Completed HTPC Build - Antec Fusion 430 (Black) (2 Viewers)

[LttlScamp]

Well, I gotta say I'm almost at my wits end here. Maybe you guys can give me some ideas on where to go next with trying to solve these problems.

Up to a few weeks ago I was running Vista SP1 with RC2. For the most part MP was working great. Except for a few flakey things (like the TV-Series database needing to be rescanned every time the machine came out of S3 hybrid sleep) I was pretty much satisfied.

However, I felt the unwise need to get RC3 installed. I decided to tackle it by rebuilding the system from scratch.

It's now running Vista SP1 again with RC3. But I have had all sorts of weird problems ever since:

Poblem 1: TV show banners not refreshing after watching a TV show in the TV-Series plugin
Workaround: Exit back to main menu and go back into the plugin to get them to refresh

Problem 2: Display blanking after a TV show ends or hitting the stop button
Workaround: Blindly navigating to a new TV show, starting and then stopping brings back the display sometimes....other times I have to remotely kill the mediaportal.exe process

Problem 3: Random freezes coming out of S3 sleep and reloading MP
Possible Workaround: turn off restart of MP after waking - haven't tested yet

Having a hard time isolating this to a problem with MP as a whole or just the TV series plugin because I can't get any of the default Blue skins to work with the TVSeries plugin...just gives an invalid or missing file error.

I really thought I'd have LESS problems after a rebuild rather than more.

Currently the only things I have running on startup are CCC and Daemon Tools. Everything else like iMon have been removed from the startup.

I'd really like to have a copy of RC2 so I can see if this is just and RC3 problem or something bigger.

 

[armandp]

I really think #1 + #2 are due to something in TV-Series in combination with RC3 and you better seek on the TV-Series forum for an answer. I do ahve some problems with TV-Series that are all database related but are in fact bugs in TV-Series.

#3: i don't have resume problems as long as i use the mediaportal menu to go to S3. I have not set the restart mediaportal on resume option as it works like a charm.. system wakes in about 2/3 seconds and mediaportal works almost instantly (it sometimes needs to redraw the menu)

I have noticed that in RC3 if you click X and close the application mediaportal.exe keeps running, i expect it to show a tray icon (as i have set this as option) but it doesn't but the process is there.

Before you try the copy of RC2 i can recommend trying the latest RC3 SVN build because there were several fixes and see if that helps your installation before reverting to RC2. Also seek through the mediaportal error logs for any .net exception they might help isolate the real problems.

 

[LttlScamp]

Yeah, I installed the latest SVN and it completely breaks the TVSeries plugin on my system. I get a mostly blank screen with no banners at all.

Resume seems to be less flakey now that I have re-enabled Cool'n'Quiet in the BIOS. Not really sure of the connection there but we'll see if the stability is maintained.

Correction: It turns out for some reason RC3 caused the TVSeries dabatabase to be completely reinitalized. Well see if I have any DB problems like you.

 

[flintstone99]

Trust keyboard

Hi armandp,

I remember you used a trust keyboard until it broke down....
However I like the idea of a keyboard with trackball and lots of media keys.

Have you had any other issue apart from the physical issue?
What about integration into mediaportal and konfguration of the media keys?

regards
Dietmar

 

[armandp]

I currently still use the MediaTech Rimini which in fact is an exact copy of the Trust keyboard - with a nicer color combination. I have absolutely no issues with it and works as advertised. "Mousing" is very easy and it feels if you are holding a very big console controller The left/right mouse buttons are naturally positioned at your left/right index finger and the trackball is moved with your thumb.

You can activate the Generic Keyboard controller in mediaportal if you want the special media keys to be active or you can install the keyboard software to remap those keys to mediaportal shortcuts so everything is possible.

 

[LttlScamp]

Jesus.

Ok, I seem to have gotten my suspend resume issues settled down.

But something new. I notice that with RC3 and the latest SVN (never noticed this with others) it defaults to EVR. Unfortunately I get really bad tearing during video playback. And if I switch back to VRM9 nothing plays back and I have menu redraw issues in MP.

Anyone else experience that?

Ok, I think the tearing, etc is being caused by the fact that I don't have Aero running. Never really noticed till now. But of course Windows Aero doesn't show up in my choices for the Windows colour schemes.

My performance index gives me a 3.8. And I'm running the latest CCC. Vista Business SP1.

Been fighting with this one for over an hour now but no dice. Anyone have any other suggestions?

Ok, got Aero back up. It looks like it was due to having VNC installed. Totally broke it. Uninstalled VNC and reinstalled CCC and Areo came back from the dead.

Enabling EVR seems to have fixed the tearing.

However, using EVR makes watching "tough" 1080P encodes like Planet Earth impossible. Frame drops galore. No DXVA anymore. That was always an issue with using EVR and why I always used VRM9.

However, using VRM9 with Vista now seems to be broke. No video playback of anything. At least for me.

 

[armandp]

EVR fixes the tearing for sure.. and Aero needs to be enabled for that.. it's correct that come software can disable aero. I don't understand why EVR makes the Planet Earth 1080p "tough" to watch. The only thing i can think of is that your "backup" of Planet Earth isn't properly encoded for DXVA acceleration ( i have such an "early" version that is that way and can only be software decoded).

 

[LttlScamp]

I know this copy definitely takes advantage of DXVA. In doing some testing last night I see that no my DXVA is broken for everything. So I'll need to do some playing to get that fixed before I can determine why EVR isn't giving me any acceleration.

Maybe someone can explain to me what I'm doing wrong.

I have completely uninstalled all codecs from my machine.

Aero is on. MP is set to use EVR.

I install FFDShow. I disable it for H264/AVC and VC-1 in the ffdshow config.

I install PowerDVD 8. I enable hardware acceleration in PDVD options.

Now, at this point if I load the mkv in question into GraphStudio it tells me it is going to use the PDVD H264/AVC Codec to decode the file. There is nothing between the PDVD coded and the Video Render.

I hit play in Graphstudio. Now, am I wrong in thinking the file should play back using hardware acceleration? It always has in the past. But it does play back only without any hardware acceleration.

Another strange thing is that if I load the MKV in question directly into the PowerDVD player it DOES play it with HW acceleration (I can tell from the CPU usage on the machine) however I get no actual video for some reason.

Ok, now let's test MP. I load MP Configuration and in the Movies - Movie Player section I set ffdshow for MPEG2 and the PDVD H264/AVC codec for H264. Under the Directshow Filter Control -> PowerDVD Decoder Settings I set it to use hardware acceleration both MPEG2 and H264.

I load MP but when I try to play back that same MKV the screen just blanks for a second then returns me back to the menu. Some of my other MKVs will play back and others won't. I just get a black screen. Those same MKVs that won't playback through MP will play through GraphStudio, however. And they say they are using the PDVD H264 decoder.

Now, I can tell what codec is being used if I render the MKV through Graphstudio. But for some reason when I play the file through MP and try and look at the graph through Graphstudio (Connect to Remote Graph) no graphs appear so I must be doing something wrong there but I don't know what.

All the above also applies to CoreAVC if I install it.

ALL of these things used to work fine before I installed the latest SVN that forces EVR as the default renderer. And also apparently breaks VRM9 under Vista.

Unfortunately the latest SVN also seems to fix a lot of other problems with TVSeries and some other things so I can't just roll back.

So, I know that was a lot. But is there anything blatantly wrong that I'm doing here?

Thanks in advance.

 

[armandp]

Oke i have several leads (from personal experience) for you that might help solve the problems:

1) for graphstudio's "Connect to Remote Graph" it's likely that you need to register "proppage.dll" there are several versions floating around and you need to do some digging into which version you need but that will solve the remote graph issue.
2) I've had the MKV problem you described in the past that was caused by directvobsub loading... check your log in MP to see what is happening when MP is trying to play it.

 

[LttlScamp]

I'll try the proppage.dll and see if that is the problem.

And I"ve uninstalled DirectVobSub/vsfilter to remove it from the equation so it's definitely not causing problems.