INTERACT FORUM

More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 23 for Windows => Topic started by: stewart_pk on August 06, 2017, 10:46:26 pm

Title: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: stewart_pk on August 06, 2017, 10:46:26 pm
I noticed this happening a few builds back. It's most noticeable to me when I start playing music or when I have music playing. It can sometimes take 10 seconds or longer and the Windows hourglass appears. Is anyone else noticing this? I have tried numerous Visualizations and it happens will all.
Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: stewart_pk on August 16, 2017, 07:55:07 pm
Bump, this is still happening.
Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: ferday on August 16, 2017, 08:27:20 pm
just FYI, i've tried switching back and forth with all sorts of stuff playing and not playing etc. and i can't make it slow down at all.

something to test is go into options>theatre view>Advanced and check (or uncheck) the box "use experimental openGL theatre view"
Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: Ashfall on August 16, 2017, 09:19:41 pm
It's happening here on one PC.  If I switch to theater view and back without doing anything, no pause.  If I browse around in theater view to where it displays some cover art, long freeze with spinning Windows wheel going back to standard view.

This is on my library server, with an old Nvidia card.  Doesn't happen on other clients with Intel HD graphics.
Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: stewart_pk on August 29, 2017, 10:50:54 pm
Bump, I'm still seeing this issue.
Also I'm now noticing this when switching from Standard View and it was probably happening before.
Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: pluto7 on August 31, 2017, 03:27:56 am
same problem
Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: stewart_pk on September 06, 2017, 07:39:40 pm
Still a problem, still bumping.
Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: RoderickGI on September 06, 2017, 09:02:25 pm
Do you still have logging turned on? If so turn it off and see if the problem goes away.

I occasionally see a long pause and even the hour glass briefly, if I have been jumping around a lot testing stuff. I don't see it all the time though, and I just put it down to me working MC hard, most of the time.
Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: stewart_pk on September 07, 2017, 08:10:27 pm
Quote from: RoderickGI on September 06, 2017, 09:02:25 pm
Do you still have logging turned on? If so turn it off and see if the problem goes away.

I occasionally see a long pause and even the hour glass briefly, if I have been jumping around a lot testing stuff. I don't see it all the time though, and I just put it down to me working MC hard, most of the time.

Hi Roderick, I'll create a log file. I don't see it all of the time too, but I observe it most of the time.
It becomes most annoying when you start playing audio and you have to wait which sometimes seems like 10 seconds or more just to be able to change volume up or down or do anything else as MC is completely unresponsive during the "busy" time.
At least up until some point it was virtually instantaneous when switching from one display type to another for me on the same hardware.
Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: stewart_pk on September 09, 2017, 02:08:39 am
Hi, log file attached.
Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: RoderickGI on September 12, 2017, 11:09:53 pm
Well that log file is much harder to make sense of. But it appears that MC is trying to access the site "http://htbackdrops.org/" and fails, timing out. Then it takes a while to close the connection. I still can't reach that site, and get the message: "htbackdrops.org’s server DNS address could not be found", which is bad. It looks like the site is having some trouble.

You can turn off the lookup on HTBackdrops using "Tools > Options > Theater View > Appearance > Theme > Online Media Slideshow > deselect HTBackdrops" and see if that makes a difference.




I can see the problem when going from Theatre View to Display View, not the other way around.

Process 8164 is reading background images by the look of it, starting at 6.297 seconds, then failing at 9.484 seconds, then no further activity is logged until 12.250 seconds.

At 6.297 seconds0006297: 8164: Reader: CWinINetReader::Open: Opening http://htbackdrops.org/api/ecc142f7e2638ba7d50646a16599f432/searchXML?keywords=Radio&default_operator=and&fields=mb_name%2Cmb_alias&inc=mb_name&limit=20&encoding=UTF-8&dmin_w=640&dmin_h=360

You actually changed to Display View at 9.328 seconds, which may have interrupted the lookup. I don't know how that works.

At 9.328 seconds0009328: 5424: General: CMCUICore::SetMode: Setting UI mode: 2

Then the lookup failed.

At 9.484 seconds0009484: 8164: Reader: CWinINetReader::Open: ConnectToURL failed, timed out (20000 ms), URL=http://htbackdrops.org/api/ecc142f7e2638ba7d50646a16599f432/searchXML?keywords=Radio&default_operator=and&fields=mb_name%2Cmb_alias&inc=mb_name&limit=20&encoding=UTF-8&dmin_w=640&dmin_h=360
At 9.484 seconds0009484: 8164: Reader: CWinINetReader::Close: Start
At 12.250 seconds0012250: 4352: Sharing Plugins: CUDPSocketReader::Accept: Finish (8016 ms)

Those last three lines are consecutive, so it looks like MC takes 2.766 seconds to recover from the failed connection. It does take 3.187 to decide the lookup has failed, but I don't think that would be stopping the interface from responding.

So it is about 6 seconds from starting the looking until MC has recovered from it. Could that be what you saw? I don't see a 10 second or longer delay in the log. It looks like you switched back to Theatre View (stopped audio playback so MC dropped back to Theatre View) at about 20 seconds, but there is stuff going on between 12 and 20 seconds, so it doesn't look like MC is locked up. There is about five seconds of playback, and a couple of seconds while MC gets back into Theatre View by the look. But there is a lot going on after the 20 second mark. Playing back audio streams (internet radio?) or something.

But like I said, this log is much harder to make sense of. More cryptic. I could be wrong in my conclusions.

Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: stewart_pk on September 13, 2017, 12:56:45 am
Thanks again Roderick, yeah I thought that looked dodgy.
Would you mind trying the same scenario on your setup and see if "http://htbackdrops.org/" ends up in your log file?
Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: stewart_pk on September 13, 2017, 01:01:47 am
From: https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/htbackdrops-org-down.134779/

Domain Name: HTBACKDROPS.ORG
Domain ID: D169143307-LROR
WHOIS Server:
Referral URL: http://www.antagus.de
Updated Date: 2016-07-06T22:04:29Z
Creation Date: 2013-07-07T07:26:20Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2016-07-07T07:26:20Z
Sponsoring Registrar: Vautron Rechenzentrum AG
Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 1443
Domain Status: pendingDelete https://icann.org/epp#pendingDelete
Domain Status: serverHold https://icann.org/epp#serverHold
Domain Status: redemptionPeriod https://icann.org/epp#redemptionPeriod
Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: flac.rules on September 13, 2017, 01:48:34 am
But site down or not, shouldn't the program handle this kind of trouble a bit more gracefully? That is just switch, and not let it get held up by not reaching a page? Similar problems could pop up later.
Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: RoderickGI on September 13, 2017, 02:44:54 am
Quote from: stewart_pk on September 13, 2017, 12:56:45 am
Would you mind trying the same scenario on your setup and see if "http://htbackdrops.org/" ends up in your log file?

Yes, it does, and it fails as well. It looks like the timeout is set to 20 seconds. Quite long. I Didn't see any really long delay though. Certainly nothing like 10 seconds. MC just displayed the Cover Art I have in the file instead.

Quote from: Elvis133 on September 13, 2017, 01:48:34 am
But site down or not, shouldn't the program handle this kind of trouble a bit more gracefully? That is just switch, and not let it get held up by not reaching a page? Similar problems could pop up later.

I believe each source has its own parameters for wait time and so on, based on past performance. If the timeout for HTBackdrops is 20 seconds it must have performed pretty bad in the past, but eventually provided an image. I am pretty sure MC does make every effort to continue and not wait for an external link, but I guess there are some limitations on that.

The best thing to do would probably be to turn off that source for now, or put up with the delay until (if) it gets back up again.
Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: tbng on September 13, 2017, 02:48:47 am
I have been experiencing the same issue and posted a bug report a week ago.
Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: flac.rules on September 13, 2017, 03:19:52 am
Quote from: RoderickGI on September 13, 2017, 02:44:54 am
Yes, it does, and it fails as well. It looks like the timeout is set to 20 seconds. Quite long. I Didn't see any really long delay though. Certainly nothing like 10 seconds. MC just displayed the Cover Art I have in the file instead.

I believe each source has its own parameters for wait time and so on, based on past performance. If the timeout for HTBackdrops is 20 seconds it must have performed pretty bad in the past, but eventually provided an image. I am pretty sure MC does make every effort to continue and not wait for an external link, but I guess there are some limitations on that.

The best thing to do would probably be to turn off that source for now, or put up with the delay until (if) it gets back up again.

Yeah, i understand that sources have they different parameters, but keeping the UI "running" should have a high priority. It is in my opinion never ok to let the interface do nothing to wait for information that isn't strictly nescessary.
Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: Hendrik on September 13, 2017, 05:32:52 am
I've disabled htbackdrops lookup for the time being. While it is true that lookups should not stall the UI, sometimes network lookups are a bit hard to properly cancel immediately (and we can't really close theater view until all its workers are also gone), but I'll try to see if some things can be improved in this particular area.
Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: flac.rules on September 13, 2017, 06:03:39 am
Quote from: Hendrik on September 13, 2017, 05:32:52 am
I've disabled htbackdrops lookup for the time being. While it is true that lookups should not stall the UI, sometimes network lookups are a bit hard to properly cancel immediately (and we can't really close theater view until all its workers are also gone), but I'll try to see if some things can be improved in this particular area.

I am not a programmer, so this might be a stupid suggestion, but is it possible to switch to the Display view, keeping the theatre view running in the background (not showing), and close it later from a program perspective?
Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: stewart_pk on September 13, 2017, 08:27:53 am
Thank you all. Once again developer turn around time once issue is properly identified impresses me greatly.
Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: RoderickGI on September 13, 2017, 09:34:40 am
Thanks Hendrik.
Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: tij on September 13, 2017, 01:10:31 pm
another reason to use local backdrop images rather than relying on online resouces  :)

local sidecar images works now for Audio ... enable online media slideshow for Theatre View but untick all online sources ... then images stored in album folder get displayed as backdrop

This is great ... especially for bands that change their members ... aka dont want Metallica images with Trujillo to show on Ride the Lightning album.

Unfortunately this still does not work for movies and tv shows :( ... yet ... pls fix this :)
Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: stewart_pk on September 13, 2017, 08:11:37 pm
I've disabled HTBackdrops from my Theater View and now all is well.
I'm relieved, as the other day I woke the other half up because the music came on loudish and MC was completely unresponsive for me to lower the volume until it presumably gave up on HTBackdrops.
Title: Re: Long pause when switching between Theater VIEW and Display VIEW
Post by: datdude on January 03, 2018, 10:35:16 pm
I've had this issue forever, and finally figured out the same solution.