Call for tester for 1.4.0 features and fixes (2 Viewers)

[Quantor]

Hi There,

as I have had issues with my live-tv and movie-files playback (stuttering and artefacts) in 1.3 Final I gave your new build a try. My TV- and Playback-Problems are nearly gone with this build (I bet it were the CPU-Optimizations you've done). Before I tried with nearly every avaiable codec and renderer combination and was not able to fix the problem. Your actual build helped me a lot regarding this. Problems startet with 1.3 beta and 1.3 final. Before (1.23 and 1.3 alpha) I had perfect picture and no stuttering or artefacts.

But if I run your testbuild I encounter the following problems. Don't know which of them are known or reproduceable:

1. Some of my plugins are no longer working "correctly". For sure I can say that HTPC-Info is no longer working. Also World-Weather-Plugin is no longer updating weather-data automaticly. I have to update the data manually by clicking actualise. I also suspecting EPG (through Clickfinder) not being handled correctly (subjective feeling).

If I change back to the original 1.3Final Files all is working correctly.

2. If I press ALT+Tab for switching to a window in the background or if I press ALT-Enter for switching MP into Windowed Mode MePo is "crashing"... Mediaportal.exe is then still running as an active process, but no longer listed in the Application-Tab of the Taskmanager. Together with this the MePo-Application Volume control is set to zero and no longer associated with the master-volume. I have then to workaround to associate it back with Master-Volume before I can restart MePo to have sound....

Same here. If I change back to 1.3 Final Files Task and Window Switching is back to normal.

Rgrds,

Quantor

PS: Any chance that overall CPU-Consumption of MePo can be optimized ? MePo is consuming over 50% of my CPU (AMD E-350) only while being in the main menu without doing anything.

 

[edterbak]

HI,

I rebuild my setup. Back to HDMI for this testbuild

ATTENTION: Im on win8 nowadays. Changed MoBo/CPU/MEM (nice upgrade) to intel i3 base.

First thing I found.
- Browse the web is NOT compatible with this build. See logs.

Ill test and post later on with other results.

[update] @Scythe42
Overall feeling is that its solid.
- Confirmed there are some issues with plugins (browse the web and will check on WorldWeather which I use as well)
- Confirmed the timebar issue.
- On W8, Im indeed not going directly to MP on auto start.
- Confirmed, Alt+TAB minimzes MP to tray icon. Its there. Restore and its OK again.
- CPU usage: regular between 6-7%. Spikes there for unknown reason. Could be anything. See screendump

 

[Scythe42]

1. Some of my plugins are no longer working "correctly". For sure I can say that HTPC-Info is no longer working. Also World-Weather-Plugin is no longer updating weather-data automaticly. I have to update the data manually by clicking actualise. I also suspecting EPG (through Clickfinder) not being handled correctly (subjective feeling).

Process Plugins might be incompatible as there were some changes.

HTPC-Info is probably responsible for your stuttering as it hooks in as a process plugin, meaning it is inside the main render loop. That's very evil for a plugin to be there just to have it running all the time in the background. Coder could provide a service backend for it instead using such a dirty hack.

World-Weather I do not know. Anyone here has tested it? I thought it pulls data when the window is active. Or is it another "evil" process-plugin hack? Anyone knows?

If I press ALT+Tab for switching to a window in the background or if I press ALT-Enter for switching MP into Windowed Mode MePo is "crashing"... Mediaportal.exe is then still running as an active process, but no longer listed in the Application-Tab of the Taskmanager. Together with this the MePo-Application Volume control is set to zero and no longer associated with the master-volume. I have then to workaround to associate it back with Master-Volume before I can restart MePo to have sound...

It is in the system tray when focus is lost in the current build. You are probably not seeing the icon. Click on the "white arrow" pointing up in the system tray and you will probably see a MP icon. This behavior will be configurable in the next build (default is NOT to hide on focus loss).

Do you use: "always on top" for MP? That might cause the ALT-Enter issue. Can you please check? If that's the case I know what to fix for ALT-Enter, which should not result in MP losing focus.

PS: Any chance that overall CPU-Consumption of MePo can be optimized ? MePo is consuming over 50% of my CPU (AMD E-350) only while being in the main menu without doing anything.

Can you disable 3rd party plugins one by one and see when this stops? Start with HTPC Info or any other process plugins that probably never free up CPU resources and can use up to one CPU core.

 

[edterbak]

Scythe,

Did a nice test. I liked the result so I thought I just share it with you.

Start MP > Music > start a nice song (in this case P!ink - try) :
- Turn TV OFF (receiver still on) >>>> MUSIC KEEPS PLAYING
- Turn receiver OFF/ON >>>> Music comes back, even with TV off.

Awesome! Good job here.

Logs attached if your interested.

 

[Scythe42]

Browse the web is NOT compatible with this build. See logs.

Which I honestly don't care much abou it. It does not survive the threaded plugin loading. This probably should be sorted out on the Browse the Web side. It does stuff during loading which it should not do, probably relying on being loaded in the main thread. Should not be such a big issue. I recommend pointing the BtW maintainer to this thread so he can already make the adjustments.

Note: only window plugins get loaded in threads. Process plugins do not as the majority does not work anymore. Having them is a can of worms anyway as being a process plugin is often misused.

I can't keep compatibility with all plugins, especially not if they are doing some "dirty" stuff. But good if we have a list...

On W8, Im indeed not going directly to MP on auto start.

Yep, the jump to desktop on start is not yet included. No need to manual add it to the Task Scheduler. Will be in the next build.

CPU usage: regular between 6-7%. Spikes there for unknown reason. Could be anything. See screendump

I assume some stuff in the background like scanning shares or whatever. I assume you see the same on 1.3.0 every now and then. Only if CPU usage is constantly very high we have a regression.

 

[edterbak]

CPU usage: regular between 6-7%. Spikes there for unknown reason. Could be anything. See screendump

I assume some stuff in the background like scanning shares or whatever. I assume you see the same on 1.3.0 every now and then. Only if CPU usage is constantly very high we have a regression.

CPU usage is fine for me. I thought id mention it regarding Quantor's post about 50% usage.
Will point attantion from browse the web dev to this thread/post. Thanks.

 

[Scythe42]

Start MP > Music > start a nice song (in this case P!ink - try) :
- Turn TV OFF (receiver still on) >>>> MUSIC KEEPS PLAYING
- Turn receiver OFF/ON >>>> Music comes back, even with TV off.

This is the "infamous" HDMI audio device removal thingy. I cannot guarantee that it always works. Depending on the order you turn on/off your equipment and the time in between (and of course the equipment itself) MP will either crash (because of the DirectShow Graph) or you loose audio.

As said it is mostly the equipment and less drivers. The newer the equipment, the less issues as manufactures have added a lot of workarounds over the years to their receivers (Pioneer seems very good at it). Also it makes a difference if you use bitstreaming or not. If not bitstreamed (e.g for MP3s) you should see fewer issues.

Yeah, complicated.

Anyway, to prevent issues an option "Stop Playback on Removal of Audio Renderer" will be added that HDMI audio users can activate if needed, meaning you use HDMI audio and turn off your receiver then MP stops playback.

That should work for now util error handling was added to the Direct Show player. Doing it from the main MediaPortal thread is a bit too complicated and @tourettes stopped me from this overkill, which is a good thing.

 

[Scythe42]

Checked the OSD percentage thingy. It's a culture info problem.

Stock 1.3.0 code just uses ToString(), not specifying any culture - never a good thing. But MP wants the string separated with "," and not with ".", even though other parts of the code work with "." as a decimal separator when working setting percentage. Because of this I used invariant culture and this does not work.

I setup a proper number format and now it is ok and safe regardless how your Windows is configured.

double percent = 100 * g_Player.CurrentPosition / g_Player.Duration;
var nfi = new NumberFormatInfo { NumberDecimalSeparator = "," };
GUIPropertyManager.SetProperty("#percentage", percent.ToString(nfi));

 

[elliottmc]

Using MePo 1.3. final I can switch my TV channels with number keys on my remote.

After implementing build 013 it 's not possible for me to change the TV channel with number keys
MePO will show me the new channel name but it will not switch to it.

You need logs ?

Bug confirmed.

Without this in my build, no problems.

With this, turn on TV, hit '2', OSD comes up, wait and nothing happens. Eventually I hit '2' again and changes to channel 22.

Definitely regression. I have a feeling something like this happened before, and we fixed it. Perhaps the fix never made it into the build and is now being overwritten on merging to master (which is how I am building).

Any thoughts @Scythe42 ?

Edit: I am using a MCE remote. Lots of errors in logs (attached) but this doesn't happen without your branch merged, so even though you don't seem to have touched the TV plugin, it looks as though you have changed something that it uses.

Strange that it works fine for some people.

 

[elliottmc]

As a follow-up for the above issue, I can also reproduce the problem using the number keys on my keyboard, so it has nothing to do with the remote.

After I press the first number key, the OSD changes to the channel expected based on the first number, and starts to flash.