Winamp Visualisations. Finally :-) (3 Viewers)

[dragonfly]

I read up on what instructions I could find and got Milkdrop working fine the first time I started MP and ran it. It worked well in both fullscreen and windowed mode, and I could switch between them without issues. Then I rebooted my HTPC, and now whenever I play a song, Mediaportal minimizes and a MilkDrop application pops up in the taskbar but all I get from it is a window (in about the size and location of the Milkdrop config window, by the way) full of what looks like random data. I'm thinking maybe this has something in common with the similar problems reported by others earlier in this thread. I changed nothing between having a working Milkdrop and now, all I did was reboot.

Digging deeper into it, I noticed that now when I run MP in windowed mode, the viz pops up in the preview thumbnail as it should, and seems to work fine. Then i press the red button on my remote to switch to full-view and a notice pops up saying: "OUT OF VIDEO MEMORY | Window resize failed. | Often this means the application ran out of video memory. Perhaps you tried to make the window too large."

I tried removing the Milkdrop ini-file and just running config and leaving it at all defaults, but now when I try to play a song in fullscreen, Mediaportal just minimizes and I can just alt-tab back. The music doesn't even start playing. In windowed mode, however, it now seems to work fine. But when I try to alt-enter to fullscreen, I once again get served the out-of-video-memory popup and music playback stops. MP gets minimized to the tray and I have to double-click it with the mouse to go into fullscreen mode.

I reverted to the original .ini-file and the result was once again what I first experienced. I'm posting a screenshot for reference.

My HTPC is an Athlon 64 3500+ on an Abit AV8 mobo with 1GB RAM and a GeForce 7600 GS running XP Pro SP2 and RC3 of MP.

Cheers!

EDIT: Added PC RAM size.

 

[dragonfly]

Update: I can't use ANY of my visualizations anymore. G-Force keeps blinking both in preview and fullscreen modes and I can't choose Alchemy in the MP Configuration because then it crashes. I'll try to install a few more viz plugins and see what happens.

 

[RaDiKal]

Dragonfly:
Try changing your desktop resolution (to a much lower one) as well as the resolution you use for MP and Milkdrop. This should eliminate the OUT OF VIDEO MEMORY error.

 

[dragonfly]

Actually, lowering to 800x600 and then resizing back to 1360x768 again fixed the crash issue I had with Alchemy.
After reinstalling Mediaportal and Milkdrop it worked fine again, until i restarted Mediaportal and then the same issues reappeared again. Except this time Alchemy seems to work.
With a desktop resolution of 800x600, I still get the out-of-memory error. Same deal.

EDIT: G-Force works now though. The blinking is gone. Automagic!

Another update:

Tried with different skins and tweaking the settings both in MP and Milkdrop for a bit but the issues remain the same. In windowed mode, the thumbnail viz works fine but going full-size (pressing red button on remote) causes an "out of video memory" crash. In fullscreen mode, just attempting to play a file will minimize Mediaportal and stop all playback, and produces the same results as in the above screenshot. I'm out of ideas, but at least Alchemy seems to be working now, so I have *some* viz at least, even though it's crappy-looking.

 

[hwahrmann]

Can't do too much about that.
Only thing i'm doing is starting external application, like G-Force, winamp vis dlls and MP vis dlls.
if the crash because of too less video memory, there's nothing i could do.

 

[dragonfly]

hwahrmann:
I doubt the fullscreen and windowed crashes are the same issue. Look at my above screenshot; that's what happens when I click a file in fullscreen mode. I don't get an out-of-memory error then.
I'm going to have a look in the logs and see if I can derive anything from that.

Cheers!

PS; I'm extremely grateful for the work you're doing. Thank you!

 

[dragonfly]

I can't figure out what's happening with Milkdrop, so I downloaded TwistedPixel and ran that instead. That seems to work fine.

However, now my new problem is that every time the song changes while the viz is running, I get the viz displayed in the lower right thumbnail and the rest of the screen is black. I have to press the "home" button on the remote and then the red button to get the full-view viz back.
I'm adding a screenshot for reference.

This happens with G-Force as well. Alchemy has started crashing again, so I can't test with that.

Funny how every time you fix a problem, something new pops up that wasn't there before.

 

[hwahrmann]

Which version are you running?
I've fixed that after RC3 has been released.

 

[dragonfly]

Ah, figures. I stated in my first post that I'm using RC3. Sorry, I should've been more clear about that.

I'm currently downloading the latest snapshot to my work-desktop to do some testing. I'll report back when I've tried Milkdrop on it.

EDIT: I've now tried running Milkdrop on my other computer. It's an Athlon X2 5000+ with 4 gigs RAM, a GeForce 8800GTX with 768 megs of VRAM on an MSI K9 Platinum mobo. It's running XP SP2 with the latest SVN snapshot. When in fullscreen mode and running Milkdrop as viz, the result is the same as on my HTPC: Mediaportal minimizes and the result is what can be seen in my first screenshot, here reposted for reference.
I've now replicated this issue on two separate PC's. Going to try it on my laptop as well in a bit and see if the same thing happens there.

EDIT2: Added screens from both PCs for comparison.

EDIT3: I'm adding my MediaPortal.log for reference.

 

[dragonfly]

Update: Configuration crashes on my laptop when I enter the Visualization part, so I can't test viz functionality on that one. I have two other PC's standing around doing nothing. I'll hook up at least one of them tomorrow and install a fresh system and attempt it on that. I'll make sure to outline my steps as thoroughly as possible.

By the way, it seems when I run MP in windowed mode and play a song, the preview window is black and the MP window starts blinking like it's losing focus and taking it back again rapidly over and over. When I drag the window a bit, it stops losing focus and the viz shows up in the preview window, and then I can press 'x' and enjoy it in full-view. However, I still can't run the viz in fullscreen. If I try to alt-enter to fullscreen mode while the viz is running, it crashes with an out-of-memory error (which is hilarious, considering the amount of memory this PC has and the fact that I actually *had* it running *once* on a PC with a lot less memory in it). If I start MP in fullscreen and start playing a song, MP minimizes the first time, and I need to click it in the tray to get back, then playback has stopped. If I attempt it again, it sometimes just minimizes again, and sometimes it crashes completely and terminates.

My 3 different desktop PC's all do this, and I asked a friend of mine to try it for me the other day, and his PC does it too.

I'll try it on a few more boxes tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure it's not me doing anything wrong. I'm using the correct files (as far as I know, the ones posted in this thread at least), I've tried several versions of MP; RC3 as well as the latest public SVN versions. I'm considering going back to an older revision to see if I can find one which works, just for testing.

Cheers!

EDIT: I tested some more with TwistedPixel and it doesn't work either. It works in windowed mode, but not in fullscreen. It crashes with "D3D CreateDevice Failed. TwistedPixel cannot run and will now exit." I have no idea if this is relevant to the Milkdrop issue, but I thought I should mention it anyway.