When trying to display vids (mp4, mkv, etc) in viewer, many times I only get a black screen. This may happen for several vids in a row until I find one that will play. Once I find one that will play, if I go back to the others that were not playing moments ago, they will suddenly begin playing correctly.
I noticed this a 2-3 months ago and tried to solve it by installing a different codec pack. I initially thought that solved the problem but the problem persists. I thought it was just certain vids but from moment to moment or day to day the same files will intermittently play correctly or not.
I was using 12.8 until upgrading to 12.10 yesterday in hopes of solving the problem... but again, it persists.
Any ideas on how to solve this would be greatly appreciated.
If yoy can't get the codecs to work, you can try using another viewer by disabling the Movie plugin.
(Note that that will also break some movie-related columns in the file display, but there's a script add-in which provides replacements for some of those if you need them.)
Opus will then fall back on the ActiveX plugin, which will use an embedded version of Windows Media Player to play the files. (It can also be configured to use the WMP preview handler, where the main difference is it is click-to-play instead of auto-play.)
Thank you for the quick reply. I disabled the Movie plugin and restarted Opus and all the video files now play without issue and load very quickly in the viewer.
Update:
After taking the steps indicated above I found that the Windows Active-X plugin that becomes the default after disabling the Movie plugin had an annoying config of needing the volume adjusted for each vid (I'd adjust volume for one vid and it would revert to full volume each time I selected a new vid).
So just as a test, I reverted back to the Opus Movie plugin and surprisingly, the problem that started this answer quest was resolved.
The Movie plugin now works perfectly fine.
All I did was disable it... restart Opus (to force use of ActiveX plugin).. and then re-enable the Movie Plugin. YMMV
