Media player classic hangs playing AVI files
 

Ok my desktop computer running Media Player Classic (MPC) and ffdshow-alpha on Windows 2000 has no problems playing my AVI files. Now I'm on vacation with my laptop running on Windows XP. I had DivX and Xvid codecs installed here (because I seldom use my laptop to watch anime), which I uninstalled and replaced with ffdshow-alpha and MPC 6.4.7.2. The problem is, MPC always hangs when I open an AVI file (I tried Air Master 12, A-Keep's FMA 10, and even Onegai Twins 8). I can play these files fine on WMP 8 and Winamp 2.91.

After looking at the Media Configuration Guide by animaniac, I downloaded and reinstalled the versions of MPC and ffdshow recommended but they did not work. Strangely my ffdshow-alpha version was ffdshow-20030816.exe, and there was no such version of ffdshow alpha on the Sourceforge site now, but I'm sure I got it from there last time. Did they take it down due to problems?? Anyway I am back to ffdshow-20030523.exe again with the same problem.

Does anyone know why? :confused: I also tried MPC 6.4.7.3 and 6.4.6.7 (from the guide) with no difference. :frustrated: Once I get home I'll try playing the files on my desktop but right now I have no idea what the problem is. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

P.S. Actually I got MPC to work with FMA 10 once, which was right after I uninstalled DivX after realizing it was interfering with ffdshow. Now I only have ffdshow installed (DivX and Xvid are gone).

Try using the non alpha of ffdshow or don't use it at all. The alpha version is buggy (and so is the non alpha, just different bugs), I have had similar problems with it. Ended up with not using it at all and I can't say I miss it. There is nothing that you can do with ffdshow that you can't do with some other codec/filter.

Uh... not true, alpha has less bugs and is much newer, almost two years newer. This is odd. Does it crash when you open or when you play? Can you play it with mplayer2?

Try using mplayer2, just to see if it is mpc causing the crashing.

Ok mplayer2 hangs when trying to load the AVI file as well. So it's both MPC and mplayer2 now. Like I said in the first post, WMP 8 works fine. Are MPC and mplayer2 related in some way or uses the same DLLs? I've been using MPC and ffdshow-alpha on my desktop for a few months now without any such problems. I've tried the non-alpha version of ffdshow before on my desktop, and I do find that it is more buggy and outdated than the alpha version.