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[fitbrit]

If I pause a video while viewing in MC, the video actually stops after a second of pause. Then my music visualisation comes on, and MC is suddenly playing IPC, but silently. No other programs are playing audio in the background.

I have to stop playback and relaunch the video I was watching to get it back.

[Matt]

I only kind of understand, but IPC will release if a string of silence is played.  It'll reattach once real sound is played.

This is because there are cases where a continuous stream of silence is played to the driver.  We don't want it to attach in those cases.

[fitbrit]

But in my case, IPC is taking over from a video playing in MC that is merely paused. The video would stay paused for 1-2 seconds and then is stopped somehow. I've quit and relaunched MC a number of times and the behaviour continues. I'll try restarting my computer now in case there's something funky going on there.

I just restarted. Here is what is happening again.

* I'm playing a video in MC.
* I try to pause it. The very first time I press pause, the video comes out of pause by itself after a fraction of a second.
* I try to pause it again. This time, the video pauses for 1-2 seconds and then stops. Aeon (SoundSpectrum music visualiser) comes on in Display View. There is no sound.
* Suddenly Playing Now is showing IPC.

In order to go back to my video, I have to press Stop and relaunch the video file.

[Matt]

Is it possible the audio output for the zone is set to Media Center?  That won't work (and won't be possible next build).

[fitbrit]

Is it possible the audio output for the zone is set to Media Center?  That won't work (and won't be possible next build).

I will check this and report back. Will be a couple of hours.

[fitbrit]

The audio device was my AVR as expected, so no luck there.

I made a little video to show what's going on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lswFZtrmtzw

[Matt]

Well it only shows IPC as playing if the driver is engaged.  So I think something must be engaging the WDM driver.

[mwillems]

I watched the video, but I couldn't see any of the screen in the top/left of the frame so it's hard to tell, but do you have WDM input redirected to a different zone?  If not, try that and see if it helps (redirecting the input to a different zone should prevent it from hijacking the current zone)

Additionally, have you tried testing with your visualization plugin disabled so it's more obvious what's happening in MC (i.e. is it switching out of display mode, what's going on)?

[fitbrit]

Well it only shows IPC as playing if the driver is engaged.  So I think something must be engaging the WDM driver.

Thank you for reiterating that. It led me to figure out the issue. A small app (now) called AVR Guard:
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=339273

The version I had was called AVR Audio Switch Fix, before it was finalised as AVR Guard.
.
A lot of people have the Silent Stream Bug with their HDMI outputs from nVidia cards to their AVRs. When audio is played, starting from silence the AVR would switch modes and since that took up to 2 seconds or so, the beginning of the audio was missed; short sounds were lost altogether.

AVR Guard was a solution for this, by playing 'silence' through the HDMI all the time. However, it never worked for me, or many others. Over time I forgot I had it installed, or resolved to play with the settings, upgrade to new versions etc. I never did.

My 'WDM problem' was due to this app working in the background. When I pause or deactivate the app, all is well in the MC world.

I will eliminate AVR Audio Switch Fix / AVR Guard from my system.


The GREAT news is that the WDM properly fixes the Silent Stream Bug for me. I will confirm that it does so independently of AVR Audio Switch Fix / AVR Guard once I have removed the latter totally.

[fitbrit]

I watched the video, but I couldn't see any of the screen in the top/left of the frame so it's hard to tell, but do you have WDM input redirected to a different zone?  If not, try that and see if it helps (redirecting the input to a different zone should prevent it from hijacking the current zone)

Additionally, have you tried testing with your visualization plugin disabled so it's more obvious what's happening in MC (i.e. is it switching out of display mode, what's going on)?

Thanks for the tip and suggestion. I think all is well now, but will redirect t another zone at a later time. I did eliminate the visualisation from the enquiries. It didn't really matter what the settings were - IPC was taking over the zone because of AVR Audio Switch Fix / AVR Guard. Funnily enough, this is the first time in years that little app has shown signs that it did anything at all.

[CountryBumkin]

Another entry for Jim's "weird problems" thread.