MXF files visible but no playback

Hi,

I'm on Windows 7 and recently installed the K-Lite 1340 Basic codec pack in order to play Sony XAVC files in an MXF wrapper. These files play fine using VLC media player, but a DAM system we're using utilizes Windows Media Player for file previews. Before installing the codec pack, I would get an error message when trying to open the MXF files with Windows Media Player. After installation, the files open but they don't play. I can manually drag the shuttle bar to different places in the video and see a still image of that frame, but the transport controls don't do anything when I toggle between play and pause.

I installed the codec pack on two machines. One was a basic install and one was advanced, although I'm afraid I don't recall exactly what changes I made at this point in the advanced install. Regardless, the file behavior is the same on both machines. Any particular settings I should look at?

Thanks for your help.

Ed

Can you upload a sample file for me? Then I can test it.
http://www.datafilehost.com

The file is here:

http://www.datafilehost.com/d/3ee7488e

This is a zip file with the MXF file and all supporting files. The file and folder structure is necessary for everything to work properly with XAVC codec. Extract all and navigate to PRIVATE > XDROOT > Clip.

Thanks for your help!

Ed

The sample plays normally here with MPC-HC and GraphStudioNext. But it gets stuck with WMP same as you experienced. I will investigate further.

Thanks, I appreciate it.

Just checking in to see if any progress was made with this file.

double post, whoops.

EMH wrote:Just checking in to see if any progress was made with this file.

Have you tried a different splitter? It seems like LAV doesn't handle MXF files properly(it also doesn't have official support for the format), because when i play it in MPC-HC, there are 4 times different audio tracks and 3 of them have no audio. There's really very little information available on the MXF format(apart form that it's a format used mainly for TV commercials , even the LAV forum shows only posts that also have problems with WMP and MXF.

Edit: When i try to select a different audio track when playing with WMP, the screen goes black and the next time you seek, WMP errors out with "Not able to play this file".

Edit 2: http://www.avobjects.com/products/splitters/mxf_demultiplexer.html this DirectShow source filter works, it's only a 30 day evaluation though(no set price either, so probably very expensive) and it takes a very long time to open MXF files, but it works. PCM streams are taken over by this splitter, that's peculiar, going to try something else.


After further investigation i have found that the issue lies within the PCM streams(as initially suspected, WMP does NOT like multiple audio streams!). Letting ffdshow process/decode the PCM streams (shown in picture) fixes WMP's playback of the MXF file. By default, processing of uncompressed PCM streams are disabled(they don't need to be processed), but it seems like that WMP+multiple PCM streams=massive disaster if it's not processed by a filter. This is probably the reason why it works fine on MPC-HC: it supports multiple audio streams internally.

Multiple tracks is not the problem. Only one is active in the splitter.

It seems that WMP doesn't like the mono audio. This solved the problem:
LAV Audio Decoder settings > Expand mono to stereo

Admin wrote:Multiple tracks is not the problem. Only one is active in the splitter.

It seems that WMP doesn't like the mono audio. This solved the problem:
LAV Audio Decoder settings > Expand mono to stereo

Maybe it's because the camera has 4 mono microphones that with proper handling of the MXF file should be merged together? There was no issue playing the MXF file with mono sound with the commercial MXF source filter 30 day trial i linked, it used it's own audio decoder though(LAV Video handled the video), so there wasn't a way to check if it was upscaled to stereo or not.

Hello notcyf and Admin,

Thanks for this. I didn't see Admin's follow-up at first, so I tried notcyf's method, which involved going back and getting the mega version of the codec pack. Enabling ffdshow on all DS applications for PCM audio worked. At that point I saw Admin's suggestion, and on another machine with the basic codec pack installed, I enabled the Expand mono to stereo option. That worked just as well.

This was a huge help. Thanks again.

Ed

Expand Mono to stereo has been enabled by default in version 13.5.4 beta.

This workaround is only needed for WMP, other applications should works with mono just fine.