MP freezes sometimes WMP plays like a dream (1 Viewer)

[OzBoz]

TV-Server Version: 0.2.3.0
MediaPortal Version: 0.2.3.0
MediaPortal Skin: Monochrome
Windows Version: Windows XP SP2
CPU Type: Intel Core2Duo T5600 @ 1.83Ghz
HDD: Hitatchi 80GB
Memory: 1GB 667 DDR2
Motherboard: unknown
Motherboard Chipset: Intel Mobile 945G
Motherboard Bios: unknown
Video Card: Intel 950 OnBoard
Video Card Driver: Latest from Intel
Sound Card: Sigmatel High Def Audio
Sound Card AC3: -/-/x
Sound Card Driver: 5.10.5185
1. TV Card: None
1. TV Card Type: --
1. TV Card Driver: --
MPEG2 Video Codec: ffdshow rev1716
MPEG2 Audio Codec: Dscaler
Satelite/CableTV Provider: --
HTPC Case: --
Cooling: Just air
Power Supply: unkown
Remote: Apple Remote
TV: Samsung 1366x768
TV - HTPC Connection: DVI to VGA

I bought a MacMini to be used in combination with MediaPortal to serve my movies to my living. Works really like a charm but there is one strange problem.

I play movies from an USB disk on my server over an 1Gbit network. If I play for example Reservoir Dogs (which is an 720WMV (x264) from about 7.5GB (pretty high bitrate) with Windows Media Player 11 it plays really well. No stuttering, nothing at all. But when I play that same file using MediaPortal it can be 10 minutes playing fluent but sometimes it just freezes (audio and video) for about half a sec and plays then further.

I attached my log files created using the debug mode. And exit mediaplayer after some freezes again. I know there are more threads about freezing. I tried a lot and was first thinking it was the network, or USB drive. Until I used WMP11 to play.. that ruled a lot out.

WMP11 uses about 50% CPU max playing it fullscreen (which surprised me though). I use CoreAVC 1.6.0.0 as codec. I can't imagine MediaPortal is for example memory wise so big it needs more mem (WMP uses about 100MB while playing).

But since I don't see strange things in the log files I wonder if someone overhere has a smart tip for me. If WMP11 can do it of all programs... well

 

[OzBoz]

Little bump, i looked at the files that do freeze for half a sec sometimes. These WMV files seems not to be x264 but use the following codecs:

Video: Windows Media Video 9 Advanced Profile
Audio: Windows Media Audio 10 Pro 768kbps 5.1 Channel 24 bit 2-pass

Still my question remains, how can it be they play great in WMP11 but not in MP. I tried to change some settings in the codec settings of FFDShow but they are really overwhelming.

Anyone suggestion what I can try?

edit:
files bitrate is about 10.5Mbit/s, strange thing is that if I tell ffdshow to play those files it doesn't. At least it shows the OSD CPU on other files but not while playing the WMV's. I start to think the internal player has a bug or something. Maybe a buffer problem or something. Then again, not i'm not smart enough to look deeper into it

 

[infinite.loop]

as far as i know, there was a bug which caused an issue as soon as you tried to play a wmv with multiple audiotracks.
this should be fixed in current svn builds.

grab latest here -> https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/nightly_builds_v0_2_3_0_final-f229.html

for testing i would also use MPV and MPA as vide/audio codecs (not sure if these would be used in that case....)

hope it helps

 

[OzBoz]

as far as i know, there was a bug which caused an issue as soon as you tried to play a wmv with multiple audiotracks.
this should be fixed in current svn builds.

grab latest here -> https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/nightly_builds_v0_2_3_0_final-f229.html

for testing i would also use MPV and MPA as vide/audio codecs (not sure if these would be used in that case....)

hope it helps

Hey Chris,

Thank you for your reaction. I downloaded the latest build but it didn't improve something. I don't know if someone in the test team has files like I play lying around but maybe I can create a smaller one cut from one and put it on my server as a test file. As far as I know they have only one audiotrack.

I'm now running Reservoir Dogs not full size, with taskmanager next to it. MediaPortal uses about 40% CPU and about 180MB of ram. Plenty of overhead I would say.

Is there some kind of way to see how the internal player handles such files? Don't know if something like Graphedit can do some realtime analysis but if there's something I can test I'm more then willing to try. Switching back to WMP11 for the WMV's makes me feel like a loser

 

[infinite.loop]

I don't know if someone in the test team has files like I play lying around but maybe I can create a smaller one cut from one and put it on my server as a test file.

as far as i know, noone of the team has such a file on hands, or at least did not encouter this problem.
would be great if you could provide a sample

Is there some kind of way to see how the internal player handles such files?

when you look at your log.zip in the first post (which you correctly generated with "MediaPortal Debug" thanks for that ) then you will find a jpg screenshot of the created directshow graph in it.

 

[ximmortal]

I'm not sure if I have the same issue, but I just rebuilt my HTPC system (new hardware) and now I can't play WMVHD files. I get what seems to be the first frame and then it freezes, but the audio continues. I have no problem playing the same file with (WMP) Windows Media Player 10 or 11. I mention version 10, as I thought maybe the issue was with WMP version 11 and reverted back to 10.

I can't even play the demo files from the MS site: http://download.microsoft.com/downl...438-d0f60da6fb54/Coral_Reef_Adventure_720.exe

I'll post logs later when I am in front of my HTPC, though I didn't see anything that looked like an error when I was researching the problem earlier.

Thanks!

 

[OzBoz]

To add a bit, it's not that worse overhere, just not fluent without WMP11.

And @infinityloop, I'll was already trying to make a sample file (but they get pretty big ) and before putting one online I have to test to see if I experience the same. I was also playing around with the 'hardware acceleration' setting in the Windows default panel to see if that made any difference. I'll keep you posted if I created a sample file.

 

[patricon]

I'm having the same problem but when using any AVI file (Divx, Xvid encoded) it plays smoothly but every some minutes (around 10 minutes) the movie freezes a bit and then continues. Using WMP it does not happen. I've tested with alot of movies and always the same issue... I'm using latest SVN available...

regards,

 

[OzBoz]

@infinityloop

Is there a FTP-servere where I can upload a big file? Still have to test a bit but I saw even if i took a 5 minutes part of the movie it will take up lots of MB's. I thought I same some server name somewhere.

 

[infinite.loop]

I'm having the same problem but when using any AVI file (Divx, Xvid encoded) it plays smoothly but every some minutes (around 10 minutes) the movie freezes a bit and then continues. Using WMP it does not happen. I've tested with alot of movies and always the same issue... I'm using latest SVN available...

i encode every recording here with divx and have no trouble playing those in MediaPortal.
i use the native divx and xvid codecs (latest builds/versions) and you?