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[Beamer]

Can we please have a fix to enable pausing a movie without MC closing down the PC.

My PC OS is Win 7 x86 & set for 10 minutes screen save and 20 minutes to sleep.  I have ticked disable screen save in Theatre view, alas MC insists on closing down the PC within a few minutes of either pausing a movie or stopping the movie and leaving the Theatre view on screen.

Presently the only way to have a tea break is to exit and restart the program using resume from bookmark, which is not very elegant.

[Matt]

Can we please have a fix to enable pausing a movie without MC closing down the PC.

My PC OS is Win 7 x86 & set for 10 minutes screen save and 20 minutes to sleep.  I have ticked disable screen save in Theatre view, alas MC insists on closing down the PC within a few minutes of either pausing a movie or stopping the movie and leaving the Theatre view on screen.

Presently the only way to have a tea break is to exit and restart the program using resume from bookmark, which is not very elegant.

Media Center prevents system standby while playing, but if you pause playback it will allow the computer to sleep.  This seems reasonable to me.

Are you saying you want it to stay awake forever while paused?

[rick.ca]

Media Center prevents system standby while playing, but if you pause playback it will allow the computer to sleep.

I haven't tested it lately, but the issue I've noticed in the past is the computer goes to sleep only a minute or two after pausing—if it has been playing longer than the usual timeout. I've learned if I stop it instead, it won't go to sleep until the usual time of inactivity has passed. My theory is MC keeps Display View going, but this does not register as "activity" by the computer. So soon after MC stops doing so, it goes to sleep. Stopping, however, closes Display View and returns to Theatre View—which registers as activity, and the timeout clock starts again.

If this is what's happening, then maybe the fix is to do something on pause that will register as user activity and cause the computer to restart the clock on the sleep timeout.

[Beamer]

I haven't tested it lately, but the issue I've noticed in the past is the computer goes to sleep only a minute or two after pausing—if it has been playing longer than the usual time-out. I've learned if I stop it instead, it won't go to sleep until the usual time of inactivity has passed. My theory is MC keeps Display View going, but this does not register as "activity" by the computer. So soon after MC stops doing so, it goes to sleep. Stopping, however, closes Display View and returns to Theatre View—which registers as activity, and the time-out clock starts again.

If this is what's happening, then maybe the fix is to do something on pause that will register as user activity and cause the computer to restart the clock on the sleep time-out.

This was the case but with 149 the situation is even worse. The time-out is only a couple of minutes in both Pause and Theatre view after pressing Stop.  If a Pause is needed for more than ~2 minutes I presently am forced to exit MC

[Beamer]

Media Center prevents system standby while playing, but if you pause playback it will allow the computer to sleep.  This seems reasonable to me.

Are you saying you want it to stay awake forever while paused?

In audio mode, MC will prevent standby only while audio is playing, it will still go to standby (within minutes if I remember correctly, not 20 as set in power set-up) after the play list finishes, which IMHO is perfect.  Unfortunately the same algorithm is playing havoc in Video mode.

I would like the computer to observe my aforementioned time-outs in both Pause and Theatre Menu modes.  I believe there is presently a bug in the software that is not resetting the time-outs when a movie is Paused or Stopped after running for more than the computer set time-out which in my case is 20 minutes. I suspect the anomaly is also present in the play back of audio when paused after playing for more than 20 minutes.

While I have your attention, can I propose you consider adding a screen saver during Pause mode! This is a feature of WMC that is a necessity for plasma viewers that wish to avoid burning their screens.

[JimH]

I've moved this from the build thread, which is intended for bugs.

Please modify your Windows settings to increase the timeouts.

[Matt]

So if pausing reset the "I'm here" timer so that it didn't sleep for 20 minutes, it'd be perfect?

[flac.rules]

Media Center prevents system standby while playing, but if you pause playback it will allow the computer to sleep.  This seems reasonable to me.

Are you saying you want it to stay awake forever while paused?

It doesn't prevent it at my computer when playing audio, only while playing video. Is this unintende behavior?

[Matt]

It doesn't prevent it at my computer when playing audio, only while playing video. Is this unintende behavior?

So your computer goes to sleep and stops the music while playing audio?  I haven't seen this, and it would be unintended.

[Beamer]

I've moved this from the build thread, which is intended for bugs.

Please modify your Windows settings to increase the timeouts.

With respect, this is a bug.

[Beamer]

So if pausing reset the "I'm here" timer so that it didn't sleep for 20 minutes, it'd be perfect?

Subject to reseting the timer on Pause and when exiting to Theatre view using Stop, it would indeed fix the problem. 

[rick.ca]

So if pausing reset the "I'm here" timer so that it didn't sleep for 20 minutes, it'd be perfect?

Maybe. Do you mean "20 minutes" literally, or whatever the Windows setting is? I would expect my Windows power saving settings to apply, just as they do anywhere else.

[flac.rules]

So your computer goes to sleep and stops the music while playing audio?  I haven't seen this, and it would be unintended.

Well, I am not that good at the difference between sleep, standby and all that. TO be honest, I think the problem is that the monitor is turned off when playing audio, might that be the case? (Seeing as audio is output over HDMI, this also stops the music)

[Matt]

Well, I am not that good at the difference between sleep, standby and all that. TO be honest, I think the problem is that the monitor is turned off when playing audio, might that be the case? (Seeing as audio is output over HDMI, this also stops the music)

You're probably right.

I'm not sure how to solve that.  Would it work for you to tell your system to not turn the monitor off?

Or does there need to be an option like "Keep monitor on while playing"?

[flac.rules]

Hmm, never turning the monitor off wouldn't be so good in itself, but it might be solvable by setting the monitors to never turn off, but setting the system standby to set in after a given amount of time. I will try that out and give a report. If that doesn't work out, having a setting to supress monitor turning off on all playback would be nice.

[Beamer]

Matt: I see that a fix to this bug has not been rolled into the latest release.  This is a show stopper for me. When do you anticipate fixing the issue?

[Matt]

I'm a little confused by this, because I don't understand how the pause command from the remote isn't resetting the system's sleep timer based on user activity.

Regardless, pausing playback will attempt to reset the system sleep timer in code with 16.0.157.  However, testing would be appreciated because the MSDN documentation is not good for the power management system.

The changes:
Changed: When pausing or unpausing playback, the system sleep and display timers are reset.
Changed: The screensaver is allowed while fullscreen playback is paused.

Thanks.

[rick.ca]

I'm a little confused by this, because I don't understand how the pause command from the remote isn't resetting the system's sleep timer based on user activity.

Could that be because it's not necessarily a pause command? On my Firefly, I use the Play button as a Play/Pause. The button is programmed with the "Application Command" "Media Play." The pause button is programmed with something else.

[Beamer]

I'm a little confused by this, because I don't understand how the pause command from the remote isn't resetting the system's sleep timer based on user activity.

Regardless, pausing playback will attempt to reset the system sleep timer in code with 16.0.157.  However, testing would be appreciated because the MSDN documentation is not good for the power management system.

The changes:
Changed: When pausing or unpausing playback, the system sleep and display timers are reset.
Changed: The screensaver is allowed while fullscreen playback is paused.

Thanks.

I am using USBUIRT via girder and sending  C:\Windows\System32\MC16.exe /MCC 10022,-1.  I very much look forward to 16.0.157 when it's available.

[Beamer]

16.0.159 appears to resolve the standby in pause issue, alas there are still issues.

1. In ROST (non exclusive renderer) the screen saver activates correctly but does not cancel when the movie is un-paused. Audio is present along with the screen saver pattern.

2. In ROHQ (Exclusive madVR) the screen saver does not activate in pause mode. If the video is left paused until the display time-out is exceeded, when the video is started the video / audio is out of sync.

[Sandy B Ridge]

I'm not sure if this is related.

I have Norton 360 installed and set to detect when programs enter full screen so that it prevents idle time tasks such as disc optimisation or virus scanning. Unfortunately it

a) detects the time as 'idle' even though a movie is playing
b) doesn't detect that MC is in full screen mode

I either have to put it in 'stealth' mode, turn it off completely, or keep twiddling the mouse every 10min (setting in Norton to delay idle time tasks) to stop it from doing heavy disc access which causes the movie to stutter badly.

Is MC16 setting the correct 'flags' when playing movies? Maybe this is why windows thinks it is idle and turns to standby after a set interval.

SBR

[Matt]

1. In ROST (non exclusive renderer) the screen saver activates correctly but does not cancel when the movie is un-paused. Audio is present along with the screen saver pattern.

Please test 16.0.160 when it's available and let us know if this is better.

2. In ROHQ (Exclusive madVR) the screen saver does not activate in pause mode. If the video is left paused until the display time-out is exceeded, when the video is started the video / audio is out of sync.

I'm not sure on this one.  If your hardware is good, you could use windowed madVR instead of exclusive.

Otherwise, you might need to seek after you unpause to sync up.