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[murray]

Click to pause is now optional, so whatever work-around you used in MC25 that includes clicking on it automatically, you can also use here again.
Otherwise you have not given any details other then "its broken", which is not something we can work with.

If you want to automate madVR, it also has a network interface you can use to talk to it, which would be reliable in all scenarios.

Thanks Hendrik I’ve wanted to talk with you...
1st off we never ever needed a work round for madvr on MC25 or MC21, its always worked for us,  MC29 is different in this respect and the latest update a few days ago hasn’t fixed the issue.

We did give details in the other thread how to test the problem.

The click to pause does certainly work now on MC29 with your new tick box without pausing the film.  But we don't want to use another command to fix an issue in MC29 .

We didn’t know there was a network interface available for madvr, after doing a Google I still cant find anything relevant. Can you point us to that please so we can test?

If that doesn’t help I’m happy to then give you full details what we are doing and the quick way to break it which we discovered out of the blue....

Thanks again...

[JimH]

I told you in the last thread this cant be tested without madvr.

It would only tell us whether madVR is part of the problem.  That would be useful.

I told you in the last thread that the issue isn't with Windows 10, it isn't with madvr and it isn't antiviris.
All these three things work perfectly on MC25.

I understand that you believe that.  Trust me.  But I'm not convinced.

For instance, any antivirus program may be fine with MC25 but not with MC29.  That's just part of how they work.  It happens all the time.  Configuring them is essential. 

Windows 10 isn't likely to be part of the problem, but it's possible.

MC29 is different in some way and thats where we have the problem. I've also mentioned that we have reverted back to MC25 as it works perfectly.

I know you're very confident of that, but I'm not.  Testing carefully, without making assumptions, might get us somewhere.

I was trying to address hendrik on this as he's the video expert here.

Yes, he's one of them, but it's not clear yet where the problem is.

Would you consider working with a consultant?  I have someone in mind. 

[murray]

It would only tell us whether madVR is part of the problem.  That would be useful.I understand that you believe that.  Trust me.  But I'm not convinced.

For instance, any antivirus program may be fine with MC25 but not with MC29.  That's just part of how they work.  It happens all the time.  Configuring them is essential. 

Windows 10 isn't likely to be part of the problem, but it's possible.I know you're very confident of that, but I'm not.  Testing carefully, without making assumptions, might get us somewhere.Yes, he's one of them, but it's not clear yet where the problem is.

Would you consider working with a consultant?  I have someone in mind.

Hi Jim and Hendrik,

Let us answer some of your questions…

Today we had another check of your wiki on the anti virus situation, first off the HTPC is only for our cinema, its not used for anything else….
Our settings are exactly the same that this thread advises https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,114101.0.html
This was setup sometime ago and I also saw a post I made in that same thread in 2018. (Certainly not to do with any problem…)
The problem still exists even if we set defender “your way” and also if we turn defender off and firewall off, there is still no issue when we revert back to MC25.

Any easy way to see the issue when its broken, you cant bring up the stats for madvr pressing ctrl J, things work if you left click then ctrl J will display the stats.

We still don’t know what causes it to break, but with all the testing over the last few weeks we have discovered how we can make it break. The following may give you some clues, we don’t know???
1. play a film in theatre view, on the player control top of the screen (using the mouse) click pause, then click play, this sequence breaks (or creates the problem) now press cntrl  J and the stats wont appear for madvr. The fix: left click the mouse on the video window and madvr stats ctrl J work. None of this issue happens when we use MC25.

You ask if I would consider working with a consultant, who do you have in mind?

[Hendrik]

The transparent player bar at the top should not block focus anymore in the next build.

[JimH]

There was a problem.  You were right.  I owe you an apology. 

This made it easy to find:

We still don’t know what causes it to break, but with all the testing over the last few weeks we have discovered how we can make it break. The following may give you some clues, we don’t know???
1. play a film in theatre view, on the player control top of the screen (using the mouse) click pause, then click play, this sequence breaks (or creates the problem) now press cntrl  J and the stats wont appear for madvr. The fix: left click the mouse on the video window and madvr stats ctrl J work. None of this issue happens when we use MC25.

[murray]

The transparent player bar at the top should not block focus anymore in the next build.

Im really pleased you have now found the problem Hendrik and I cant wait to test the next build. If I can stay on MC29 rather than MC25 it will be much easier to pop back into JRVR for testing on my large 150" curved scope screen from time to time.

[murray]

There was a problem.  You were right.  I owe you an apology. 

This made it easy to find:

That’s ok Jim these things can happen from time to time.

It was getting to me and I did post the break method 7 days ago in post 29 but I just couldn’t get anyone to listen to me...
But if we have the “focus issue fix” on the way that’s the most important thing not only for me but also MC29.

I’ve been with JR for many years now and running my movie shows for my private film club off JRs Playlist feature is truly amazing. It took me years and years to find a prog that would do what I needed, out of the blue I found JR…... My screenings with the JR playlist are no different to how my shows ran for 40 years being a cinema projectionist with 35mm film. I’m a fanatic about presentation and hopefully soon MC29 will work the same as MC25, All the best....

[jmone]

Myself, Murray and his team have been testing over the weekend to see if we could make a simple scenario showing the focus issue.  Murray has a more complicated scenario that always fails but it is not practical for others to try.

Test Procedure: So for testing this is what we landed on as while not 100% repeatable, it shows that something causes MC29 to lose focus at times:
- Boot into MC's Theater View
- Play video
- Pause video
- Press Ctrl+J to see if it will bring up the OSD
- Shutdown Windows, repeat. 

Results: This was tested with both JRVR and madVR and the results are consistent regardless of the renderer, but.... only on Murray's setup (I could not replicate the issue on my HTPC at all):
- After a Cold Boot, Cnrl+J will not work some 30% of the time
- Behaviour does not change even if MC is set to autorun or not (eg run MC manually after some time allowing Windows to fully load)
- If Cnrl+J does not work, fully exiting and then restating MC does not fix the issue, you have to do a warm reboot.

Workaround: The workaround is when Cntrl+J is not working, you can Left Click on the image and from then it is fine going forward.  In addition it also stays fixed even doing multiple Restarts (warm boots), it is only after cold boots that the issue can arise.  We at one point thought it was Windows loading MC too quickly after a Cold Boot and that some services was not yet up (as I've seen this with my Library Server clients sometimes loading faster than the network connection being available)... but Murray tried turning off MC auto starting and manually running MC after a minute but no improvement.

Any Suggestions ?:  Murray's AV installer is going to map a button on their RC that will fire off a "Left Click" using event ghost so it is not the end of the world but I've run out of ideas on why MC29 is losing focus but only after a Cold Boot.

Thanks
Nathan

[jmone]

I can get a Log from Murray if that helps but I'm not sure it will show any details on what has focus.

[jmone]

I'm not sure if MC's logs show changes in focus? ... but I've written a little util that logs changes to the focus window (attached).  Runs in the background and pushes out a timestamp and the name of what grabbed focus to a text file.  To exit the util just press "ESC".

[Hendrik]

When restarting MC doesn't change the behavior at all, but only a reboot does, you know what that screams to me, right? External interference.
Contrary to these terms existing, a "cold" and "warm" boot are also really not any different to software.

On a technical side, it sounds to me like another window has registered itself as the foreground window, which is a special flag in Windows that retains foreground focus even if some stuff happens.
A fully user-controlled click will override the foreground status from then on.

Why this only happens sometimes, on certain reboots, who knows.

[zybex]

The keyboard numbers used for these are 3 and 4 which we operate through eventghost. We call these 3 = soft, 4 = sharp.

It seems to me from your comments that many other keys are in fact working, so the problem may be with the Eventghost mapping, or even that 3 and 4 are already assigned for something else on the new MC and so are not getting passed to MadVR. Have you tried mapping those scripts to some other different keys? Also, try directly on the keyboard, skipping eventghost. You can check if keyboard shortcuts are working in MadVR by testing a known key function, like CTLR+J. If that works but 3 and 4 don't, then it's likely that changing the keys will fix it.

Also, check numlock 

[zybex]

By the way, I assume you checked the MadVR config from within MC via "open MadVR settings" ?
Upgrading MC would also have upgraded MadVR, possibly resetting your configuration.

[jmone]

Thanks Hendrik, and to make it more confusing…. Murray has both MC25 and MC29 on the same HTPC and it is only MC29 getting these focus problems. 

The good news is that with more testing (since the last post) on MC29 the issue does not appear if:
-   Windows Start Up --> Run on Windows Startup = Media Center
-   Startup Interface --> Mode = Standard View
-   & he then manually switches to Theater View

The focus issue only occurs when the Startup Interface = TheaterView


@zybex, the aim of the testing on the weekend was he was trying to find a simple, repeatable use case where focus is lost that did not rely on madVR or Eventghost.  Murray was able to replicate the loss of focus regardless of it if was madVR or JRVR and can do so with just using Cntrl+J from a keyboard using the method described.  I could not replicate it at my end so it is something unique.

Anyway, he has now narrowed it down to the start-up behaviour going straight into Theaterview.... but it might be the Interaction on getting MC from StdView to TheaterView solves the focus issue.  Likewise a simple Left Click also fixes it.

[Hendrik]

I assume you have the on-screen instructions turned off, eg. Settings -> General -> Show on screen Instructions? If not, try turning them off, they can be a bit icky, and anyone that used it for 5 minutes will know how it works anyway.

[jmone]

Thanks - I learnt something today (how to turn them off)!  +1

Murray checked and "Show on screen Instruction" are already off for him.  Unless something simple comes to mind, he's also pretty comfortable with the boot into Std View then run up Theater View as they already have a button for that and it seems to address the issue.

[zybex]

@zybex, the aim of the testing on the weekend was he was trying to find a simple, repeatable use case where focus is lost that did not rely on madVR or Eventghost.  Murray was able to replicate the loss of focus regardless of it if was madVR or JRVR and can do so with just using Cntrl+J from a keyboard using the method described.  I could not replicate it at my end so it is something unique.

OK, thanks. So any other app may be taking focus. Last time this happened to me it was just a Windows notification taking the focus from MPC-HC (icon was white, saying there was some notification pending). Once I dismissed the notification, focus started working fine again. There's also a setting on Windows about "focus mode" to prevent notifications from interfering, but I'm not sure if it handles this case.

I'd suggest closing all other apps, one by one, to see which one may be causing the issue. Even closing Windows Explorer is a valid test (CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+Right-click on the Explorer bar, Exit Explorer; better open a 'cmd' prompt before doing that, so that you can then type 'explorer' to restart it).

[bogdanbz]

Any easy way to see the issue when its broken, you cant bring up the stats for madvr pressing ctrl J, things work if you left click then ctrl J will display the stats.

I will join this conversation by saying that I am also getting sometimes a similar behavior while watching a movie which was started from Theater View with JRVR (and by now I know it's not the Theater View window which is used to play the movie, but the Display View window):
- I can press Enter to pause/resume the video, the left and right arrow keys to skip forward or back, the up or down arrow keys to display the OSD menu, etc
- but if I press Ctrl+J to display the JRVR OSD, no OSD is displayed

And yes, I also have Startup Interface = TheaterView.

My experience would suggest that it's not an issue of the MC window(s) losing focus (as Windows would not keep sending the key press events to MC in that case), but some issue with the event processing in your window(s ?) event loop.

I have no idea what triggers this, but it does happen randomly.

I only started using MC with v28 last year in November, and it had the same behavior, it's not new to v29.

As a slight oddity: did you know that you have MCC command 24011 mapped to the Ctrl+J shortcut in your default Resources.xml? According to the wiki, the 24011 command is the "MCC_CHECK_FOR_UPDATES" command. Maybe your event loop is sometimes eating the Ctrl+J to run the check for updates, while some other times it's not and the event is left alone to reach another handler that shows the JRVR OSD?

Later than usual edit: You might not experience this odd behavior if you are using some internal builds of MC with check for updates feature disabled!