Movie player stops playing DS on windows - URGENT - Its showtime.

Fred

I am using the direct show on windows to playback hap encoded AVI files. I have 800+ cycles, so the system is not stressed. After some time of moving between scenes the movie players will stop playing, no crash, just no matter what they do not play and I have to restart Isadora to get things going again.

I have two days of rehearsal left before the show and the setup is pretty basic, just scenes with movie players and mapping, nothing else. I have made a lot of adjustments and optimised the system. I have a good playback machine, kapylake, 32g ram, 1080ti, and just running two HD projectors blended. I have goner through every optimisation process and nothing changes it. I am sure this is a bug, have notified Mark and been chatting via email, seemingly I am left on my own after all this investment in an Isadora system for this show....

It seems it may be related to this issue:

https://community.troikatronix...

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Juriaan

Perhaps you can switch to an older version of Isadora ?

LPmode

I've seen the behavior with HAP mov clips as well, and I think I was able to make the clips play by manually enabling the player. I'd try to initialize the movie player with enable art zero and a delayed enter scene trigger at 1. You'll need to tweak your scene transitions.

Also, have you tried lowering the resolution of the clip? I know it's not a system issue but I think that was my solution around the mov bug.

Skulpture

If you have time I would consider trying another codec as a test. Even if its just one or two clips. Maybe do a batch export overnight?

The systems clearly isn't being stressed and as you say; the patch is simple so I can only assume its a a codec issue. AVI Hap is still pretty new... maybe its a bug that develops over time?

DusX

I have recently come across this as well. Last week. I can't yet reproduce the issue reliably. I was using qt hap, so I don't believe it's a DS issue.

I found that I was able to get reliable playback if I init speed to 0 and then enterscene it to 1. Keeping the movie players enabled always.

Not sure if this will help you... but worth a try.

I am still working on a recreate. If you find a reproducible procedure let us know asap.

Fred

@Skulpture my only codec choices would be Avi uncompressed or hap. I need the DS player to get the performance and multichannel audio.

Does anyone have any other codec recommendations for DS compatible codecs that are high quality?

DusX

@Fred

You can use a higher bit rate wmv file. Although I find these use a lot of cpu cycles.

Fred

@DusX I'm projecting on a 40m * 20 m building, the quality of wmv is too low.

I did some tests with OF and a DS based hap player and don't get any issues, the codec is fine as is the playback. The problem is the way Isadora deals with initialising the movies.

Fred

@DusX so this method leaves me with a black hole between movies?

Victreux

Hello,

Just to share.

I had a similar problem with the player on win ( with a strong computer, Iz 2.5.1 ). But i was using QT, photo-jpeg.

The show played something like 30 time last months.

And 4 times, the players freezed during the show. Evry thing was blocked ; need to quit isadora and start again. No crash report.

Cold sweat every show.

Fred

@Fred so it seems that this is a problem of video playback on Windows full stop. The symptoms are exactly the same as I am getting for hap DS as is for other users with QuickTime and photo jpeg.

Fred

@Skulpture I tested hap DS with other playback systems and don't get this issue. I am doubting it is codec related as the same codec is fine on the same machine with other software. It seems considering the other responses this is an Izzy problem.

Fred

@Fred @DusX ok, after exactly 75 scene changes (all containing) DS native video isadora crashes everyone. Can anyone els recreate this? It would be great to know. I don't have 75 scenes but clicking on any other scenes 75 times exactly isaodra crashes.

Reinhard

Despite the magic number, fingers crossed for your show!

Fred

@Reinhard and everyone, I can confirm this is a bug and is related to activating scenes with movies 75 times. After that Isadora becomes unresponsive. I made it through a rehearsal (less than 75 cues in the show).

Anyone else with this problem restart your patch before the show and as long as there are less than. 75 cues it works fine. Without the worry I was actually amazed at how easy isadora eats through the 4k hap avi files I am playing, they also have 6 audio tracks and this can be expanded to 8 with no trouble.

Fred

crystalhorizon

@Fred very interesting finds. What can that magic number be? @mark