[ant_tm]

I am having a problem with my XBMC Beta 1 installation. When I play a video it will often (but not always) stop the playback and return to the previous menu after slightly more than 30 seconds. When it drops out the movie or episode is marked as watched.

My system is a fresh install of Vista SP1 32bit with AnyDVD, PowerDVD, AVG and XBMC Beta 1. Hardware is an nVidia 8200 based motherboard (XFX), AMD X2 5600+ processor and 2GB RAM.

I have seen the problem with all types of files (avi/xvid, mkv 720p, iso). When it drops out like this I can restart and skip to the location and continue (the slightly more than 30 seconds means I skip to almost the right spot) but sometimes it will drop out again another 30 seconds in. On one occasion I had to restart a fourth time and skip 2 minutes in before it would continue without problems.

Some (purely subjective) observations;
- it seems to happen more with High Qualitty Software Upscaling enabled
- it seems to happen more when I skip over opening credits

Debug log of one such dropout can be found here - http://pastebin.com/m14069fb7

Ant_tm

[darren]

My System is Vista Business SP1 in 64bit, Nivda 9300GS 256MB.

I had same issues. only for High Qualitty Movie. Some AVI with Low qualitty is no problme.

I found a way to fix that:

XBMC -> System Config->Video ->Advance Setting -> Buffer:

Change "Video/music/DVD" buffer from 256K to 2048K.

After that, I am able to play Blue-Ray Rip 720P 4.3GB movie without any problem.

[ant_tm]

Hi Darren - thanks for the leads. Unfortunately the cache does not resolve the issue for me. But you led me to some obserations;

1. I am using Enterprise Edition 32 bit (long story) - is it possible that something is missing from the non-home editions of Vista ?

2. I set the cache to the longest possible 4096KB from memory. When I start a video it takes a while to fill the cache but if I skip forward it starts playing instantly - even from a 10 minute skip forward that the cache could not contain.

3. If I am playing from the network and something slows network speed then rather than dropping out like this is doing it will show me a buffering message and then keep going.

4. The log I provided does show an exception which I think is the problem.

5. The files I am playing are coming from a drobo. I have tried playing when shared on my file server, shared on a droboshare or plugged in locally. Same issue comes. I will try if I cam replicate it from local SATA disk & on other usb devices.

6. I have updated to latest (178.13) drivers with no effect.

7. The timing thing is weird - it is always about 29 seconds - that is if I skip forward 3 times it will play for 29 seconds from that point before it drops out. If it does not drop out then, then it will play the entire file.

I really hope to get this resolved

Anthony

[ant_tm]

I just ran a few tests and came across something interesting. I ran 12 tests on various files. Every time I viewed a file from Library mode I got the drop out problem. Every time I ran with Library mode turned off I was about to play the file without problems.

This seems more than a little odd but then I do not know the ins and outs of library mode. Perhaps a developer could comment ?

Thanks
Anthony

[jorgb]

[ant_tm]

Thanks for the confirmation Jorgen - nice to know I am not going nuts

I see some similarity between your posted log and mine - the CDVDPlayerAudio:: Discontinuty and the ImageLib.dll memory leak for example.

It's odd that you're getting it regularly at 60 seconds while I get it regularly at 30 seconds. Out of interest what OS and graphics chipset are you using ?

Agreed on the rocking of XBMC for Windows

Anthony

[jorgb]

Hi ant_tm,

My system is Vista SP1, I use an ATI Sapphire PCIe card. Not too fancy, but what might be the expanation is that I increased the video buffer with twice the size. It might need some experimenting if it is made 4 times as large or 2 times as small to see if the time it needs to drop also changes.

Regards,
- Jorgen

[ant_tm]

I just wanted to confirm that the issue is still there with Beta 2.

ant_tm

[calvinf]

There is already a thread about this problem here:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=36502

Unfortunately, judging by the number of replies, it seems very few people are in this position!

To summarise the problems I was seeing. I installed Beta 2 on two IDENTICAL model / spec / batch machines and the "cleaner" machine of the two experienced problems, whilst the other didn't!

The problem was happening on SMB share (both IP address mapped and mapped via windows) for standard def files and also locally stored high def files.

After a full uninstall and delete of any left over XBMC folders, the problems appeared to go away. I upgraded to the test version with lower CPU usage at idle, but have yet to see if the problem has come back or is still resolved.

[ant_tm]

Hi Calvin. Thanks for the pointer - I had not seen that.

However I do not think the problem being reported at the beginning of that thread is the same problem. The symptom of dropping out of video playback is the same but there is no mention of the consistant 30 (or 60) seconds and the error log provided there is obviously SMBclient related - hence it is fixed for them when they map the source as a drive letter.

Can you confirm if you are getting the same symptoms as Jorgen and I ? The 30 seconds (or 60), the same messages in the logs, seeing it whether local or network mapped file and (almost) never seing it if not in library mode ?

Can you provide some details of your configuration ? Any matches with what I detailed in the original message in this thread ?

Thanks
Ant_tm

[RickDeckard]

I can confirm I am seeing the same problem. On some movies I can predict exactly the moment at which they are going to stop playing and kick back to the menu - which is about 30 seconds after starting the movie.
It happens in about 90% of the time when I start the movie, so it does not happen always. I do not see a significant difference between starting from the library or folder view, though. Also, I have only seen it happen on 1080p H.264 MKV files.

Here is an extract of the debug log file: http://pastebin.com/m5c65fd87

In summary, I also see similar errors as reported above:

22:00:53 T:3956 M:1287372800 DEBUG: Q:\system\ImageLib.dll (base 08240000): Detected memory leaks: 1 leaks
22:00:53 T:3956 M:1287372800 DEBUG: leak caller address 8308ed8, size 128, counter 1
22:00:53 T:3956 M:1287372800 DEBUG: ImageLib.dll: Total bytes leaked: 128
22:00:53 T:1200 M:1288400896 ERROR: CThread:taticThread : Access violation at 0x616c5044: Reading location 0x616c5044

My Setup:
- Pentium Dual Core E2180 (OC'ed to 2.8 GHz)
- Vista SP1
- Geforce 9600GT with latest drivers

I noticed there are a few threads dealing with this problem, could they be merged so we can coordinate efforts in getting this sorted out?

[cfsnatch]

Sorry - tried to delete this post.

[calvinf]

I am seeing the same errors, extracts from log here as examples:

Upon start of playback, many of these:

14:48:26 T:916 M:1143242752 WARNING: CDVDVideoCodecFFmpeg:: Decode -
avcodec_decode_video didn't consume the full packet. size: 54, consumed: 0

Then:

14:48:27 T:468 M:1143259136 DEBUG: Surface::CSurface::Flip - missed
requested swap, increasing swaptime to 38183
14:48:27 T:2740 M:1145602048 DEBUG: CDVDPlayerAudio:: Discontinuty -
was:2005998.579255, should be:1992619.566988, error:-13379.012267
14:48:29 T:468 M:1145540608 DEBUG: CApplication::OnKey: 61517 pressed, action is 24
14:48:29 T:468 M:1145012224 DEBUG: Alloc resources: 2.12ms (0.00 ms skin load, 0.30 ms preload)

And as it crashes:

14:48:55 T:468 M:1142042624 DEBUG: SECTION:UnloadDelayed(DLL:
Q:\system\ImageLib.dll)
14:48:55 T:468 M:1142042624 DEBUG: Q:\system\ImageLib.dll (base 07F30000):
Detected memory leaks: 1 leaks
14:48:55 T:468 M:1142042624 DEBUG: leak caller address 7ff8ed8, size
128, counter 1
14:48:55 T:468 M:1142042624 DEBUG: ImageLib.dll: Total bytes leaked: 128
14:48:55 T:2016 M:1143119872 ERROR: CThread:taticThread : Access
violation at 0x00000029: Reading location 0x00000029
14:48:55 T:2016 M:1143119872 NOTICE: CDVDPlayer::OnExit()
14:48:55 T:2016 M:1143119872 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: eof, waiting for queues to empty
14:48:55 T:2016 M:1143119872 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: closing audio stream
14:48:55 T:2016 M:1143115776 NOTICE: Closing audio stream
14:48:55 T:468 M:1143250944 DEBUG: SECTION:UnloadDelayed(SECTION: LCODE)

The ONLY thing that has changed in my install since it was apparently working, is that the my library has been updated with coverart etc scraped from IMDB.

The above extracts are from a 1080p file stored locally, but it's also happening with SD content played over the SMB.

EDIT: C2D T8100 (2.1GHz), Nvidia 8400M GT, 2GB RAM, Vista Home Premium

[calvinf]

Has anyone got ideas as to the problem or solution for what we're experiencing?

[Peter_T]

Nope, but I'm definitely seeing th eproblem, too... I can FF through the "stop" point... weird.