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[RawbCahn]

I just reinstalled Vista and MC12 (latest version) and I'm getting this strange problem I never had before on my previous install. I first noticed that while Media Center was open, even minimized, and not playing anything, the transparent frame of my Vista dialog boxes, including my not-fully-maximized browser window, would flicker every second or so. It resembles what happens when Vista begins going into the basic theme because of some incompatible program. Once I close MC it stops immediately. I tried opening and playing some music in WMP but had no flicker. No other program seems to be replicating this, so I don't think it's a Vista issue. The flicker isn't just visual either. It interferes with scrolling. While I've got the scroll tab grabbed the frame flickers and I lose my "grip". I also can't bring up ANY menus in MC, right click or otherwise, for more than a second without them closing themselves. I have to race to my selection. If what I want is on a branch, like Rename files from properties, then I just can't get there fast enough.

Has anyone else experience this or know the cause?

EDIT: I just noticed that if I just open Media Center it doesn't happen immediately. It takes about 10 seconds to begin. I also just noticed that I'm having the same menu problem with Firefox that I'm having within MC. If I maximise it gets rid of the noticable flicker on the frame, but the menus, right click and otherwise, still close after a second.

EDIT: OK now it has stopped. I was able to change the visualisation in the display box, which was impossible a few minutes ago. I know I didn't do anything to fix it, and I have rebooted since it started so it's not exclusive to this session so does anyone know what the problem is? I even reinstalled MC one time since it started happening. I'm not too confident that it's over with.

[rick.ca]

This is an excellent description of what I'm experiencing with version 12.0.497 in WinXP. I'm impressed with what little I've seen of this program running normally, but if this problem persists, it's unusable. But I'm even more concerned that a user could go to the trouble to describe their problem so carefully—only to be totally ignored. This seems to be a very active forum—What gives? Is support available to registered users?  ?

[Mr ChriZ]

Sometimes threads just gets missed.  Supports available for everyone.
If no one answers just bump the thread up and try again.

Occasionally if the problem is weird or wonderful enough it may just be
that no one knows the answer yet.  There are a lot of experts here including
the owner of JRiver, and the developers themselves, not to mention
a lot of very experienced users, but sometimes things do slip through the net.

The flickering issue maybe to do with Video Thumbnail building, especially in Vista.
If FFDShow/ other video decoder is setup incorrectly it can set Vista in to Basic mode
but then release it afterwards.

Do you have the taskbar on Autohide?  I've found this can cause hell on Vista
when thumbnail building far more so than XP.

You could try creating a new library with no Video's in it as an experiment, and this will narrow the issue
down slightly.

 ?

[JimH]

Welcome to Interact.

Maybe the original poster's edit also kept people from answering.

EDIT: OK now it has stopped.

12.0.514 is available at the top of the MC12 board here.

Video thumbnailing is a reasonable guess.  It will use a DirectShow filter in some cases.  The filter itself can cause problems.  You could try a search for Haali to see a similar problem. 

Very few posts are ignored.

[rick.ca]

Thanks for your responses. I'm reassured.

I think video thumbnailing was the problem. I thought it was finished—the progress window disappeared—but there were still videos without thumbnails when I started the program today. I let it finish, and added thumbnails manually where there were none. I haven't had the problem since.

All of the thumbnails it made (and those I supplied) were of cover art that (generally) resides in the same directory. From the comments you've made, I presume the video thumbnailing you are referring to is a process of extracting a frame from the video file itself. If so, it didn't work for any of my videos. I'm not sure I would want it to. Is there a way to turn this off, or force it to use only cover art?

BTW, no video file information (duration, bit rates, codecs, etc.) appears for my files. Doesn't the program extract this?

I searched for Haali and scanned a few topics. I assume you mention this just so I'm aware there are issues related to this, rather than suggesting I need to change filters. Technical stuff like that could make my head explode.