"View Multimedia files" window immediately closes

[fps]

Hi,

I'm trying to playback a separately recorded video using the "View multimedia files" option in Spike2 (versions tried: 8.12, 8.13a, 8.19a and 8.21.) I do remember having to upgrade to 8.19a last year to make it work reliably. Sadly this version of Spike2 does not work this year. I suspect maybe a change in Windows 10? Usually the view multimedia files window's problems were of a different nature: Lost sync, or missing updates. But this is new: The window just immediately closes after seleting "view multimedia files" - Sometimes the first frame of the video is visible for an instant. I updated to 8.21 just to see if the problem was maybe already fixed before reporting this here. But sadly it was not.

Is the issue known to you? Do you happen to know a workaround?

Kind regards,
FPS

EDIT: I should add that I tried a couple of video formats: Raw AVI, palletized and RGB, and MP4-Container with a H2.64 encoded stream. None of them works. Another point: I tried the same thing on a different computer and there it works fine. Sadly I cannot find any debug log or similar for Spike2 which could help identify the problem.

[Greg Smith]

If it works on one computer and not on another, that suggests a problem with the codecs on the failing system. However, if you see one frame, then the codec must have been working, at least well enough to decode the file header and the first frame.

Can you replay any files in the Spike2 Multimedia window on the failing computer?

Please email me the smallest mp4 video that fails or make a small one (and verify it fails) and I'll see if there is anything about the format that could cause a problem? I also need the data file (again, a small one - export a short section to make a small file) and the resource (.s2rx) file that goes with it.

There is not much in the way of debugging you can do in version 8 (version 10 allows us to dump quite a bit of useful information about the video setup, which can help to diagnose problems as it list all the DirectShow components used and how they are connected). However, if the window does not stay open, this debug information is not accessible...

Most problems we see are in constructing the DirectShow graph that displays the file, but it does not seem that this is your problem as all failures in that generate an error message and you say that you have seen the first frame of data. For the window to close without an error message suggests something unexpected has happened... We do not have other reports of this problem.

[Greg Smith]

Any progress with this? If you have sent me files I have not received them.