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[leezer3]

Hiya,
Sure I've reported this before, but I can't find where 
Anyway-
Problem
With the most recent builds of Media Centre, importing will cause the thumnailing process to go completely nuts, hanging the PC for ~5 mins, and no thumbnails are generated either. Everything plays fine, just no thumbnails and the hanging makes the PC nearly unusable.
This behaviour started with 12.0.122, and has got slightly worse with 12.0.226.
I've also noticed that the thumbnailing attempts are spawning multiple copies of FFDShow, over ten at one point, not entirely sure why.

Cause
Not sure 
A lot of investigating tonight has identified the FFDShow DivX decoder as the top-level cause of the hanging- Disabling it & installing the standalone DivX stops the hanging, but I'm mystified as to why this only started with 12.0.222.

Halalli media splitter (Again the CCCP version) is set to handle AVI's, as I've got a few odd anime variants with multiple languages, but disabling it doesn't do anything.
I've also got a nasty suspicion that it has something to do with the thumbnailing problems reported in this thread- http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=40277.0
Cheers

-Leezer-

[JimH]

We're working on two problems that may be related.

In certain circumstances, podcasting can block the main program.  Try turning this off if you use it.

And our device enumeration will also hang in some cases.  Try unplugging any memory cards, etc.

[leezer3]

No podcasting here unfortunately.
I noticed the device enumeration in the logs (1gb CF card plugged into the reader on the 2407wfp) taking ~7500ms, but unplugging it didn't actually do anything & I'd rather keep it plugged in, as I run an auto-import off it.

There's nothing else obviously wrong (At least to my untrained eye) in the logs, just no thumbnails being built. The thumbnailing process for each file appears to be taking about 2400ms, which while perhaps a little excessive shouldn't be causing 5 mins plus hangs.

-Leezer-

[JimH]

Are the files or your MC database on a network drive?

[leezer3]

Nope  no network files in use, although there is a single network drive mapped (Via samba to a Ubuntu server).
The library does consist of approx 110,000 files which are spread across five different drives though-

(Connected to motherboard)
C:\ Raptor 74gb- Boot, MC library & install drive
D:\ 400gb Samsung- Some photos, mostly apps though.
E:\ 200gb Maxtor IDE- Audio files
F:\ 400gb Samsung- Video drive 1
Z:\ Samsung SATA DVD-RW
(Connected to Silicon Image SIL3114 RAID card)
G:\ 400gb Hitachi- Video drive 2
H:\ 500gb WD- Films & temp drive
(Network drives)
L:\ 640gb network drive from my server, contains backups but no MC files.

The system itself is nothing particularly odd-
Asus P5N-E Sli motherboard
Core 2 Duo E6320
2gb OCZ SOUE memory
3 week old install of XP Pro.

-Leezer-

[JimH]

A lot of investigating tonight has identified the FFDShow DivX decoder as the top-level cause of the hanging- Disabling it & installing the standalone DivX stops the hanging, but I'm mystified as to why this only started with 12.0.222.

I missed this the first time.  Please see this post of glynor's:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=39978.msg272507#msg272507

[leezer3]

Nah, you've missed me 
The hanging only occurs when FFDShow is set to handle DivX, and as far as I can see the post you linked to is the other way around, so AFAIK it's a different issue.

-Leezer-

[glynor]

FFDSHOW is generally preferred over DivX to handle MPEG-4 ASP content (including DivX, XviD, and 3ivx files).  There are known problems with the FFDSHOW versions posted at the SourceForge page, so if you are using those (from November 2005) then yes, you will see issues.  However, newer versions of FFDSHOW are generally going to give you better quality and better performance than using DivX's codecs directly.

I'm working on the DirectShow Playback FAQ in the Wiki currently.  You might want to take a look at it for a place to obtain good versions of FFDSHOW (or the option of using CCCP which is designed to handle a wide range of different media types).

[leezer3]

FFDSHOW is generally preferred over DivX to handle MPEG-4 ASP content (including DivX, XviD, and 3ivx files).  There are known problems with the FFDSHOW versions posted at the SourceForge page, so if you are using those (from November 2005) then yes, you will see issues.  However, newer versions of FFDSHOW are generally going to give you better quality and better performance than using DivX's codecs directly.

I'm working on the DirectShow Playback FAQ in the Wiki currently.  You might want to take a look at it for a place to obtain good versions of FFDSHOW (or the option of using CCCP which is designed to handle a wide range of different media types).

Its the currently supplied version with CCCP unfortunately
The only clue I can find is the multiple spawned versions- Almost looks as if MC is failing to close the files properly or something similar.

-Leezer-

[glynor]

Okay then... You're using the same version as I am.  So you're seeing lockups of ~5 minutes per file that get's thumbnailed?  That seems quite extreme.  I am not getting lockups quite to that degree, but  I do sporadically have some performance issues when Thumbs are building however -- and we are not alone (and I believe they are working on it).

I generally keep the "Build Thumbnails" option de-selected when I run imports, and then let MC build them on the fly (and occasionally just build them manually to get "caught up").  I do sporadically get long 3-5 minute pauses while browsing around in my videos, and I am using CCCP.  Some similar issues other users have mentioned have had to do with Podcasting Auto-Downloading, which is why Jim mentioned it.  Could you do me a favor and, even if you don't use Podcasts, go in to the Podcasts item in the Tree and click the Disable Auto Download button to make sure it's turned off.  Its interesting that building the thumbnails on import is seems to be getting stuck on certain individual files...

If you switch only MPEG-4 ASP (DivX/XviD) from FFDSHOW to the DivX filter then all the playback issues go away, correct?
Do you have other video file types that decode using FFDSHOW?  Any MPEG-4 AVC stuff (Quicktime H264 MP4s, Nero Digital AVC, X264 videos)?

Also, if you could generate a log file that includes this behavior (but not a whole bunch of extraneous activity -- so close MC, open it, reproduce the behavior, and then grab your logfile and save it), I suspect that would help them.  I'm going to try to do the same thing for them, but I have a bunch of network files and it helps if you can eliminate those possibilities.  Sounds like we might be able to give them a couple of similar reports to investigate!

[leezer3]

The hang doesn't seem to be too related to the number of files which are trying to be thumbnailed, just a lockup  of about ~5 mins while the thumbnailing tries & fails to do something.
http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk/Log.zip
That log is for an import of 21 files, & basically spends about 7 mins in a hung state before MC rights itself & is closed.
Browsing or attempting to tag these files also causes MC to hang, but not nearly as badly (Much more of a very extreme lag)
No thumbnails generated at all by any of this.

This is what the taskbar looks like througout all this:

(Apologies, PrintScrn is hung as well, so I had to resort to the digicam)

-Leezer-

[leezer3]

Still very much still here as of 12.0.240
Adding the current build of FFDShow Tryout into the mix (Needed to play an odd Japanese anime file) has absolutely no effect either.
Added some networked XVid files as a test too- Import & thumbnail nicely, no problems there.

Its also only the DivX part that causes problems- FFDShow is still set to handle XVid & any generic MPEG-4 types.

-Leezer-

[glynor]

I've still been having issues as well.  I sent a log file to Matt early on Wednesday morning though.  Yesterday there were a bunch of changes in the beta build that seem to be targeting fixing the thumbnailing issues.  I haven't really been able to confirm anything yet -- as I had plans last night -- but stay tuned...

[onlyelliot]

I've been having this exact same problem with xvid files. whenever I import them there Jworker eats up all my resources.  Has anyone found a solution yet?

[leezer3]

FWIW, my main box has moved to Vista. This bug isn't present there, so that may eliminate something from the investigation. I've also added a load of network files into the mix, no problems there either 
I'm wondering now if this is a graphics card driver issue (Not reinstalling XP to check, but it makes some sort of sense lol)- The card in question was & is a Nvidia 7800GTX, nothing extraordinary.

Cheers

-Leezer-

[thurston]

No solution, but I think I also have the same problem.  When it slows down (cursor movement takes seconds to respond to mouse, transitions extremely sluggish especially in theater view, etc) there are 10-20 or so FFD icons in the taskbar tray.  I'm running XP and use a GIGABYTE GV-NX76T256D-RH GeForce 7600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card.

[glynor]

I've been having this exact same problem with xvid files. whenever I import them there Jworker eats up all my resources.  Has anyone found a solution yet?

Yeah.  Don't use crappy builds of FFDSHOW.  Update to the current version of CCCP or use the FFDSHOW Tryouts builds.

See here: http://wiki.jrmediacenter.com/index.php/DirectShow_Playback_Guide#What_filters_do_I_need_and_where_do_I_get_them.3F

Shouldn't have anything to do with the video card or the video card drivers unless you're trying to use Nvidia PureVideo to decode MPEG-4 ASP content (which I don't know if they even handle that and libavcodec would be a better choice anyhow).  I have a 7800GTX in one of my machines and it's fine.

Even with current FFDSHOW builds, thumbnailing can still get a bit extreme sometimes (sucking up CPU time with reckless abandon), but it doesn't go nutso and crash like it does with earlier alpha FFDSHOW builds.  I try to run the manual thumbnail building overnight fairly often to avoid the issue, and having a dual-core CPU really helps.

That said...

I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY wish JRiver would add the option to completely disable on-the-fly thumbnail building.  I'd keep it turned off on my older machines and simply build thumbs manually every so often.  Similarly, I'd also love an automation command to start the manual thumb build option so I could schedule it for once a month at 1am.

[thurston]

I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY wish JRiver would add the option to completely disable on-the-fly thumbnail building.  I'd keep it turned off on my older machines and simply build thumbs manually every so often.  Similarly, I'd also love an automation command to start the manual thumb build option so I could schedule it for once a month at 1am.

This sounds like a great idea.  Is it currently possible to set autoimport to run on a schedule?

[glynor]

Is it currently possible to set autoimport to run on a schedule?

You don't need to.  Auto-import runs in the background whenever MC is open, and will grab new files very quickly after they "appear" (are created or moved into) one of the watched folders.

You can initiate a "manual" Import scan if you want via a command line (MCC 23000).  I haven't figured out what flag to use to run the auto-import however.... There is probably a way, but I can't figure it out.

Code: [Select]

MCC_IMPORT = 23000,                            // [int nFlags (1: bDisableAlreadyRunningWarning)]
What are the valid nFlags values?  What do we need to pass to do the Run Auto-Import Now command?

Matt... Any help?

[onlyelliot]

I don't have any trouble if other formats, besides xvid and it is only while j.river is first reading the file to find a thumbnail, i've tried different builds of ffdshow, cccp, and even the plain ol xvid decoder, but i get the same problem with all of them.

[glynor]

I don't have any trouble if other formats, besides xvid and it is only while j.river is first reading the file to find a thumbnail, i've tried different builds of ffdshow, cccp, and even the plain ol xvid decoder, but i get the same problem with all of them.

What are your system specs?  (You could use the Help --> System Info tool in MC to post it.)

[onlyelliot]

Media Center Registered 12.0.318 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 12\

Microsoft Windows XP  Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium 4 2975 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 2096 MB, Free - 1299 MB

Internet Explorer: 7.0.5730.11 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82.2900 / Shlwapi.dll: 6.0.2900 / Shell32.dll: 6.0.2900 / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping /   Drive D:   Mode:Normal  Type:Auto  Speed:Max
  Drive H:   Mode:Normal  Type:Auto  Speed:Max
  Digital playback: Yes /  Use YADB: Yes /  Get cover art: Yes /  Calc replay gain: Yes /  Copy volume: 32767
  Eject after ripping: Yes /  Play sound after ripping: No 

Burning /  Drive D: HL-DT-ST DVD+RW GCA-4040N   Addr: 1:0:0  Speed:16  MaxSpeed:16  BurnProof:Yes
  Test mode: No /  Eject after writing: Yes /  Direct decoding: Yes /  Write CD-Text: Yes
  Use playback settings: No /

Interface Plugins:
  last.fm (Active)
  Library Server (Active)
  TiVo Server (Active)
  UPnP Server (Active)

I can run xvid fine in other players, I only have this problem with j.river which is sad because I just upgraded to a terabyte of storage and would like to catalogue all of my movie and tv episodes in j.river, but most of the tv shows are in xvid.

[benn600]

I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY wish JRiver would add the option to completely disable on-the-fly thumbnail building.  I'd keep it turned off on my older machines and simply build thumbs manually every so often.  Similarly, I'd also love an automation command to start the manual thumb build option so I could schedule it for once a month at 1am.

I agree completely.  I'm using Media Center to run all the video clips for our theatrical production next week and it would save a lot of potential problems.  Those wmvs are causing major slowdowns and problems.  I REALLY want this feature, too.  If you can add it can I please ask that you send me an earlier beta type version with the feature?  It would be VERY helpful.

[glynor]

Yeah... With 2 GB of RAM and a late model P4 (even though it IS A P4) it should work well...  Just to be sure onlyelliot, since you didn't answer before... What filters are you using to handle XviD decoding?

[thurston]

I have some questions regarding on-the-fly thumbnail building and manual building.  I understand to some degree how thumbnails are handled for audio files.  In my case, the thumbnail for each album is taken from a jpg file located in the same folder as the album audio files (as oppossed to embeded in the audio file itself).  Where are video file thumbnails saved?  Where do they come from when MC is building them?  Once MC builds them, does it rebuild them the next time videos are browsed (on the fly)?  I'm currently manually building the thumbnails and my system is extremely slow because of it.  They were building all night as well.  In my system tray I have dozens of FFD icons.  Thanks in advance.

[glynor]

I have some questions regarding on-the-fly thumbnail building and manual building.  I understand to some degree how thumbnails are handled for audio files.  In my case, the thumbnail for each album is taken from a jpg file located in the same folder as the album audio files (as oppossed to embeded in the audio file itself).  Where are video file thumbnails saved?  Where do they come from when MC is building them?  Once MC builds them, does it rebuild them the next time videos are browsed (on the fly)?  I'm currently manually building the thumbnails and my system is extremely slow because of it.  They were building all night as well.  In my system tray I have dozens of FFD icons.  Thanks in advance.

The video thumbnails are saved in the location specified by the Registry key at: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JRiver\Media Center 12\Properties\Thumbnails - Base Path

By default, this is: C:\Documents and Settings\<USERNAME>\Application Data\J River\Media Center 12\Thumbnails

They are saved in an "internal" JRiver format (not just JPEGs).  This is actually where MC stores the thumbs for the Audio files too.  It builds it's thumbnails based on those JPEGs in the album folders, but does not actually directly display the JPEGs.

MC builds them by taking a "screenshot" of the video (at a somewhat randomized point near the beginning of the video I believe).  They are only built once, but it does happen when they are browsed "on-the-fly".  Once MC has built a thumb for a particular video, it is saved and then doesn't need to be rebuilt (unless you delete and re-add the video to your library I'd guess).

[thurston]

Thanks for the explanation.  Does this mean that the audio thumbnail jpegs can be deleted once the thumbnails are built?
I didn't find this in the help section, but I apologize if it's been asked on the board before- other than the right-click & screen cap, is there a way to use a particular image as a thumbnail for each video?

[glynor]

Thanks for the explanation.  Does this mean that the audio thumbnail jpegs can be deleted once the thumbnails are built?
I didn't find this in the help section, but I apologize if it's been asked on the board before- other than the right-click & screen cap, is there a way to use a particular image as a thumbnail for each video?

I don't know and I don't know (though for the first I suspect not -- it might detect that the source image has "changed" and try to rebuild the thumb, thereby deleting it).  Sorry!  Perhaps someone else will!

[thurston]

I figured out how to change the video thumbnail (I think):
Right click on the existing video, select coverart, add from file (or paste from clipboard, etc).  Same way as is done for audio files.

[justsomeguy]

I had very similar problems.  No matter what the video type was MC would bring my computer to its knees when it was attempting to build thumbnails.  I too am using ffdshow.  I must have tried 10 different versions of ffdshow from very old to the latest and greatest.  Only thing that fixed my problem was going back to an older version of MC.  I am currently running 12.0.198 without any problems.  It went trough and built thumbnails for 80 some files fairly quickly and during the entire process the computer still was smooth allowing me to actually watch a video at the same time.  I tried ver. 12.0.154 and everything worked fine there too.  The next version I tried was 12.0.259 and the problem returned.  I have no versions between 198 and 259 so not sure exactly which version it started with.  All the newer versions appear to have this problem.  Hope they can figure out what changed.

[gallimore]

I had very similar problems.  No matter what the video type was MC would bring my computer to its knees when it was attempting to build thumbnails.  I too am using ffdshow.  I must have tried 10 different versions of ffdshow from very old to the latest and greatest.  Only thing that fixed my problem was going back to an older version of MC.  I am currently running 12.0.198 without any problems.  It went trough and built thumbnails for 80 some files fairly quickly and during the entire process the computer still was smooth allowing me to actually watch a video at the same time.  I tried ver. 12.0.154 and everything worked fine there too.  The next version I tried was 12.0.259 and the problem returned.  I have no versions between 198 and 259 so not sure exactly which version it started with.  All the newer versions appear to have this problem.  Hope they can figure out what changed.

I have been suffering in silence with this for several months, but without saved versions of MC from earlier in the year was unable to provide any concerete information. However the version timeline above sounds about right, I had no problems back in March/April.  Also as far as I am concerned ffdshow is a herring rouge, I get the same problem regardless of the using ffdshow or the latest DivX networks codec. There are two things that are particularly irritating about this:

1. after doing so much work you don't get any thumbnails, then having failed/given up once the next time MC starts it tries to do it all over again.

2. while doing the work, MC seems to be continuously grabbing screen focus, i.e. if you try to bring up a menu on any running application, including MC itself both in normal and theater views, it instantly gets dismissed before you can select anything, essentially making the system unusable. For MC to make itself unusable is one thing, for it to effect other applications in this way is bad form.

[JimH]

A virus checker set to check every file on opening could explain this.

[gallimore]

A virus checker set to check every file on opening could explain this.

Interesting suggestion. My checker is only setup to check modified files with certain extensions that don't include media files; however I will disable it completely and see if it helps.

[justsomeguy]

A virus checker set to check every file on opening could explain this.

Good suggestion.  I did try this myself however.  I am using NOD32 and disabled it from checking any files and the problem was still there.  I can easily recreate the problem by just installing a newer version of MC, then go back to the old version and the problem goes away.  If it was an antivirus problem seems it would happen in the older version as well.

I am going to play with this some more, if I come up with any results I'll post them here.

[fwhoch]

The hang doesn't seem to be too related to the number of files which are trying to be thumbnailed, just a lockup  of about ~5 mins while the thumbnailing tries & fails to do something.
http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk/Log.zip
That log is for an import of 21 files, & basically spends about 7 mins in a hung state before MC rights itself & is closed.
Browsing or attempting to tag these files also causes MC to hang, but not nearly as badly (Much more of a very extreme lag)
No thumbnails generated at all by any of this.

This is what the taskbar looks like througout all this:

(Apologies, PrintScrn is hung as well, so I had to resort to the digicam)

-Leezer-

Im getting the same hangups, Before Haali Media Splitter I didnt have this problem.  I uninstalled it, but still having the hangups and the thumbnails wont generate either.