Hi, I’ve been using ELAN for a while for Sign Language Research, and I never had any problems until recently. The main issue is that the video player appears as a completely blue screen. The audio works, but not the video.
I’ve tried using different kinds of video formats, pre existing ELAN files, new files, uninstalling and reinstalling ELAN and updating Java and the problem still remains. Is there something I am missing? I have absolutely no idea of how to fix it.
Thank you very much
Hi,
This sounds like something must have changed in/on the system, difficult to tell what it could be. Or maybe you know if there have been system updates or new hardware etc.?
What is the operating system and version? And the ELAN version?
-Han
Thanks for the reply!
It can’t possibly be a hardware problem, because I use a laptop and I haven’t change any physical part. It may be a software problem, though. I’ve been updating Windows from time to time; it may have something to do.
My OS is Windows 8.1 and it is up to date. My ELAN is on version 6.3; it was 6.2 previously but I unistalled it and replaced with the current one.
If there is any other piece of information that would help you, please tell me. Thank you very much again.
Eloi
Given your description it seems you now ran into a problem that has been reported several times (also on this forum) and for which we never found a clear cause nor a real solution. You can check this by opening a file and when you see the blue box, go to View->View Log... and look at the last lines to see if there are repeated message like this The aspect ratio is not initialized yet.
It would be interesting to know which of the changes in the system actually caused this switch from working video in ELAN to the blue box, but I guess this will be hard to establish.
You could check if the JavaFX based player works well enough for you: go to Edit->Preference->Edit Preferences...-- Platform/OS and select the JavaFX Media Framework as the preferred framework. In files that you open after that, that other player will used for the video playback.
-Han
I have now tried to change the video player and tried it by opening new files and sadly it still isn’t working.
I’ve also checked the log and I have found this repeating error section:
NATIVE: MMFPlayer.ProcessMediaEvent: setting rate failed, requested rate 0.500000, actual rate 0.000000
Mar 24, 2022 9:58:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: MMFPlayer.Invoke: failed to process the media event (-1072875821, 0xC00D36D3)
Mar 24, 2022 9:58:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: MMFPlayer.ProcessMediaEvent: setting rate failed, requested rate 0.500000, actual rate 0.000000
Mar 24, 2022 9:58:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: MMFPlayer.Invoke: failed to process the media event (-1072875821, 0xC00D36D3)
Mar 24, 2022 9:58:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: MMFPlayer.ProcessMediaEvent: setting rate failed, requested rate 0.500000, actual rate 0.000000
Mar 24, 2022 9:58:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: MMFPlayer.Invoke: failed to process the media event (-1072875821, 0xC00D36D3)
Mar 24, 2022 9:58:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
NATIVE: MMFAudioExtractor.PrintMediaTypeProperties: audio properties (in)
Mar 24, 2022 9:58:01 AM nl.mpi.jni.NativeLogger nlog
Thank you once again for your help
Eloi
I had this happen on the latest Mac version 6.3 a lot (probably earlier versions as well). As a workaround I simply changed the video display area size by dragging the “handle” that separates the audio and video areas. This seems to reset something and the image is back. Same for videos only displaying at a fraction of their viewport.
EDIT: This is using AVFoundation for media playback, by the way.
This is an old issue, but adding my observations to document stuff: I came across a similar case, video was all blue and audio was partly working, but skipping video (under ELAN) was problematic. The input MP4 video seemed quite regular, 768x576 25 FPS video with regular standard codecs, encoded with VLC player from MOV source, originally from some analog DV/VHS source, and this VLC-encoded MP4 worked fine with external video players but not in ELAN.
The workaround was simply to re-encode the MOV source via ffmpeg. A video encoded with default settings (ffmpeg -i source.mov target.mp4) worked just fine with ELAN, including audio and seeking back and forth. This was under Windows 10 with ELAN 6.4. Maybe VLC muxes the video funnily and ffmpeg produces more standard-compliant MP4 file?
Thanks for sharing these observations, very useful!
Our media encoding guide also focuses on conversion with FFmpeg.
-Han
Hello,
I would like to report that I have encountered the same issue - blue box instead of video. I am using .avi videos. The problem appeared while opening previously coded observations as well as when creating new ones.
I have observed that it always happened with the master media video file (I open 2 or 3 video files for observation). Other videos used to show fine. Thus it seemed to me that it is a problem with Elan, not videos per se.
I tried to convert my video files, but after conversion, there were lags in playing the videos using frame-by-frame buttons. However, all .mp4 files showed up in the media window (no blue box problem).
I have tried different options in the preferences → edit preferences → Platform OS, and tried Java Direct Show or Java FX Media, but they didn’t work.
I uninstalled and re-installed the VLC player and then changed the preferences to VLC player library, and it started working in Elan v.6.2 and v.6.4. (on Windows 11).
I thought it might be useful for some users to fix similar problems. At least it seems to work for me now, hope it stays 
Best wishes,
Alicja
Yes, it was not the intention to suggest that it is always a matter of video encoding. The situation you describe, the first video not showing up while the others show up fine, has been reported before and is an indication that something is wrong in the connection of ELAN and that media player framework. We simply don’t know yet what it is and how to repair it. Just like the situation of a video not showing up on one PC but displaying normally on another, comparable PC: we don’t know the cause of this problem.
Best,
Han