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[stubbo]

I reported this during the beta but couldn't follow up after the thread was locked.

All the visualisations in MC15 judder along and pause every second or so, it's very annoying.

I've loaded a new clean version of Windows 7 64 bit with MC15 and it's doing exactly the same, so it can't be realted to any other software I have installed.

I have 6GB Ram and an i7 920 so horespower shouldn't be an issue.

I've installed G-Force 4 as well and this also stutters along as well. I've tried G-Force 4 in Windows media player it it works just fine, along with Media players own visualisations.

Music playback isn't affected (only using mp3s played from my network file server), it's only the graphic visualisations that have a problem.

Hope this can be fixed soon.

[JimH]

Your graphics card may not be able to keep up.  An inexpensive new card might work.

MC has a Benchmark feature (under Help).  You could compare what you see there with other PC's.

[Matt]

I'm getting perfectly smooth visualizations on an i7 with Win 7 64-bit here.

I can't think what would cause this, but try disabling DSPs, using different visualizations (like a simple 3D one like 'Particle Creation'), playing a local MP3 or APE file, and disabling third party plugins that might be doing any background work.

Do any of those things make a difference?

[stubbo]

Graphics card wise I have an nVidia 8800GTX with the latest drivers, no way that isn't fast enough, and like I said all visualisations (especially G-Force) work in other apps with no problems at all.

In DSP Studio, everything is disabled, I have nothing turned on at all.

I get exactly the same juddering with particle creation and a local mp3 file as well.

If I set the visualiser to album art and then launch G-Force in standalone mode it works perfectly, so the issue is only when it runs within MC15, the same with all the other viz.

I've tried resizing the windows, but that didn't make any difference either.

It's almost as if the visualisations are given a maximum CPU utilisation and once they have used it they are clipped. G-Force for example in stand alone mode takes over 20% cpu, but when running in MC15 the cpu never goes over 1%.

I've tried all the view modes, they do the same thing as well.I'm using stock settings from a clean install of MC, the only thing I've installed is G-Force.

Benchmark results....

=== Running Benchmarks (please do not interrupt) ===

Running 'Math' benchmark...
    Single-threaded integer math... 6.589 seconds
    Single-threaded floating point math... 3.708 seconds
    Multi-threaded integer math... 1.895 seconds
    Multi-threaded mixed math... 1.277 seconds
Score: 1411

Running 'Image' benchmark...
    Image creation / destruction... 1.440 seconds
    Flood filling... 0.678 seconds
    Direct copying... 0.775 seconds
    Small renders... 4.115 seconds
    Bilinear rendering... 2.097 seconds
    Bicubic rendering... 2.033 seconds
Score: 1975

Running 'Database' benchmark...
    Create database... 0.879 seconds
    Populate database... 3.160 seconds
    Save database... 0.238 seconds
    Reload database... 0.070 seconds
    Search database... 3.653 seconds
    Sort database... 4.491 seconds
    Group database... 3.450 seconds
Score: 1349

JRMark (version 15.0.38): 1578


System Info

Media Center 15.0.38 Registered -- D:\Program Files (x86)\J River\Media Center 15\

6.1  (Build 7600)
Intel Pentium III 2023 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 4194 MB, Free - 2810 MB

Internet Explorer: 8.0.7600.16385 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82.7600 / Shlwapi.dll: 6.1.7600 / Shell32.dll: 6.1.7600 / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping /   Drive Z:   Mode:Normal  Type:Auto  Speed:Max
  Digital playback: Yes /  Get cover art: Yes /  Calc replay gain: Yes /  Copy volume: 32767
  Eject after ripping: Yes /  Play sound after ripping: No 

Burning /  Drive Z: SATA     TSSTcorpCDDVDW S   Addr: 3:0:0  Speed:48  MaxSpeed:48  BurnProof:Yes
  Test mode: No /  Eject after writing: Yes /  Direct decoding: Yes /  Write CD-Text: Yes
  Use playback settings: No /

Portable Device Info
  Removed devices:


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

Any other suggestions, I'll gladly try anything to help track it down.

[JimH]

It may turn out to be a security program of some kind.  Here's an example:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=57635.msg391067#msg391067

You will find more in the "Weird Problems" link in my signature.

[stubbo]

This will fall in to the category of weird, but it does appear to be a bug in MC15.

After I've done multiple installs, uninstalls, new copies of windows, uninstalling software on old copies I got nowhere.

Then on a mild hunch I tried uninstalling MC & GForce and going through a controlled process of elimination.

What I found is that if I start MC15 and then search for my my library server after startup the visualisations work fine with no juddering.

However, if I configure my library into the library manager and delete the default library from the list and restart so MC15 connects to my servers library on startup, then the visualisations judder.

If I then click search for library servers again, without restarting MC15, then the juddering goes away. So it's only caused by the initial loading of MC15 when the default library it's connecting to is a remote library server.

This I proved with and without G-Force installed, just in case it had an affect on the results.

Hope that gives you enough to be able to track the little bug(ger) down !!

[Matt]

Thanks for the testing.

That's certainly hard to explain, so hopefully we'll be able to make the same happen on our side.

We'll follow up later this week.

[Matt]

We're seeing the same thing here.

The Library Server client is making calls (from the main thread) to query the server about the playback state.  These calls are blocking drawing of visualizations since basically all drawing happens from the main thread, even if processing to get ready for a draw was in a background thread.

We're working on a fix for this now.

[Matt]

I should add that until a fix is available, you could disable the offending option:
Options > Library & Folders > Show playback zones from the server on the client

[stubbo]

Great, thanks for the support, exemplary!!