RE: Video Replaced By Black Box

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Video Replaced By Black Box

Author	Message
daniemeg	daniemeg posted 9 Years Ago Topic Details Share Topic
Group: Forum Members Posts: 13, Visits: 36	I am attempting to run a brief video with Inquisit Web, but all I can see is a black box. For the computer-based version of Inquisit (4.0.8.0), the video displays perfectly with an .asf format. However, when I attempt to run the script using the Web version, an error message (video format not supported) is produced. So I converted the video to an .mpg format (using an online converter) as suggested in the documentation. Fantastically, the Web version (both Chrome and Firefox, using Java) with the .mpg video does run (no error message), however a black box replaces the video. This occurs in both the computer and the Web version. The video itself plays fine on VLC. Any help would be appreciated (do I need to be thinking about this from a video angle, or an Inquisit angle?) - I have reached my the (admittedly small) limit of my personal troubleshooting ability.
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Dave	Dave posted 9 Years Ago ANSWER Post Details Share Post
Group: Administrators Posts: 13K, Visits: 104K	Hard to tell with certainty, but I think the "video-angle" is the one to pursue. Inquisit uses certain codecs available on the system to render videos (under Windows, those are so-called DirectShow filters). VLC comes with its own set of binary codecs which are completely independent of those available system-wide -- i.e., the fact that VLC renders the video tells you little of relevance, unfortunately. The fact that Inquisit just displays a black box suggests that there's either (1) an issue with the way the video has been encoded (try a different converter / different settings), (2) no suitable codec available to render the video, or (3) both. Hope this helps.
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daniemeg	daniemeg posted 9 Years Ago ANSWER Post Details Share Post
Group: Forum Members Posts: 13, Visits: 36	Thank you Dave! I checked another video player and confirmed the .mpg only played on VLC. I was then able to successfully convert the working .asf file to an .mpg. This file looks great in VLC, my other video player, and during an Inquisit experiment run on the computer. However, now Inquisit Web will not run- telling me that the video format is not supported, so I have come full circle! Any ideas? Here are the errors if that is useful: Inquisit Media Error: Cannot play back the file: the format is not supported. line 74: file win\MediaPlayerControl.cpp ; Unable to the load media file 'C:/Users/HP/AppData/Local/Temp/loading.mpg'. Verify the file is of a supported video format.
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Dave	Dave posted 9 Years Ago ANSWER Post Details Share Post
Group: Administrators Posts: 13K, Visits: 104K	That error indicates that your system doesn't allow Inquisit Web to access the relevant codec -- it's most likely a permissions or other codec configuration issue. The above might come down to a bitness-issue. Suppose you run a 64-bit Windows edition with 64-bit Inquisit Lab installed. The video will work if a suitable 64-bit codec is present and accessible on the system. That, however, doesn't mean that a suitable 32-bit codec is available as well (or vice versa). I.e., if you then run Inquisit Web (32-bit) / using a 32-bit browser (e.g. Firefox), you may see the 'video format not supported' error. Edited 9 Years Ago by Dave
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daniemeg	daniemeg posted 9 Years Ago ANSWER Post Details Share Post
Group: Forum Members Posts: 13, Visits: 36	I wanted to thank you for your help. I never QUITE figured out how to solve the problem (though I think you identified what it was!), but since it was a brief video I made it into a .gif.
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