codec problems. warry about uploading yet

[Lizard_Crimson]

Hey there!

I'm having trouble creating a clean version of the video I'm trying to edit, as when I export it using the h.264 codec, where whenever I play it on windows media player, it cuts out one of the last frames so it doesn't loop well, and the hue changes on and off, making it flash weirdly. Plays just fine on the default win10 media player and loops well in both there and premiere, but I'm trying to upload to wallpaper engine, and it does the same hue flashing problem and bad looping there too, so I'm assuming it's the same problem

anyone seen this problem before and know how to fix it?

linked is the file in question: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IfMt03aSa0Qry2iZOVXpt4z8ROgMFnBU/view?usp=sharing

[Asteroid]

Have your win10 activated?If not wallpaper engine may not have right to change the wallpaper of you PC.

[Lizard_Crimson]

Originally posted by Asteroid:

Have your win10 activated?If not wallpaper engine may not have right to change the wallpaper of you PC.

Yep. Everything good there. I've made wallpapers before with no problems.
Here's a link to what I'm seeing on my screen
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=1ejht4Ip6nKtkJOWpemcnm16BMm36pN9R

[Tim]

Wallpaper Engine essentially uses Windows Media Player to play videos (simplified explanation), so if something is slightly off there, it will be the same in Wallpaper Engine. Unlike media players like VLC, Windows Media Player will use your graphics card to play videos because this has a better performance. However, this can also cause weird hue issues. I would recommend you start by doing a clean re-installation of the latest graphics card drivers. Download the latest ones, delete your current ones including all settings and then install the latest drivers and restart your PC and see if the hue issues go away.

Regarding the "it does not loop" well, this is sort of in the same category. In the "General" tab of the Wallpaper Engine settings, change the "Video loading" option to "In-memory" and see if it becomes better. It may just be that your system is too slow to load the video perfectly. Sometimes antivirus applications or similar may also cause a tiny delay when looping the video, so make sure nothing is able to cause these micro stutters.

[Lizard_Crimson]

Originally posted by Tim:

Wallpaper Engine essentially uses Windows Media Player to play videos (simplified explanation), so if something is slightly off there, it will be the same in Wallpaper Engine. Unlike media players like VLC, Windows Media Player will use your graphics card to play videos because this has a better performance. However, this can also cause weird hue issues. I would recommend you start by doing a clean re-installation of the latest graphics card drivers. Download the latest ones, delete your current ones including all settings and then install the latest drivers and restart your PC and see if the hue issues go away.

Regarding the "it does not loop" well, this is sort of in the same category. In the "General" tab of the Wallpaper Engine settings, change the "Video loading" option to "In-memory" and see if it becomes better. It may just be that your system is too slow to load the video perfectly. Sometimes antivirus applications or similar may also cause a tiny delay when looping the video, so make sure nothing is able to cause these micro stutters.

Thanks for the advice!
unfortunately, reinstalling my drivers didn't seem to work. And with that, I don't think it will be ideal either, as others may want to use the same wallpaper and not have correct drivers. Perhaps using a different file type will help? I tried using gif, but it looked kinda bad. I'll keep asking around video editting forums to see if I can fix the mp4, but if you think of anything else that might be a problem, let me know
Thanks!

[butcho]

Maybe you have a keyframe problem cutting your file to loop it.
My personal experience when it comes to creating loops out of h264 or h265 videos is that some tools just ♥♥♥♥ up when you cut the movie at a certain point. Let´s say you have a keyframe interval of 3 seconds. Some tools just cut the video on the next keyframe not between the keyframes. If you want your file to have a duration of for example 10 seconds then a keyframe interval of every 3 seconds means that the cut only happens at 3 seconds, 6 seconds, 9 seconds and so on and it can happen that you are missing one second of the video because of that. Which is not a big deal when you watch a movie but it´s the death for any decent loop. ^^

What you can do is export your video to an image sequence, put the sequence back together in a program like After Effects or VirtualDub, create your seamless loop, export it as RAW avi and then use a good video encoder like Handbrake to create your h264 file. Then you will get a good looking looped mp4 file.

[butcho]

Mmmmh....i think my guess was wrong. Wherever i play your file it loops pretty good.

Sorry didn´t read your first post correctly.

[butcho]

For me the lag only seems to appear in Wallpaper Engine. Dunno what´s exactly the cause of this.

What fixed the behaviour for me was switching from Video loop --> Default to Video loop --> Sync topology and then back to default in the general settings of WE.

Don´t know what´s going on but now it´s looping good in Wallpaper Engine. ^^

[Tim]

The issue is likely a mix of how the video is encoded and a hardware issue. Depending on how you create your video, you could try to export it as an uncompressed video and try to compress it with a tool like Handbrake and see if that yields better performing results:

https://handbrake.fr/

[Lizard_Crimson]

Originally posted by Tim:

The issue is likely a mix of how the video is encoded and a hardware issue. Depending on how you create your video, you could try to export it as an uncompressed video and try to compress it with a tool like Handbrake and see if that yields better performing results:

https://handbrake.fr/

Thanks for the reccomendations!

I ended up saving the premiere project as an uncompressed AVI. then I found a program that lets me convert to mp4 with several different codecs. Unfortunately, Windows Media Player didn't care what codec it was in or who converted it, as it still had the same color errors

It's not that fancy of a wallpaper, so I think I'll give up on this project, but I hope it helped you guys think of ways to improve wallpaper engine in the future, with perhaps it's own media player with more supported file types

Thanks!

[butcho]

What i didn´t have is the wrong color flashing. Other than the 1 second lag on loop the file looked totally fine. I exported it to an raw video file with After Effects and reconverted it and there were no color errors. Maybe there is something wrong on your side with your Windows Media Player? Maybe some installed codec packs or stuff like that. Have you tried the file in another player like VLC or Media Player Classic?

[Tim]

The flashing colors must be caused by some application or your graphics card drivers changing the video output. Wallpaper Engine uses hardware acceleration to ensure video wallpapers perform well, however, this also means that videos go through the graphics card where they may be altered completely depending on your driver settings. There may also be other applications on your system which somehow alter the video output.

This issue will not happen in a player like VLC because VLC does not use hardware acceleration which is, in a sense, "more robust" but in turn performs much worse - something you definitely do not want in a wallpaper where you want to ensure performance is always great.

I would recommend that you again check your graphics card drivers and ensure that the re-installation you did was a "clean" one, in other words that you did not retain any settings. If that was the case, there is likely something else on your computer which somehow affects the image output of video hardware acceleration.

[butcho]

Originally posted by Tim:

This issue will not happen in a player like VLC because VLC does not use hardware acceleration which is, in a sense, "more robust" but in turn performs much wors

Of course it has. On Windows systems you can choose between Direct3D 11 or DXVA 2.0 hardware accelerated decoding in the settings of VLC.

[Tim]

Hm, I believe it's turned off by default but may info may be outdated, it's easily testable though by creating some crazy color settings in the Nvidia Control panel, specifically the "Video" section. If it does not show up in VLC, it's not going through the GPU from my understanding.