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[Sky King]

Hello folks.  I've run into a little nitpick of an issue that of which I can't seem to get at the root cause and I'd like your insight if you can help.  Randomly but predictably, when watching a movie from my Win11 HTPC connected via HDMI to my Sony Bravia 9 television, during the playback of a movie the video will suddenly freeze but the audio continues to be processed normally and smoothly without interruption.  I can mouse up and stop, not pause, the video and restart it and playback picks up perfectly from where the point where the playback was manually stopped with the mouse click.  This happens randomly, but predictably, once or twice during a half hour period of time.

The HTPC is connected to the network via 1GbE Ethernet and the fact that the audio continues without interruption leads me to believe that it isn't a connectivity issue but I could be wrong.

Any thoughts on where to look?

[marko]

I have also experienced this behaviour. Win 11 HTPC connected via HDMI to an LG-something-or-other that's around nine years old.

As soon as I twig, I stop, the bookmark is saved, and restarting playback allows the movie to complete. It's OK if it's just me and the wife, but really, super-uncool if guests are round.

The only difference for me is that it's really not that predictable. When I first began to get this, I kept a note of each affected movie, but, I couldn't find anything common between all them, so, I gave up looking. I can go several weekends without issue, then have a run, weekend after weekend. It has never been predictable. Our HTPC is fanless, so I wondered if perhaps the crash was being caused by too much work and excessive heat, but it's definitely not that.

To be fair, I've not had it happen for a while now, but thought I'd chime in with this mostly, unhelpful post, so that you would know you weren't going crazy

The problem with issues like this, is, in order for them to be fixed, you have to provide cast iron, 100% guaranteed ways to reproduce the freeze, because, if the developer's can't see it, they can't fix it.

Frustrating, right?

[mwillems]

Hello folks.  I've run into a little nitpick of an issue that of which I can't seem to get at the root cause and I'd like your insight if you can help.  Randomly but predictably, when watching a movie from my Win11 HTPC connected via HDMI to my Sony Bravia 9 television, during the playback of a movie the video will suddenly freeze but the audio continues to be processed normally and smoothly without interruption.  I can mouse up and stop, not pause, the video and restart it and playback picks up perfectly from where the point where the playback was manually stopped with the mouse click.  This happens randomly, but predictably, once or twice during a half hour period of time.

The HTPC is connected to the network via 1GbE Ethernet and the fact that the audio continues without interruption leads me to believe that it isn't a connectivity issue but I could be wrong.

Any thoughts on where to look?

If you're seeing it once or twice per half hour, have you tried playing with the CTRL-J console up until it happens and seeing if that shows any useful info (it might just freeze too, or it might not)?

[JimH]

I wonder if a network device is going into a low power state.  We've seen that with some network cards in the past.  It could even be on the TV side.

Might be in the Weird Problems thread.

[Sky King]

Thanks all and it's good to know that I am not crazy and someone else has experienced this phenomenon.  And, yes, it's impossible to troubleshoot with being able to reproduce it.  I may have been a little overzealous when I mentioned one to two event per half hour and it's more like one to two events per two-hour movie.  Interestingly, I don't think I've ever seen it on TV shows but just Movies not that that should make a difference.

I'll try playing with CTRL-J up and see if that traps anything.  Regarding the network adapters, the one in the computer are set to not allow Windows to put them to sleep, etc., but regarding the TV I never have it connected to the network unless I want to update the software, etc., so it's probably not caused by the NIC in the Sony.

I have the ability to swap out an old Win10 HTPC and may do that on a trial basis just to see if it's possibly Win11-related.

Have a good weekend y'all!

[Sky King]

@mwillems, I ran the program with CTRL-J active and when the video froze up so did the activity on the console as well.  I am going to play around with desktop resolutions and refresh rates just to see if that has anything to do with it but I suspect not.

I've attached a representative screen shot of what the typical console info looks like just in case any thing glaring stands out.  Does MC have error detection mechanisms built in and running that could help determine why the video froze up?

[mwillems]

So in the past when I've had network problems that sometimes caused the video to freeze or caused video/audio to desync, but at least in my case the console continued running and logging dropped frames (i.e. the network wouldn't let JRiver buffer enough video to keep up, but JRiver itself remained fully responsive).

The devs are the real experts here, but if the console is also freezing that suggests to me that the issue is more likely in the video stack (drivers, video card overheating, bad connection to display, etc.) than in the network stack.

[Sky King]

Update:

Swapped out the Win11 HTPC for a lower performing Windows 10 HTPC with a down-level version of MC and let it run.  Ran for many hours without a video freeze.  So, this narrows it down to the HTPC hardware to Sony TV interface or, less likely, something that changed from MC 32 to MC 33.

Attached is a CTRL-J console readout for the Win10 PC in case it can show something.

[BryanC]

Based on your other post about files dropping offline, I bet that your USB external drive(s) are powering down intermittently when connected to your newer hardware (specifically the internal USB hub). You can try to disable USB selective suspend settings in the Windows power controls but that may not fix it completely, there are certain USB->SATA chipsets that randomly drop off/power cycle (usually transparently). ASMedia ASM1X5X, Realtek RTL9210, and JMicron JMS567/568 are common culprits.

[Sky King]

Hi BryanC and I appreciate the thought.  In this particular issue I am experiencing, however, the files are located on a QNAP NAS and are being delivered over a 1GbE connection to the PC and there are no USB drives involved.

[JimH]

Hi BryanC and I appreciate the thought.  In this particular issue I am experiencing, however, the files are located on a QNAP NAS and are being delivered over a 1GbE connection to the PC and there are no USB drives involved.

See if you can reproduce it when the NAS isn't involved.  Play a few movies from a local internal drive.

[craigmcg]

Sky King, I have two non-expert test suggestions:

1) try to copy one of the problematic movies from your NAS to the Win 11 HTPC (as Jim mentions) then try watching it to see if there are any issues
2) if there are not, the network driver in the Win 11 htpc might be an issue (or a network setting like Jumbo Frame being different between the NAS and the htpc). I use 9014 for Jumbo Frame on my home network on all pcs and the NAS and I can't remember the last time I had a video freeze unless the file itself was bad. I found this info about QNAP and jumbo frames in case it helps. https://www.qnap.com/en/qutube/video/tFxjYeCcxyc

[Sky King]

Per JimH's and craigmcg's recommendations, I put some test files on the computer's local hard drive and the video also froze when playing these files back probably eliminating a network related issue.  Just as a test, I think I will install a down-level version of MC and give that a try.  I have versions going back to 19 but will probably install the same version that is on the Win10 machine which is 32.058 or thereabouts.

Depending on what I find with that, I may put Win10 on that same computer because it's so very much fun to play around!

[whoareyou]

Do you have the presentation queue enabled (I don't see statistics for it in your screen grab)?

I have same issue, and not sure when it started, but for me the issue seems to be related to the presentation queue being enabled.
When presentation queue is enabled you see "queue empty" statistic continuously climbing on ctl-j screen. 

If I disable presentation queue videos seem to play normally.  This only seems to happen on my machine with Nvidia 4070 card.  I haven't updated the driver for this card for as long as I can remember. 

[Sky King]

I installed a previous version of the software, 32.0.58.0, and the video has been delivered smoothly without errors of any kind for well over ten hours.  That would lead me to believe that the network, the video stack and the embedded Intel Arc & Iris XE graphics adapter are functioning properly.

Does this imply something was changed that my hardware system did not agree with going forward in version 33 or is it possible that the installation of version 33.0.72.0 that I have on the system got corrupted or, possibly, I messed up a setting that led to this behavior?

Would an uninstall and reinstall of 33 be worth the effort?  Let me know if there is anything else that I can do on this end to assist in identifying the root cause of this issue.

(PS.  I am not sure of where to get at the setting for "presentation queue" but I'll look for it and play with it if possible.)

[craigmcg]

My suggestion is to do a library backup in the fully functional MC32 on your Win 11 htpc including the settings then once you have done so, I'd do a library restore including the settings within your currently installed MC33 on the same pc.

This should address settings "mismatches" then you can test playback to see if you need to go further. If everything works as hoped, I'd so a library backup with settings included within MC33 for subsequent use in MC34 if you upgrade.

You should also check that you tamed Windows Defender for MC33 on the htpc just to be safe.

[Sky King]

I will do that and report back my findings.  Just to be certain, when I do a manual library backup, the only question I get asked by the program is "Do you want to save the icons".  Please confirm that a backup will automatically save all the program settings in effect at the time or is there another "box that needs to be ticked" somewhere?

OOPS!  What's that saying about the best laid plans of mice and men??  This is a remote library on a different PC entirely from the one that I am watching from and the ability to back up is greyed out.  Should I try and host this same library where the server is to the one I am watching from?

[craigmcg]

I forgot to mention that when I do this I change to a local library on the same pc (even an empty one since the goal is backing up the settings) then do the backup from the old MC then restore the new MC. Once I have restored the library in the newer version of MC, I reconnect to the library server (remote library) with the settings specific to the pc are in place. I do check the save the thumbnails because I find that makes things faster on restore.

More expert people may have a better way to do this.

[Sky King]

Understood and thanks for the clarification.