Windows Media Encoder Screen Capture Problem

June 4, 2005 12:14 PM

I'm trying to use Windows Media Encoder to capture a video of my computer screen. Everything is fine, but the resulting movie plays back split down the diagonal of the screen. Its hard to describe, so here is a sample.

Does anyone know what I am doing wrong? I've tried turning off hardware acceleration but that didn't have any effect. The product has a zillion different switches and knobs I could turn but I don't really know which ones to start with.

posted by mmascolino to computers & internet (10 comments total)

I don't quite understand what you're describing--the video looks fine to me.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 12:27 PM on June 4, 2005

This is what I see.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 12:30 PM on June 4, 2005

(Oh, and the free image hosting site I used for the above pics has some NSFW ads, FYI)
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 12:32 PM on June 4, 2005

Yeah... so I notice...
Same here; can't tell what the problem is
posted by Doohickie at 12:34 PM on June 4, 2005

After seeing the the above two responses I doubled checked the video in Windows Media Player directly (I had been using WinAmp before). You are right, it plays fine in Windows Media Player. So I guess I amend my question on why it doesn't play correctly in WinAmp ( I always thought WinAmp was just embedding Windows Media Player into its own GUI but apparently that isn't the case...sorry for any confusion).
posted by mmascolino at 12:43 PM on June 4, 2005

Er, why do the location of individuals in the ads on the image-hosting site all center around my actual physical location? It couldn't be a coincidence...
posted by odinsdream at 2:20 PM on June 4, 2005

No, the sites probably scour your cookies files (Yahoo, Metafilter, etc.) to look for ZIP codes. "Look, all these wonderful, hot, sex-crazed people are in my area just waiting for me!" (Please insert quarter).
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 3:05 PM on June 4, 2005

It's guessing from the IP address. And lying, or those sexed up folks have clones in MN and Mass.

I couldn't get the video to play at all... (mplayer on linux).
posted by roue at 3:21 PM on June 4, 2005

Civil_Disobedient: risking a verge into offtopicness, that's not how cookies work at all. It's the IP address.
posted by nmiell at 4:02 PM on June 4, 2005

Sorry, nmiell, I thought sites could spoof sources to get cookies, but apparently IP addresses are the method, as you say.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:33 PM on June 4, 2005