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  • RunnerBiker
    Expert
    • Feb 2008
    • 86

    #16
    Yes Tom, I rebooted after disabling all that stuff, and by the way, Sherlock doesn't report any problems either.

    BC3 (and BC2) lock up when attempting to open an MP3 file that has the characteristics I described earlier in this thread.

    Highlight one MP3 file.
    Press ENTER to open it in MP3 Compare.

    The cursor changes to an hourglass for a few seconds and then the screen flickers and the cursor returns to an hourglass. If you hover the cursor on the "Cancel" Red X in the top right corner, after the flicker, the cursor becomes an arrow.

    After the cursor becomes an arrow, clicking on the Red X in the top right corner causes Windows to react to a Not Responding Application, and lets you cancel it.

    Comment

    • Tom
      Expert
      • Oct 2007
      • 74

      #17
      Sounds pretty frustrating, RB. Still, you've ruled out any codec issues, so you & Aaron can look elsewhere.

      Comment

      • RunnerBiker
        Expert
        • Feb 2008
        • 86

        #18
        One additional clue is that the player controls are greyed out when the audio portion of an MP3 file begins after (or very nearly after) 128K into the mp3 file. (offset 20000 Hex)

        This happens on my system (Win XP Media Center).
        It happens on my wife's system (Win XP Home).
        I believe Aaron told me it happens on his test system too.

        What is special about the 20000Hex offset?

        What Call did BC3 make to the Explorer shell to discover whether to enable the player controls, and what response code did BC3 get back that tells it to not enable the palyer controls.

        When the BC3 player controls are not enabled, the MP3 file still plays successfully in Windows Media Player when you launch it from within BC3 (Alt+A X P) or by double clicking on it in the Windows Explorer. Why does BC3 think the mp3 is not playable?

        Is there anyone else reading this who is running Windows XP Media Center who would like to try one of these "bad" MP3 files to see how your system responds to it?

        Comment

        • Aaron
          Team Scooter
          • Oct 2007
          • 15941

          #19
          Hello,

          We are using a Windows API call for the playing of media, which is returning to us that it cannot. Windows Media Player (most recent) probably has been worked on (by Microsoft) to handle trouble or otherwise wider range of files. The older Windows Media Player 6.4 seems to be closer in consistancy with what this API call can also handle.

          Investigating this is on our wishlist.
          Aaron P Scooter Software

          Comment

          • Aaron
            Team Scooter
            • Oct 2007
            • 15941

            #20
            Are you still encountering any type of freezing? It sounds like from your later forum post that you managed to fix that and simply see the "button not enabled" which is the expected behavior.
            Aaron P Scooter Software

            Comment

            • RunnerBiker
              Expert
              • Feb 2008
              • 86

              #21
              Originally posted by Aaron
              Are you still encountering any type of freezing? It sounds like from your later forum post that you managed to fix that and simply see the "button not enabled" which is the expected behavior.
              YES, I'm still getting lockups.

              For a moment after running Sherlock the first time, I could open MP3s that have the 20000Hex offset issue, but as soon as I rebooted the lockups returned. Running Sherlock again did not help.

              Like I said in my post on "06-01-2008 05:57 PM" I'm still getting lockups.

              Thanks for your perserverence.

              I sure would like to see someone else volunteer to test one of these files on a Windows XP Media Center Edition.

              Comment

              • RunnerBiker
                Expert
                • Feb 2008
                • 86

                #22
                aac_parser.ax causing lockups

                I finally figured out what was causing BC to lock up on certain files.

                I used SysInternals: FileMon to watch what files BC accessed when it locked up. The last file it opened was aac_parser.ax. Then it went into an infinite loop reading 9 bytes from the MP3 file at the offset of the first audio frame.

                This frame was an INFO frame and didn't really have any audio in it. I suspect that is one factor. The INFO frame is a recent addition to the MP3 encoding. It is possible that aac_parser.ax was not written to handle INFO frames.

                The first time I reported the lockups to Scooter in October/November 2007, I had just upgraded an audio conversion program that I use. It is called SUPER (http://www.erightsoft.net/home.html). The behavior of BC2 changed.

                Before I upgraded SUPER, when I encountered a trouble file, BC2 would not complete an MP3 compare, but it would respond to the ESC key and regain control. After I upgraded SUPER, BC2 would not respond to the ESC key (locked up).

                I uninstalled SUPER, rebooted, tested, installed the previous version, rebooted and tested again but the new behavior was stuck.

                What I discovered yesterday was that SUPER installs aac_parser.ax but it doesn't uninstall it. I deleted it and scoured it from the registry.

                Finally after months and months, I can use BC2/3 without worrying about getting locked up.

                Thanks for Aaron and Chris and everyone else who worked on this with me.

                aac_parser.ax details:

                Comments: Allows playback of ADTS files (normal extension .aac) in DirectShow players.
                File Version: 1.1.0.0
                Language: English (United Kingdom)
                File Size: 81,920 bytes

                Comment

                • Tom
                  Expert
                  • Oct 2007
                  • 74

                  #23
                  Congrats, RB! Too bad it's not easier to troubleshoot that kind of stuff, but SysInternals really has done a lot to make it doable. The Win Driver Verifier (verifier.exe) is pretty good, too (although not designed for codecs, of course), but it's a pretty obscure tool and requires a lot of CPU. With all Microsoft's (and other people's) work on virtual machines, maybe there'll be a solution soon that'll create an automated, self-contained environment that would really stress-test these kinds of things without affecting the actual installed OS until you were ready to do some kind of repair.

                  You've really done quite a bit of detective work, sir!

                  Comment

                  • RunnerBiker
                    Expert
                    • Feb 2008
                    • 86

                    #24
                    Thanks Tom, This problem bothered me for quite a while.

                    Curiously, I had suspected Super from the start, since the behavior of the MP3 compare in BC changed for the worse when I installed an upgrade to Super.

                    Anyway - the problem seems to be gone now, I have used the MP3 Compare tool to analyze hundreds of MP3 files that would have caused me trouble and it has worked without any trouble.

                    Comment

                    • Chris
                      Team Scooter
                      • Oct 2007
                      • 5527

                      #25
                      RunnerBiker,

                      Thanks for posting the update. I'm glad you finally managed to solve the problem!

                      Also, thanks again for all the feedback you've given us on BC3. We really appreciate it.
                      Chris K Scooter Software

                      Comment

                      • RunnerBiker
                        Expert
                        • Feb 2008
                        • 86

                        #26
                        The next challenge is to discover why sometimes the player controls are greyed out. The file is playable with Windows Media Player, but BC's player controls are greyed out.

                        Comment

                        • Erik
                          Team Scooter
                          • Oct 2007
                          • 437

                          #27
                          As we've mentioned before, the controls are grayed out because we're asking Windows if it can play the file and it tells us it can't because it wants to use an older player. It's on our wishlist to figure out how to get it to use a newer player.
                          Erik Scooter Software

                          Comment

                          • RunnerBiker
                            Expert
                            • Feb 2008
                            • 86

                            #28
                            Originally posted by Erik
                            As we've mentioned before, the controls are grayed out because we're asking Windows if it can play the file and it tells us it can't because it wants to use an older player. It's on our wishlist to figure out how to get it to use a newer player.
                            Windows is probably consulting some codec (or another .ax file) to decide how to answer your query.

                            But the controls are only greyed out for some MP3 files, not all of them. I'm investigation for what is different about the MP3 files that it can't play. maybe there is a clue there.

                            Preliminary results show that the same files that locked me up before I discovered the aac_parser.ax connection are the ones that don't allow playback. The common feature of these files seems to be the first audio frame is at or after $2,000 hex. These files usually have a large picture (APIC frame) in the tag.

                            Comment

                            • Tom
                              Expert
                              • Oct 2007
                              • 74

                              #29
                              Originally posted by RunnerBiker
                              But the controls are only greyed out for some MP3 files, not all of them.
                              Not here -- it's probably been years since I last saw an MP3 for which the play controls were active. Naturally, that's caused me to use BC a lot less for that file format, representing about a 35% reduction of use overall. Instead of fixing BC's plugin, it might only take someone knowledgable to post how to set the right codec to be prioritized (in Windows).
                              Last edited by Tom; 09-Jul-2008, 07:41 PM. Reason: clarification

                              Comment

                              • RunnerBiker
                                Expert
                                • Feb 2008
                                • 86

                                #30
                                Hi Tom,

                                Do you have an MP3 TAG Editor? Something like Tag&Rename? (http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm)

                                Can you remove the tag from an MP3? If you remove the tag, are the player controls enabled?

                                Maybe you can post one of your MP3 files that has the player controls disabled, to see if they are disabled with my install.

                                Comment

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