X3 Games have this video/cutscene colour glitch - Fixed in OS update.

[raivopleika1]

https://youtu.be/MTP_6BHcFIc

There is this video glitch, that after windows update, the color change, if you see this egosoft maybe it can be fixed with an update.

[Alan Phipps]

Same as this I think.

I'm not sure that Egosoft is responsible for fixing anything in these now elderly and unsupported legacy games when the issue appears more likely to be the interaction of a Windows update with current graphics drivers and settings.

[KalakaWhitewing]

Something is messing with in-game movies's colors. I wasn't installing any codecs or updating Windows so it appeared out of nowhere. This problem appears in X3: Reunion and X-Tension. I can play any other movie on my PC just fine. So it must be a problem with codec that both of these games are using. I just don't know how to fix it.
Here's an example of this problem on title screen:
https://1drv.ms/i/c/890D61FE296F2971/EU ... A?e=KdNmsT

OS: Windows 11 Home 24H2
CPU: Ryzen 5 3600
GPU: RTX 2060 12 GB
RAM: 16 GB

[KalakaWhitewing]

https://youtu.be/MTP_6BHcFIc

There is this video glitch, that after windows update, the color change, if you see this egosoft maybe it can be fixed with an update.

MAYBE some Windows update broke something but latest updates were installed on my PC before I was last playing X3: Reunion. I'm trying to uninstall latest ones right now, I'll see if it changes anything.

[KalakaWhitewing]

Same as this I think.

I'm not sure that Egosoft is responsible for fixing anything in these now elderly and unsupported legacy games when the issue appears more likely to be the interaction of a Windows update with current graphics drivers and settings.

It is indeed a Windows Update that caused this problem. Though I don't know HOW it was causing any trouble only since yesterday as it was installed on previous week and back then I was playing X3: Reunion just fine. But whatever.

[scdack]

Can confirm, I have the same colour glitch, and removing the Windows 11 update resolved it.

However, I did not want to remove the update permanently only for playing an older game, and so I went with the suggestion to reencode the videos. To keep the loss in quality as low as possible, and because I am a bit pedantic, did I use the command line version of ffmpeg and picked the options carefully. Here is a shell script for anyone who knows a bit about ffmpeg and wants to try it:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash

# Where to find the X3 Reunion videos:
mov="$HOME/mov"

# The external libxvid encoder is slightly better than FFmpeg's own encoder:
#encoder="-c:v mpeg4 -vtag xvid"
encoder="-c:v libxvid -me_quality 6 -ssim_acc 0"

# Apply a post-processing filter after the decoding.
# This is very slow, but it improves the quality.
filter="" # No filter.
#filter="-vf spp=quality=3:qp=2:mode=soft" # Slow.
#filter="-vf spp=quality=6:qp=1:mode=soft" # Very slow.

# Encoding quality: 1, 2, 3, ... 1 is best, 2 is good.
q=2 # Good, normal-sized files.
#q=1 # Best, large-sized files.

# Number of parallel ffmpeg instances:
jobs=32

# Backup videos as .orig files, and ignore "00144.dat" as it is audio-only:
find "$mov" -type f -name "*.dat" | sed 's#\.dat$##' | grep -v '00144$' |\
    xargs -P1 -I@ mv --update=none @.dat @.orig

# Re-encode only the video data, but leave timestamps and audio untouched:
find "$mov" -type f -name "*.orig" | sed 's#\.orig$##' |\
    xargs -P$jobs -I@ ffmpeg -v quiet -i @.orig \
	  -bitexact -vsync passthrough -c:a copy $filter \
	  -q:v $q $encoder -f avi -y @.dat

The script should explain itself. Check whether your version of ffmpeg supports the native xvid library "libxvid", because the built-in xvid encoder by ffmpeg produces slightly lower quality. Applying a post-processing filter after the decoding helps with some of the artefacts by older video codecs like Xvid/DivX. New ones, like the H.264/HEVC/AV1 codecs, apply their own filters these days. Using a quantization scale of 2 produces roughly the same size of files. Only q=1 is better, but it produces large files. So pick your poison - slow and huge, or, quick and moderate. However, the timestamps and the audio data are being copied untouched, because there is no need to reencode them. These work just fine and should not be reencoded. Note, the resulting video files must be MPEG4 Part 2 (Divx/Xvid) video streams, contained in an AVI format. I have tried using different ones, but the game will not play them, sadly.

A completely different solution is, of course, to play the game under Linux instead. I only used Linux here to convert the videos, because I still like to use Windows for games and work.

[KarlHemmings]

29-October-2025
I had a new Windows 11 update today and the in game "red" colour has been fixed
Unfortunately the Microsoft site is currently under DNS attack so I can not copy the official text.
The update for me was "Preview Update KB 5067036 (26200.7019)

Now back to Freedoms Reach and that stupid time trial in Shady Business.

[raivopleika1]

This is now fixed from Microsoft side, i updated windows today, and its fixed