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Activity Forums Compression Techniques Peter Max Psychedelic Colors

  • Peter Max Psychedelic Colors

    Posted by Bob Cole on June 14, 2007 at 9:55 pm

    I just created four .wmv files of different file sizes of the same video. For one I used Flip4Mac on my Mac, to create a .wmv file directly from a Final Cut Pro timeline. I created the others by playing the timeline live onto a Digital Rapids card in a PC.

    All of them play fine on the HP where my Digital Rapids card lives.

    But when I put them on a CD and try to play them off the CD in other PCs (Dell desktop, another HP desktop, and a Dell laptop), I get unpredictable behaviors: some files play fine, but others generate Peter Max psychedelic colors. One time, a file started out for just a half-second with psychedelic colors, but then righted itself and played normally.

    What’s going on, and how can I keep it from happening on my clients’ computers when I send these files out into the world?

    Thanks!

    — Bob C

    Erik Pontius replied 19 years, 2 months ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
  • 4 Replies
  • Craig Seeman

    June 14, 2007 at 10:23 pm

    In the past I’ve seen this issue when the computer screen wasn’t set to millions of colors. See if you can change the screens to millions of colors on the PCs where you’re seeing the issue.

  • Bob Cole

    June 14, 2007 at 10:41 pm

    I can’t seem to find a setting for millions of colors. Two monitors where this occurred are set to 32-bit.

  • Craig Seeman

    June 14, 2007 at 10:49 pm

    32 bit should work. Hmmm.

  • Erik Pontius

    June 15, 2007 at 1:24 am

    Check the version of media player on the systems that are showing the interesting colors….you’ll most likely find that they are running an older version. Your WMV files were most likely encoded using newer codecs which require the latest version to playback properly. The latest version available from MS is Media Player 11.
    Probably the only way to guarantee playback is to use the age old Windows Media Video 8 codec…which is pretty mediocre quality compared to WM9. With Media Player being a free download, you might just include a note that your videos might require the latest version.

    Erik

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