Topic: Bitstreaming - behavior during pause (WASAPI exclusive issue) (Read 3462 times)

htnut · « **on:** February 10, 2023, 03:00:29 am »

Seems to bitstream Atmos requires WASAPI exclusive mode. And this prohibits any other audio devices from sending audio to the amp.

Is there a workaround, so that if I pause a movie the audio path can be open for another program to send audio over the same HDMI to my amp? I read a help file about setting up a second zone, but that doesn’t seem to have an effect - if the movie is paused in the other zone the audio path is still blocked.

Thanks for any ideas.

JimH · « **Reply #1 on:** February 10, 2023, 07:22:58 am »

Did you try Stop, not Pause? MC will start where you stopped.

htnut · « **Reply #2 on:** February 10, 2023, 01:58:00 pm »

…even when playing back from BD menus? I’ll try that this afternoon.

htnut · « **Reply #3 on:** February 12, 2023, 03:52:50 pm »

Seems when playback started from BD menus (so that forced subtitles appear reliably the first time), I cannot get the movie to cleanly “resume” from where it “stopped”.

It would be really nice if there was a way to command MC to release the exclusive WASAPI stream during pause. Or, some workaround?

Thanks for any suggestions.

htnut · « **Reply #4 on:** February 16, 2023, 12:14:17 pm »

Is there anything other than "stopping" the BD playback that will cause MC to drop the WASAPI exclusive mode? Or maybe someone knows of a third party tool that will force a disconnect of the audio path temporarily?

Awesome Donkey · « **Reply #5 on:** February 16, 2023, 01:07:09 pm »

Quote from: htnut on February 12, 2023, 03:52:50 pm

It would be really nice if there was a way to command MC to release the exclusive WASAPI stream during pause. Or, some workaround?

That's just how it is unfortunately with using WASAPI exclusive. You can't use WASAPI exclusive and pause it, expecting it to let go of exclusive access so other apps can access and use it while playback is paused, because it doesn't and it can't. It actually kinda defeats the purpose of exclusive access. Regardless, you can reproduce this with other apps that can use WASAPI exclusive and you'll get the same result, and this isn't a Media Center issue at all. The only workaround is to stop playback, unfortunately.

htnut · « **Reply #6 on:** March 01, 2023, 03:13:55 am »

Should I be able to bitstream Atmos without having to use “exclusive” mode? I seem to get an error when loading a BD if exclusive is unchecked.

Awesome Donkey · « **Reply #7 on:** March 01, 2023, 03:22:08 am »

No, bitstreaming requires exclusive mode.

htnut · « **Reply #8 on:** March 01, 2023, 10:11:02 am »

If I use the WDM driver, should I be able to play Zoom Player audio while MC30 has an Atmos BD on pause?

Hendrik · « **Reply #9 on:** March 01, 2023, 10:11:50 am »

No, only one source can be playing with exclusive output (and "pause" is technically still playing). That includes MC itself doing two separate things.

Awesome Donkey · « **Reply #10 on:** March 01, 2023, 10:16:12 am »

Quote from: htnut on March 01, 2023, 10:11:02 am

If I use the WDM driver, should I be able to play Zoom Player audio while MC30 has an Atmos BD on pause?

No, that would defeat the purpose of exclusive mode. If you want to play anything else, you have to stop playback (and not pause playback) or not use exclusive mode, which means no bitstreaming. There's no other way to accomplish what you want to do, it's either use exclusive mode and stop playback or disable exclusive mode and lose bitstreaming.

htnut · « **Reply #11 on:** March 02, 2023, 04:37:25 pm »

Hendrik or Awesome Donkey:

I consulted a friend, an audio software engineer, hoping to find a solution using some virtual audio driver or such. Admittedly, my use-case is unusual and not "mainstream" (I'll explain the lengthy details if you wish).

My friend suggested I ask for a long-shot, he knows it is technically easy but would require a non-trivial addition of code to MC... The enhancement to MC (certainly a non-default option/checkbox): Close the WASAPI stream on pause. I know that then the audio stream will "reset" when I click "play" again resulting in a delay, but wow it would sure make my "home theater cinema experience" I've designed much more seamless.

Thanks for considering, or if you can direct me who to send the humble request to

Hendrik · « **Reply #12 on:** March 02, 2023, 04:39:02 pm »

We are not aiming to change the pause behavior at this time, sorry.

htnut · « **Reply #13 on:** March 02, 2023, 05:26:05 pm »

To be clear, my request is not a change of pause behavior but the addition of an OPTION to have pause/play close/reopen the stream.

Thanks for the reply.

JimH · « **Reply #14 on:** March 02, 2023, 09:57:20 pm »

Use Stop instead of Pause.

htnut · « **Reply #15 on:** March 03, 2023, 12:28:27 am »

JimH, yes that works but then we have to endure all of the FBI warnings and menus again when resuming (I choose to always launch with BD menus because this way we always can rely on forced subtitles to appear).

Awesome Donkey · « **Reply #16 on:** March 03, 2023, 03:46:30 am »

Quote from: htnut on March 03, 2023, 12:28:27 am

we have to endure all of the FBI warnings and menus again when resuming

Makes me wonder how we all got through the late 90s to the late 2000s using DVD and BD players.

htnut · « **Reply #17 on:** March 03, 2023, 10:53:12 am »

Awesome Donkey, I did just during those years! I was set up with TheaterTek and it’s DVD auto movie start point bookmarking. My first HTPC was built in 2002 driving a Sony 1272 CRT in a dedicated HT.

Launch the movie with the menu, configure the desired audio track, when the actual movie would start use CTRL-B, and then TT would set a bookmark at 0:00:00 of the playing title.

Worked with 100% reliability next time the movie starts it begins at that timestamp with the correct audio track. (This is important, as with DVD the “default” audio track would often not be the DD or DTS track).

It seems that functionality may be impossible with the complexity of BD menus/Java. Up until now, for BD/UHD my solution has been to play the “main feature playlist” only in MPC-BE. But of course the experience is poor when you realize halfway through a movie that there’s a foreign language scene and there should be forced subtitles. So I’m thrilled that JRiver has solved the BD menus resulting in (so far) 100% reliability with forced subs and also not running into screenpass issues.

This leads me to my reasons for asking for the open audio path on pause: I have collected thousands of trailers from Apple, add add batches of new ones regularly. I’ve also made some “movie theme music” by taking some surround sound music from closing credits of favorite movies and making them separate audio files. Then, before I start a movie for friends and family I “queue up” the movie (setting masking on my “constant area” projection screen, setting to start point of the movie, etc.) and then Zoom Player plays (with a black screen) the theme music randomly to create ambiance as people come in, get their snacks, etc. Then with one button on my remote I wrote a script so my HTPC dims the lights to 50%, stops the music, launches 3 trailers at random, after zoom finishes it gracefully closes - the script dims the lights off - and the main movie starts with no menus or FBI warnings.

Oh, and I’ll add that a while ago, in a thread here “MC30 requested enhancements” (can’t find that now) I mentioned the desire for MC30 to also auto-quit upon main movie completion (instead of returning to the menus which is the default behavior). Because, with MPC-BE when the movie would end (credits end, of course, a true movie enthusiast always stays for all of the credits!), the player would quit and my script would take over, bring up the lights and start the theme music again at a reduced volume.

JimH · « **Reply #18 on:** March 03, 2023, 02:45:30 pm »

Pause and stop are different and that won't change.

Stop does set a bookmark in MC. Play should start there again.

Double stop clears the bookmark or you can edit the tag.

htnut · « **Reply #19 on:** March 03, 2023, 04:38:40 pm »

JimH, maybe I’m doing something wrong. But when playing from menus I cannot find how to get MC to resume from the stop point without navigating the menus to resume.

I appreciate the attention and respect if you don’t wish to add functionality for my “edge case”.

JimH · « **Reply #20 on:** March 03, 2023, 05:15:14 pm »

Just pressing play should work.

htnut · « **Reply #21 on:** March 03, 2023, 06:50:29 pm »

Oh I might end up being embarrassed.

When I “stop” and then right away hit “play” it says “There is nothing to play”.

I’m launching it from the command line feeding it “index.bdmv”. I have my media on a number of removable drives, not a server always attached so I don’t build a “library”.

How should I launch it to set it to stop and resume right where I left off?

JimH · « **Reply #22 on:** March 03, 2023, 07:58:24 pm »

Try playing from within MC, not from the Command Line.

htnut · « **Reply #23 on:** March 03, 2023, 08:50:30 pm »

No joy.

I open MC30

Navigate to File — Open Media File

I select index.bdmv for the BD movie. The BD menus are shown, I select “Play” and the movie begins.

I use stop (ctrl-s) which returns me to the MC interface.

I click Play and it says “There is nothing to play”.

I also checked settings in Options — General: remove files from playing now is “No” and resume playback is “Automatic”.

htnut · « **Reply #24 on:** March 03, 2023, 11:22:11 pm »

A second test, I used file — library — import

Selected the parent folder containing BDMV and CERTIFICATE

MC shows the movie in the library.

Double click from the library starts the BD menus, I can select Play from the BD menu and the movie starts.

I stop the movie with ctrl-s

Then if I select play, the BD menu starts from scratch with FBI warnings, etc same as the first time.

It seems to me the bookmarking “feature” does not work when launching a BD from BD menus.

Is there another procedure I should be using to play within MC and have it resume on play?

Awesome Donkey · « **Reply #25 on:** March 04, 2023, 05:31:01 am »

Have you tried using a ripped BD using MakeMKV? Maybe it simply doesn't work with DVD/BD discs, disc image files and folder structures?

Hendrik · « **Reply #26 on:** March 04, 2023, 05:32:52 am »

Menu playback does not save bookmarks. The menu state is too complex to actually save. You could just swap to title playback if thats the more important feature.

eve · « **Reply #27 on:** March 04, 2023, 05:34:55 am »

Quote from: htnut on March 03, 2023, 10:53:12 am

I did just fine with TheaterTek and it’s DVD auto movie start point bookmarking. My first HTPC was built in 2002 driving a Sony 1272 CRT in a dedicated HT.

Launch the movie with the menu, configure the desired audio track, when the actual movie would start use CTRL-B, and then TT would set a bookmark at 0:00:00 of the playing title.

Worked with 100% reliability next time the movie starts it begins at that timestamp with the correct audio track. (This is important, as with DVD the “default” audio track would often not be the DD or DTS track).

It seems that functionality may be impossible with the complexity of BD menus/Java. Up until now, for BD/UHD my solution has been to play the “main feature playlist” only in MPC-BE. But of course the experience is poor when you realize halfway through a movie that there’s a foreign language scene and there should be forced subtitles. So I’m thrilled that JRiver has solved the BD menus resulting in (so far) 100% reliability with forced subs and also not running into screenpass issues.

This leads me to my reasons for asking for the open audio path on pause: I have collected thousands of trailers from Apple, add add batches of new ones regularly. I’ve also made some “movie theme music” by taking some surround sound music from closing credits of favorite movies and making them separate audio files. Then, before I start a movie for friends and family I “queue up” the movie (setting masking on my “constant area” projection screen, setting to start point of the movie, etc.) and then Zoom Player plays (with a black screen) the theme music randomly to create ambiance as people come in, get their snacks, etc. Then with one button on my remote I wrote a script so my HTPC dims the lights to 50%, stops the music, launches 3 trailers at random, after zoom finishes it gracefully closes - the script dims the lights off - and the main movie starts with no menus or FBI warnings.

Oh, and I’ll add that a while ago, in a thread here “MC30 requested enhancements” (can’t find that now) I mentioned the desire for MC30 to also auto-quit upon main movie completion (instead of returning to the menus which is the default behavior). Because, with MPC-BE when the movie would end (credits end, of course, a true movie enthusiast always stays for all of the credits!), the player would quit and my script would take over, bring up the lights and start the theme music again at a reduced volume.

Okay so this makes more sense. You're like 'half' of the way there.
I have a custom 'pre-show' setup (it doesn't use JRiver's built in show time functionality) for doing pretty much exactly this. You're just going to do things in a slightly different order.

So you queue up your BDMV in JRiver, get it to the correct main feature title, and stop it. Now, you'll want to populate this playback zone with the 'pre-show' items, inserted BEFORE your main feature (that you've already set up)

When you start this from the beginning, all your pre-show items will play.

You can pretty easily write a script that will randomly pull an assortment of trailers, bumpers, snipes etc from your library. If you want the theme music, you could probably populate the queue with a few copies of it, and then when you're ready to start the main show 'skip' to the index in the current playback queue where your video items start.

If you want your 'theme music' automated, you'll have to come up with a tag to pair the music to the item, use the imdb or tmdb id maybe and when your script 'searches' for stuff to populate the queue with, it can look to see if a piece of music corresponds to said item.

EDIT: Yes, please switch from menu to title playback to get JRiver to 'remember' where you are for the main feature.

eve · « **Reply #28 on:** March 04, 2023, 05:36:13 am »

Go look at my post history. There's a slightly more detailed explanation of what I do that should help you sort out how to get this running.

I used NodeRed to mock it up which means, you really don't need a serious understanding of programming to make it work.

eve · « **Reply #29 on:** March 04, 2023, 06:08:32 am »

Quote

Oh, and I’ll add that a while ago, in a thread here “MC30 requested enhancements” (can’t find that now) I mentioned the desire for MC30 to also auto-quit upon main movie completion (instead of returning to the menus which is the default behavior). Because, with MPC-BE when the movie would end (credits end, of course, a true movie enthusiast always stays for all of the credits!), the player would quit and my script would take over, bring up the lights and start the theme music again at a reduced volume.

I have not figured out an efficient method of doing this sadly. I'd be hugely supportive of it. There's a major limitation in JRiver, it doesn't really 'announce' its state.
So the only way for you to handle this is polling JRiver. It's not exactly ideal. You can poll it at an interval, see when the playback queue is close to the end (like say, under 15s left if you're polling every 10s or something) and then act upon that 'situation'

Volume wise, if I'm doing 'cinema' playback, JRiver is locked at a fixed volume obviously. Since you're bitstreaming (and assumedly, these multichannel audio files that make up your background music are bitstreamed) you won't have control of volume from JRiver. Now, depending on the source of your 'cinema ephemera' like trailers, they're probably significantly 'louder' than the audio for your main movie and perhaps this background music. So you either handle that on your own, or you'll use that same 'play state' info you have to poll, to tell the 'arbiter' of your volume, to adjust it based upon what's playing. If it's a receiver that's somewhat recent, you can probably work out IP control or RS232 to get 'absolute' volume instead of spamming IR and hoping it works

Right now my JRiver 'polling' happens at 30s intervals, but it's got 'fake' responsiveness in that, if I interact with it through my interface or remote controls (say 'press pause' ) it'll fire off a request to jriver so it can update the state.

htnut · « **Reply #30 on:** March 04, 2023, 05:05:10 pm »

eve,

Thank you so much for reading all of my posts and providing such a thoughful reply. I'm pleased that you "get it" (for my "cinema experience" goals).

1. Thank you for "seconding" my request for "quit MC on movie playback".

2. Your solution is very appealing but, unfortunately, requires me to use Title playback. I tried to be very clear early on (in my "Reply #3") and repeated throughout this thread that I really need to use Menu playback as it is the only way to reliably get forced subtitles to display properly. Note: It is primarily the amazing ability of JRiver MC to properly use menus that prompted me to buy the software and have come to really like it.

3. This brings me to another point. An alternative to me finding a workaround for this bistreaming lock, would be if MC30 could 100% reliably display forced subtitles when in "Title Playback" mode. Maybe MC30 can "read" the magic happening with Java menus to display forced subs correctly? I am aware that there is at least THREE different ways BD/UHD handles forced subs. Examples here: https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=169976

Re: the suggestions to repackage to MKV: I don't care to convert hundreds of movies to MKV, both because a) it would take a tremendous amout of time and b) it is obvious the forced subtitle issue is still a big issue unless I would take the monumental amount of time to research / preview every single title to try to find & include the correct forced sub into the respective MKV.

I recognize that my use of MC30 exclusively as a movie player and not as a "library" is only one piece of a very complex and capable Media Center. So, I appreciate the attention my requests have received and hope to find a solution.

Thanks.

eve · « **Reply #31 on:** March 04, 2023, 05:21:24 pm »

Quote from: htnut on March 04, 2023, 05:05:10 pm

eve,

Thank you so much for reading all of my posts and providing such a thoughful reply. I'm pleased that you "get it" (for my "cinema experience" goals).

1. Thank you for "seconding" my request for "quit MC on movie playback".

2. Your solution is very appealing but, unfortunately, requires me to use Title playback. I tried to be very clear early on (in my "Reply #3") and repeated throughout this thread that I really need to use Menu playback as it is the only way to reliably get forced subtitles to display properly. Note: It is primarily the amazing ability of JRiver MC to properly use menus that prompted me to buy the software. \

3. This brings me to another point. An alternative to me finding a workaround for this bistreaming lock, would be if MC30 could 100% reliably display forced subtitles when in "Title Playback" mode. Maybe MC30 can "read" the magic happening with Java menus to display forced subs correctly? I am aware that there is at least THREE different ways BD/UHD handles forced subs. Examples here: https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=169976

Re: the suggestions to repackage to MKV: I don't care to convert hundreds of movies to MKV, both because a) it would take a tremendous amout of time and b) it is obvious the forced subtitle issue is still a big issue unless I would take the monumental amount of time to research / preview every single title to try to find & include the correct forced sub into the respective MKV.

I recognize that my use of MC30 exclusively as a movie player and not as a "library" is only one piece of a very complex and capable Media Center. So, I appreciate the attention my requests have received and hope to find a solution.

Thanks.

Yeah the forced subs is a bit of an issue. You can somewhat trial and error it but I agree, I do wish there was a more standard way of handling it. Despite retaining BDMVs, I tend to remux all of my material for regular playback, and I've been slowly moving towards having everything OCR'd as well as pulling in text based subs from a reliable source (not OpenSubs or anything like that)

So weirdly enough, you and I are actually in the same boat in how we use JRiver. I pretty much purely use it for video playback, the library functionality isn't really something I take advantage of. I actually didn't know that anyone else was doing the same.

In my case, as I was setting up my pre-show thing, I found it easier to actually have JRiver 'know' about the assets used to fill out my pre-show, rather than using another database like I do for movies and television. So in that respect, I do use JRiver's library functionality.

htnut · « **Reply #32 on:** March 04, 2023, 10:48:29 pm »

This "hit or miss" with forced subtitles I've been dealing with for a decade since the advent of BDMV. Inspecting the sizes of the pgs files and experimenting before sitting to watch a movie is tedious. Ultimately we would just watch a movie and if foreign languages started with no subtitles I'd pause and experiment with turning a subtitle stream on. This, of course, really takes you out of the movie.

Zoomplayer's function for playing files at "random" works very well with my folders of trailers and "theme music".

I think I've found a workaround, but it's a bit of a "kludge". If I connect both of my HDMI outputs to separate inputs on my AVR, it presents two audio devices. I can put JRiver on what W10 thinks is "Monitor 1" bitstreaming to "Denon AVR"... and put Zoom Player to display on "Monitor 2" and bitstreaming to "Denon AVR 2". Then, while MC30 is "paused" (at 0:00:00 of chapter 1), my script can switch the AVR to the other input - do its thing - and then switch back to the other input before sending the unpause command to MC30. The biggest drag is that it takes a full 8 seconds for the AVR to switch "sources" and my projector throws a message in the corner after the input has switched.

Maybe we should open a new thread about forced subtitles and see if the software wizards can fix this once and for all with title playback

eve · « **Reply #33 on:** March 04, 2023, 11:18:56 pm »

Quote from: htnut on March 04, 2023, 10:48:29 pm

This "hit or miss" with forced subtitles I've been dealing with for a decade since the advent of BDMV. Inspecting the sizes of the pgs files and experimenting before sitting to watch a movie is tedious. Ultimately we would just watch a movie and if foreign languages started with no subtitles I'd pause and experiment with turning a subtitle stream on. This, of course, really takes you out of the movie.

Zoomplayer's function for playing files at "random" works very well with my folders of trailers and "theme music".

I think I've found a workaround, but it's a bit of a "kludge". If I connect both of my HDMI outputs to separate inputs on my AVR, it presents two audio devices. I can put JRiver on what W10 thinks is "Monitor 1" bitstreaming to "Denon AVR"... and put Zoom Player to display on "Monitor 2" and bitstreaming to "Denon AVR 2". Then, while MC30 is "paused" (at 0:00:00 of chapter 1), my script can switch the AVR to the other input - do its thing - and then switch back to the other input before sending the unpause command to MC30. The biggest drag is that it takes a full 8 seconds for the AVR to switch "sources" and my projector throws a message in the corner after the input has switched.

Maybe we should open a new thread about forced subtitles and see if the software wizards can fix this once and for all with title playback

Honestly, the forced subs thing is easier to solve looking forward instead of backwards. PGS subtitles are relatively pointless for 90+% of the material out there, they add nothing. We can render much cleaner subs with text based ones. PGS / image subs made sense when player hardware was all over the place and there was no easy way to ensure consistency player to player. So they took the nuclear option so to speak and went with images
I still agree that in the situation where you have a full disc, it would be nice to have but I'm not sure if its worth the effort.

I like having my own fonts / and vaguely yellowish desaturated 60% brightness sub rendering.

htnut · « **Reply #34 on:** July 29, 2023, 01:20:22 am »

To bring closure to this thread, for the benefit of anyone with a similar situation who reads this...

My situation is resolved. Hendrik confirmed bitstreaming using DirectSound is now fixed in MC31. So, I no longer need to use WASAPI to bitstream and with DirectSound, when MC31 is paused, my other applications can share the audio device with no conflict and all returns to normal when done and playback in MC31 resumes.

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: Bitstreaming - behavior during pause (WASAPI exclusive issue) (Read 3462 times)