I’ve had the handy for a couple weeks and I’m loving it, but I noticed some videos won’t play. When I play the videos in VLC they work fine, but if I try to play them on the handy feeling local player the video just stays black. The audio comes through and the handy moves with the script, but no video. I can even skip around in the video just like it was playing, it just stays black. I tried installing the standalone ScriptPlayer and it does the same thing.
This only happens with a couple of videos. Most videos work fine. They’re all mp4 files but there’s one difference I’ve noticed between videos that work and ones that don’t. The ones that work show a still preview from the video as the VLC thumbnail, while the ones that don’t just show the VLC cone logo (I have my default video player set to VLC). I don’t even know if this is related, just something I noticed.
I think your video might be corrupted. Sometimes video sources give corrupted videos. Just got to find another source to download from and pray it is not corrupted. I think? Probably.
I use stash app to sort my videos and when they are corrupted I have a similar experience to what you are describing.
I thought it might be something like that but the video plays fine locally in VLC. It’s only when I try to play it through HandyFeeling or ScriptPlayer that it doesn’t work.
If you want I can send you a video to download that I know is corrupted so you can see if that is the case? If not lmk. My corrupted videos are also able to be played through VLC. It just has video distortions due to the corruption.
You’ve probably already checked on Handyverse, but the videos using the H.265 codec may have playback issues. the player is fine with the H.264 encoding.
I’ve had this happen before, and in my case it was a format/codec issue.
Some video players, like VLC, include the codecs required to process a video file with the application itself. Most players do not, and require a codec at the system level.
There are quite a few ways to get such codecs, but one of the easiest ways is the K-Lite Codec Pack. Many people seem to like to complain about that, but I’ve yet to see a legitimate reason why. It’s just an installer (there are a few to choose from, including one that has basically everything) that installs codecs and utilities, making it easier on you.
If you want to do things more manually, then you need to figure out what codec the videos in question are using, and locate the required files yourself.
All that said, the most likely scenario is that your system is lacking the H.265 codec, which Microsoft distributes for a small fee ($5?), though there are ways to get it for free via certain links, from Microsoft itself. You’ll have to chase that down yourself, though. It’s been a while since I looked.
I have confirmed that the 2 videos that don’t work are using the h265 codec, while all other videos that do work seem to be using h264. Would installing the codec pack help with this though? Wouldn’t it be the HandyFeeling.com player that needs the codec, or is that sort of thing done on the local computer?
I downloaded and installed the k-lite codec pack, making sure it included h265 and h264. No change, video is still black when I try to play it using the handy feeling local player.
If the player is based on Windows Media Foundation then you might need to pay $0.99 for HEVC Video Extensions in the Microsoft Store. There was an option before to download HEVC from Device Manufacturer, but that option was removed in many (or maybe all) regions.
Using ffdshow, Matroska, K-Lite code pack is possible for those players that support DirectShow.
After installing HEVC Video Extensions I have no issues with playback of h265. No more messing around with all these codec packs that cause as much problems as they solve (IMHO), but maybe they are better today than when I used them when I had Windows 7.
I have the same H.265 issue, I just use ffmpeg to change the encoding to H.264, works fine afterwards. An easy way to tell them apart in my situation is if a thumbnail is displayed when using a viewing mode with “icons” in the name; all the H.265s don’t have one and all H.264s do. All you have to do to change them one you install ffmpeg is go to command prompt in the right directory (“cd Desktop\Homework” for example) and then paste “ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libx264 -profile:v high -preset slow -tune film -crf 18 output.mp4” while changing the _.mp4 names to the right ones and changing the “-preset slow” to “-preset fast” or whatever preset you like. The preset determines how fast the conversion is processed, at a tradeoff of quality.
This sounds like my exact issue including the thumbnail thing. How do I install ffmpeg? I googled it but all the links just go to uncompiled source code.
If you scroll down a bit you will find release builds. Download what you need there. They are portable meaning they don’t have an installer, just the binaries that you can run directly from the command line or via other tools that depend on ffmpeg.
Okay it took me some trial and error to figure out the command line stuff but that did the trick and I was able to get the videos working. Thanks for all the help everyone.