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Notice Fixing 'Black screen' issues with the in game videos.

Black Bart

Corsair
Storm Modder
I started to have this problem many years back while working on an older version of Build 14, and it meant that all those game loading video's (disney, akella, bethesda) would just display as a black screen while the music for them played fine.

It also meant all the in-game videos would just display the same problem, so no more title screen or oxbay attack into video's, which was pretty sucky.

Anyway years later i seem to have found a solution, and it was wildly searching for help i came across a thread from this forum, and here is the bad bit, i forget whom gave the advice i ended up following, and i can no longer find that specific thread to thank them for this years old problem i had been having!

That advice was to download a utility called InstalledCodec by Nirsoft, here is the link:

Disable/enable codec drivers and DirectShow filters installed on your system

When you have that installed, run it and it will display all your codec in alphabetical order. That will likely be a lot of info and take up more than your whole screen!

What we need to do is click on the 'type' column heading to ensure we get all the 'Driver - Video' entries up the top one after another, as this makes it easier to run through them all.

I had 16 entries here, and as it turned out it was a combination of 8 of them that were stopping the PotC video's from playing properly. So here is the list of offending video codecs to check against if you have this problem (in PotC or any other game perhaps?).

1. Indeo Video Interactive R.45 - version 4.51.16.03 - filename: C:\Windows\system32\jr41_32.ax

2. Intel Indeo Video YUV Codec - version 5.1.2600.5512 (xpsp.080413-2108) - filename: C:\Windows\system32\iyuv_32.dll

3. Microsoft H.261 ICM driver - version 5.1.2600.5512 - filename: C:\Windows\system32\msh261.drv

4. Microsoft H.263 ICM Driver - version 5.1.2600.5512 - filename: C:\Windows\system32\msh263.drv
(there are two version of this with different driver keys only, otherwise they look exactly the same)

5. Microsoft UYVY Video Decompressor - version 5.3.2600.5512 (xpsp.080413-2108) - filename: C:\Windows\system32\msyuv.dll
(there are three versions of this with different driver keys)

Now using the InstalledCodec utility you can disable/enable any codec you want for testing, and on my system whenever i had any of those above codecs enabled it would create problems for some or all of the PotC video's, so having them all disabled makes those video's run fine as they should.

I have no idea why this happened, but i obviously installed some codecs in something after PotC had been running fine for years, and that was what messed the video's up.

Hopefully this info will be useful to any one else having video playback issues within PotC (modded or otherwise), and thank you so much to the Piratesahoy poster that suggested the InstalledCodec program for another persons question.
 
Your welcome :)
 
I think it was probably me, that is one handy little program! Codecs can cause some really annoying behavior, sometimes it is not the fault of the author, but the operating system, sometimes it is just a combination of both. It is functionality like that provided by InstalledCodec that should be included in Windows 10, instead of pointlessly forcing Edge, Cortana and data mining into EVERYTHING! :rolleyes:
 
ah yeah, well i'm staying away from windows 10. Windows 7 is my last Windows, as i've started the move to Linux Mint (i'm posting this on my laptop that has been running Mint fine for about 8 months now), and will keep Windows just for gaming (currently i'm running the Build Mod on my old XP rig, but i have a new gaming rig that is Windows 7 also).

But yes as soon as you posted i remembered it was your post about that utility, so it definately was you. And boy that video problem with PotC had been a very long running one so i really do mean thanks :D
 
I agree mate, Linux Mint is awesome! I was using that almost exclusively over the last few years, my main rig died however, and I purchased a Windows 10 lapatop. Once I decide exactly what I am going to build next time, my new rig will be Linux only.
 
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