DVD is fine but MP4 cannot be played

terrypin wrote on 12/22/2015, 3:30 AM

I thought I'd comfortably met my deadline for finishing my one hour video but I've hit a last minute snag.

It's a 14 day walking holiday video so there were 14 projects. Each was exported to MP4 with my usual settings (1920 x1080 etc - I'll provide more details if necessary later). Each MP4 was successfully played after its export. All 14 were imported into a final project and chapters added. I successfuly first made a DVD which plays OK.

But my main aim as usual is to end up with an MP4 for playing on my HD smart TV. So I then exported the project using identical settings to all the others. On returning to the PC a 3.5 GB MP4 had been created. However, it refuses to play on my PC with any of my players.Typical messages:
VLC "The format of the file cannot be detected".
MPC-HC "Cannot render the file"
WMP ("WMP encountered a problem") .

GSpot and MediaInfo ("Format: MPEG-4, Format profile: Base Media / Version 2, Codec ID: mp42)")gave very sparse info.

I'm about to start methodical analysis. But does anyone have any suggestions on the likely cause please? My first thoughts are maybe some momentary 'brown-out' or other physical glitch, insufficient to crash or stop the process but enough to introduce corruption.

MEP 2014 Premium.

Comments

terrypin wrote on 12/22/2015, 5:13 AM

I'm surprised I didn't notice this earlier (it was about 5 am when I returned to the PC) but it's now clear that what happened was that the computer re-booted itself near to completion of the export. I've just repeated the export and on returning a few minutes later I found it had rebooted again. This time much earlier, creating only a 200 MB MP4.

So that makes this thread OT. It's not an MEP issue at all. I'm clearly now looking for an OS or hardware or other obscure problem.

One possibility could be a dodgy external HD, a 2 TB WD unit. Event Viewer shows frequent Event ID 51 errors: An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk8\D during a paging operation. Although it's shown as 'Healthy' in Computer Management > Disk Management. It shouldn't be involved during an export from MEP, of course, but then nor should it flash its LED often when I simply open a JPG (on my C: drive) with IfanViewer, so who knows!

At least I have it on DVD. BTW, hard though I stared at it on my Panasonic TX-40CX800 40" LCD, I can't say I found much if any visible difference with watching similar videos via streaming from the MP4 at 1080 HD.

terrypin wrote on 12/24/2015, 3:35 AM

I disabled the setting that cause an automatic restart after a BSOD, so that after beginning another MEP 2014 export last night the message was still waiting for me at dawn. Here it is, plus a list of that file's occurrences on my XP PC C: drive.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4019461/BSOD-Dec2015.jpg

I can't be sure, but it's now at least arguable that this is no longer OT. Mind you, how many other programs do I have (much less use) that needs this file? ;-)

Anyone have any insights into how MEP or VDL uses nv4_disp.dll please?

Edit:

Just found this, which looks promising:

http://www.personalcomputerfixes.com/general-errors/steps-to-resolve-the-nv4_disp-dll-error/

Edit

...but I still got the BSOD after changing the file.

Next step will be to install later drivers.