Black screen at intro movie and cut scenes.

I cannot view the intro movie or other in-game movies. Only scripted ones.
The intro-movie: A black screen with a loading symbol in the bottom right corner will display indefinitely until I decide to quit the game.
In-game: A black screen - If I hit escape I am given the option to Skip the scene.

What I have tried:
-Run as admin
-Uninstall, reinstall
-Updated GFX drivers (ATI)
-Tried various gfx options, full screen, windowed, various low/high settings, resolutions etc.
-Tried installing K-Lite codec pack. No difference.

My specs:
CPU - AMD Phenom II X4 965
RAM - 8 GB DDR3
GFX - ATI AMD Radeon HD 7970
OS - Windows 8.1 Pro 64bit

Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Grinebiter

I cannot view the intro movie or other in-game movies. Only scripted ones.
The intro-movie: A black screen with a loading symbol in the bottom right corner will display indefinitely until I decide to quit the game.
In-game: A black screen - If I hit escape I am given the option to Skip the scene.

What I have tried:
-Run as admin
-Uninstall, reinstall
-Updated GFX drivers (ATI)
-Tried various gfx options, full screen, windowed, various low/high settings, resolutions etc.

My specs:
CPU - AMD Phenom II X4 965
RAM - 8 GB DDR3
GFX - ATI AMD Radeon HD 7970
OS - Windows 8.1 Pro 64bit

Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks.

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Do you watch anime? Did you install any of the horribly misguided codec packs? These will override system codecs, and the reason you see a black screen is because codecs like FFDSHOW will prompt you the first time if you want to use it for that application. So the way around this is to run the game windowed, and confirm or not when the opening movie fires off. That should fix it. Otherwise you'll need to remove any of those codecs (or you can install FFDSHOW and just tell it to override everything)

I should have mentioned: This is a fresh install of Windows 8.1 on a formatted drive. So no extra codecs (other than the ones that come with 8.1, if any) have been installed.

Probably a dumb question but knowing Microsoft you may never know :p
Did you run windows media player at least once?
The game cinematics are wmv encoded so maybe the first run setup of windows media player (this is what it does on W7) may configure the libraries somehow.

OK, if that is the case, I must wait. I have the N-version of Win 8.1. Which means Media Player did not come bundled with the OS. If I had Windows 8.0 I could've downloaded this one http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/downl....aspx?id=30685 but this pack does not work with 8.1 .. so..

Else, I need to find a pack with only windows media player codecs..?

Update: I tried installing the K-Lite codec pack K-Lite_Codec_Pack_1005_Basic.exe - But it made no difference.
I tried installing the CCC codec pack Combined-Community-Codec-Pack-2013-08-01.exe - But it made no difference.

Update: I submitted a case to official support, roughly explaining what troubleshooting steps I have done. And their reply was a list with actions I just told them that I had already tried.
I don't understand..? Are they mimicking me? Like a monkey?

There was a MS update dated aug 13th and rereleased on the 27th and it did list FFXIV as one of the fixed issues. This was for Media player 11 and 12. Also it's for Windows Media Format Runtime 9 and 9.5. Can read about it here http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;2803821 . So i'd try using windows update and see it that resolves the issue. I'm fairly sure S/E posted something about a fix for this as well. But i don't recall what the fix was nor can i find the post atm. Oh i'll also add that the MS fix actually caused issues for other programs or games by having the screen chopped in half. So update at your own risk. lol

This will not work as I have Windows 8.1 without Media Player (Windows 8.1 N-version). And there is still no way of installing it on 8.1 N - Maybe must wait till official release of Windows 8.1 17th october. But I must say, it is very strange that FFXIV is dependent on Windows Media Player in order to show the movies. VERY STRANGE

Strange strange strange strange strange strange strange strange

More like the codecs it comes with

So a solution might be to somehow install the WMV-codecs without installing WMP.
But I can't find a standalone installer..

Windows 8.1 official release is today, so maybe it will be possible to download this Windows Media Player pack for 8.1N versions, which should give me the correct codecs in order to view the in-game movies.
Please do not close thread yet.

You will have to wait till the Media Feature Pack is available for 8.1

confirmed working after installing the Media feature pack for Windows 8.1 N which was made available just recently.
As a general recommendation for all developers: You should NOT make your game dependent on Windows Media Player in order to work properly..