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[Supersnake]

How to fix this bug in MC 24.0.45?

Description of Problem
Today I clicked on a video in my collection - let's call it Video A.
Five seconds into the playback of Video A the playback hung. I was forced to view the hungup frame (with the audio continuing) for about 10 seconds, after which time the playback resumed and the rest of the video completed playing without a problem.

 After that event:
1. Every remaining video (Video B or C, etc) that I have starts and plays fine for about 5 seconds, but after the 5 seconds has elapsed the video gets hung for 10 seconds just like before.
2. But the frame that displays in the hangup is the very same frame from Video A.
3. After 10 seconds the hung frame gets released and the rest of the video completes playing without a problem.

No matter which video I load, and no matter what the file type is, 5 seconds into the video it gets hung up and displays the frame from Video A.

Failed Attempts to Fix
1. Moved Video A to the trash and launched Video B, C, etc.  Same hangup, same Video A frame displaying in the hangup.
2. Toggled Windows Control panel to make a different media player the default player and all videos played fine without a hangup on the different media player. But the problem didn't go away when returning to MC 24.

[swiv3d]

Update to 54

[Supersnake]

I updated to 24.0.52 (Stable) - same problem
I updated to 24.0.54 (Latest) - same problem.

 ? What do I do now?

[swiv3d]

Haven't come across this one - If it was me I would backup my library - uninstall MC and then reinstall it, a bit drastic but I can't think of any other solution... you might want to wait to see if one of the video gurus joins the conversation - Hendrik for example.

[Supersnake]

Thanks for the suggestion. Can you tell me the path to locate the Library Backup?
Hoping that one of the video gurus comes on with the fix or my problem gets recognized as a bug and is corrected in an update.

[JimH]

Backup and Restore are under File > Library

[Supersnake]

Thanks Jim, will give that a try.

[JimH]

Did you follow the tutorials / threads on the different distro's that you installed?

What happens if you turn off auto-import.

Did you install your license?

[Supersnake]

After creating a Library back up I browsed to Restore Library > it offers an option to Restore library and an option to Restore Settings.

Before I take the drastic option of uninstalling/reinstalling MC 24 I would like to know if that Restore Settings option restores the settings I have within Tools/Options?
If it does not restore my Tools/Options settings then I will take screenshots of all my options settings before I perform an uninstall/reinstall.

Did you follow the tutorials / threads on the different distro's that you installed?
I did not install any Linux software on my computer if that is what you are referring to.

What happens if you turn off auto-import.
The problem remained.
Also, in the main menu on the far left of the MC screen when I click on "Videos" the only videos there are two videos I uploaded 6 years ago. [and when I play them they play with the problematic bug]

Did you install your license?
Yes, I did.

[jmone]

Very very odd.....To narrow it down, also try toggling a couple of the following and settings in Tools--> Options--> Video
- Video Mode: Red October vs Rod October HQ
- Hardware accelerate video : On vs Off
- Optimise hardware decoding for performance : On vs Off

[Supersnake]

Very very odd.....To narrow it down, also try toggling a couple of the following and settings in Tools--> Options--> Video
- Video Mode: Red October vs Rod October HQ
- Hardware accelerate video : On vs Off
- Optimise hardware decoding for performance : On vs Off

Toggled Red October  Standard vs Red October HQ =  Problem remained
Toggled Accelerate Video On vs Off = Problem remained

--> Optimize Hardware Decoding is not listed in Tools>Options>Video (see screenshot). Is it listed somewhere else?

 

[jmone]

You only see that option with the latest build and only when Video Mode is set to Red October HQ.

...anyway it does not look like it is the video renderer but maybe Hendrik has some Ideas.

[Supersnake]

Thanks for the suggested workarounds everyone.

Update
I made a backup of my library then uninstalled and reinstalled MC 24.
Good News: Was able to restore my library from the backup.
Bad New: Tools/Options/Settings did not get restored. Have to reset them all manually.
Very Bad News: No matter what video I played the same frame hungup from "Video A" made its way into every video again.

Update
So, I uninstalled MC 24 for a second time. This time though I did not restore my library, and no library items were present as a result. The bug is still there.

[swiv3d]

How do you know if the bug is still there when there are no library items for you to play? Try installing VLC and see if that suffers in the same way - this is looking less and less like an MC problem.

[Supersnake]

Yes, I used VLC and it played videos without a problem.

[fitbrit]

Things to try:

1. Choose a video file. Locate it on your disk, and delete the sidecar file. Now try playing it.

2. Remove a video from your MC library, but do not delete the file from disk. Now try playing it from Explorer in MC.

Weird problem.

[Supersnake]

Fitbrit,
Could you please guide me. I have no idea how to locate and delete a .mp4 video file's sidecar file (or how to locate any file's sidecar file).  But before you do that, could you and everyone here that has been trying their best to help me resolve this weird issue, please look over this:

Last night I utilized Windows Backup and Restore to access a system image I created 6 days ago and I restored my computer to become as it was 6 days ago. I thought that there might be a chance that 6 days ago, this problem I am now experiencing would not be present.

After the restoration was completed I immediately played one of the many .mp4 video files that I have on my drive - making sure that the video file I chose was not the now infamous "Video A" file. Let's call the video file that I chose to play Video X.  Please note that Video X was the first video I chose to play after the restoration and I played it using MC24.

Video X played perfectly from start to finish. Needless to say I thought that I uncovered a workaround by going back in time.  However! I then played a second video file, let's call that video file Video Y.  Five seconds into the playing of Video Y a frame from Video X displayed and the playing of Video Y was hung for 10 seconds displaying only that frame from Video X. That is the identical behavior that I was experiencing before, only difference is Video A is no longer involved, Video X is.

 I then chose a third video, and a fourth video, and a fifth video to play. Five seconds into the playing of each one of those videos there appeared the frame from Video X and the playback of the videos was hung for 10 seconds after which time the videos resumed playing correctly to the end.

I have no idea what is behind this weirdness and really would like to have the MC video playback problem fixed.

VLC continues to play my videos without any problem.

[Hendrik]

This sounds very bizzare, and I have never heard of such a problem before.

The entire video playback chain in Media Center is completely destroyed and re-created between video files, which means no component that handles video actually remains active to be re-used.
The only part of the system that does is the graphics driver.

As such, I would recommend to update the driver, or at the very least do a full clean re-install of the same.

[Supersnake]

Hendrik,
Thank you very much! Every aspect of your analysis was correct. After updating my graphics driver I could view video files without experiencing the hang.

The problem can accidentally return.
During a trial run of playing one video after another, I accidentally did something to cause the Theater View screen to appear, and the playback of the video then hung for 10 seconds displaying only the Theater View screen. From that event forward every subsequent video that played would hang after 5 seconds of playing and display only the Theater View Screen. The hang would last 10 seconds.  I corrected the problem by performing a clean reinstall of my updated graphics driver.

The problem can be reproduced by intention.
After experiencing the accidentally occurring event I discovered that I could reproduce the problem by pressing the Ctrl+4 keys to activate the Theater View keyboard shortcut. From that event forward every subsequent video that played would hang after 5 seconds of playing and display only the Theater View Screen, the hang would last 10 seconds.  I corrected the problem by performing a clean reinstall of my updated graphics driver.

Note: I performed several more trials in which I intentionally activated the Theater View during video playback but the video did not hang, and I was able to exit Theater View without any difficulty or delay. Beyond this experiment I have no reason to activate Theater View when viewing a video.

At the present time videos are playing problem free using MC24. Should the hangs appear again it admittedly would be an annoyance to have to perform clean reinstalls of the graphics driver but it does correct the problem. Is this problem something that needs further investigation by MC developers?