "ant.mpg", I
have a choice of 500 frames under "Display", or 498 frames under
"ActiveMovie Control".

Mark


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From: Mark Wagner
Subject: Re: A Record-Setting Round
Date: 24 Oct 2000 23:03:24
Message: <39f64d7c@news.povray.org>
Greg M. Johnson wrote in message <39F049DC.5E951B90@my-dejanews.com>...
>If you look at my posting here under "Frame Size Creates Difficulty..."
7/24/00
>you may find some alternative viewers that may help you until the day we
all
>agree on a standard format.


The verdict on HyperMPEG Player:
Plays only the first 300 frames of "soul.mpg"
Crashes when trying to open "invmix.mpg"
Plays 500 frames of "ant.mpg"

ELECARD MPEG2 Player:
500 frames of "ant.mpg"
Plays all of "invmix.mpg"
Plays all of "soul.mpg"

Cinematograph:
500 frames of "ant.mpg"
All of "soul.mpg"
Opens but does not play "invmix.mpg"

EZMedia:
AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!!!!
EZMedia refuses to open any file of any type, giving an error message.  Any
further attempts to do anything with EZMedia (like quit) result in an
infinite series of error messages.

Windows Media Player and ActiveMovie Control:
500 frames of "ant.mpg"
All of "soul.mpg"
All of "invmix.mpg"
Play all files, however, they almost always leave off the last few frames of
any movie.

Display:
500 frames of "ant.mpg"
300 frames of "soul.mpg"
876 frames of "invmix.mpg"
This is a DOS program.  Under DOS, it plays sound.  If Windows is running,
it doesn't.

Quicktime Player 4:
Does not play .mpg movies, but registers the file type as playable by
Quicktime.

I hope this helps people in deciding what viewers to use.
P.S. How long is "ant.mpg"?


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From: Ken
Subject: Re: A Record-Setting Round
Date: 24 Oct 2000 23:06:03
Message: <39F64E3F.E6D60943@pacbell.net>
Mark Wagner wrote:

> I hope this helps people in deciding what viewers to use.
> P.S. How long is "ant.mpg"?

500 frames ? :)

-- 
Ken Tyler - 1400+ POV-Ray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/


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From: Thorsten Froehlich
Subject: Re: A Record-Setting Round
Date: 29 Oct 2000 22:31:13
Message: <39fceb81$1@news.povray.org>
In article <39f64d7c@news.povray.org> , "Mark Wagner" 
<mar### [at] gtenet> wrote:

> Quicktime Player 4:
> Does not play .mpg movies, but registers the file type as playable by
> Quicktime.

No, QuickTime plays MPEG movies.

Given the result with all the other media players, maybe they are all simply
not working because they don't work together on the same system?


      Thorsten


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From: Mark Wagner
Subject: Re: A Record-Setting Round
Date: 30 Oct 2000 00:50:14
Message: <39fd0c16$1@news.povray.org>
Thorsten Froehlich wrote in message <39fceb81$1@news.povray.org>...
>In article <39f64d7c@news.povray.org> , "Mark Wagner"
><mar### [at] gtenet> wrote:
>
>> Quicktime Player 4:
>> Does not play .mpg movies, but registers the file type as playable by
>> Quicktime.
>
>No, QuickTime plays MPEG movies.


To quote the error message Quicktime 4 gives me:
"Couldn't open the file "mwinvade.mpg" because it is
not a file Quicktime understands."

>Given the result with all the other media players, maybe they are all
simply
>not working because they don't work together on the same system?


No.  I only had one of HyperMPEG Player, ELECARD MPEG2 Player,
Cinematograph, and EZMedia installed at a time.  Additionally, all of the
players I tried except EZMedia successfully played "mwinvade.mpg", which I
used as a reference file.

Mark


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From: Jerry
Subject: Re: A Record-Setting Round
Date: 30 Oct 2000 11:39:19
Message: <jerry-A11A55.08392030102000@news.povray.org>
In article <39fd0c16$1@news.povray.org>, "Mark Wagner" 
<mar### [at] gtenet> wrote:

>Thorsten Froehlich wrote in message <39fceb81$1@news.povray.org>...
>>No, QuickTime plays MPEG movies.
>To quote the error message Quicktime 4 gives me:
>"Couldn't open the file "mwinvade.mpg" because it is
>not a file Quicktime understands."

The Mac generally stores a file's type and creator as an integral part 
of the file, so when it sees a Windows file, it has to guess. The act of 
registering a windows file as playable by quicktime and the ability to 
play a windows file are actually completely separate in the Mac OS.

When you place a windows file on a Macintosh, the Mac's OS looks at the 
extension, and then looks in its database of Windows extensions and 
marks the file appropriately. The extension ".mpg" corresponds to MPEG, 
which Quicktime can play. Go ahead and (if you really want to see this 
in action) name a Word document "myresume.mpg" on Windows, and copy it 
to your Mac. It will register for Quicktime, but Quicktime obviously 
won't be able to play it.

(Windows does the same thing on its own files: go ahead and rename your 
MPEG file "mymovie.doc", and double-click it. It should open in 
Microsoft Word assuming you have Word on your computer. Word will 
hopefully tell you it doesn't understand the file format. If you go into 
your movie player and do a File:Open, and tell the filepicker to show 
all files, you will still be able to open the mymovie.doc file that way 
and the movie player will accept the file.)

Most likely:
  (a) this is a new form of MPEG that Quicktime 4 doesn't yet 
understand. I think this is unlikely, since as far as I know MPEG is a 
specific format, not an encapsulation of other formats. But if MPEG can 
encapsulate other formats, I'd call this the most likely problem.

  (b) the file was corrupted in transit; for example, if it was FTP'd, 
it might have been FTP'd in text mode.

  (c)  Or it might be that it isn't really an MPEG file, it just has the 
.mpg extension, and is actually another video format (divx?) that is 
relatively new, and that the other players understand but that Quicktime 
doesn't yet.

Jerry
-- 
http://www.hoboes.com/jerry/
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish, and you've
depleted the lake."--It Isn't Murder If They're Yankees
(http://www.hoboes.com/jerry/Murder/)


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From: Mark Wagner
Subject: Re: A Record-Setting Round
Date: 31 Oct 2000 00:34:39
Message: <39fe59ef@news.povray.org>
Jerry wrote in message ...

>Most likely:
>  (a) this is a new form of MPEG that Quicktime 4 doesn't yet
>understand. I think this is unlikely, since as far as I know MPEG is a
>specific format, not an encapsulation of other formats. But if MPEG can
>encapsulate other formats, I'd call this the most likely problem.


Nope.  This is 24 different MPEG-1 movies.  This is a well-defined single
format.

>  (b) the file was corrupted in transit; for example, if it was FTP'd,
>it might have been FTP'd in text mode.


Damn near impossible.  I downloaded the movies as 3 zip archives.  All of
the archives test out OK, the movies can be extracted properly, and I can
find players to display all 24 of them.

>  (c)  Or it might be that it isn't really an MPEG file, it just has the
>.mpg extension, and is actually another video format (divx?) that is
>relatively new, and that the other players understand but that Quicktime
>doesn't yet.


You mean that we actually got a round of the IRTC anims contest where no
MPEG-1 movies were submitted, yet there were very few problems displaying
the movies, and the submissions checking script didn't scream bloody murder
about people submitting their movies in the wrong format?

(yes, I'm being sarcastic)

Mark


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