Not always marking played/watched with "External player (MPC-HC)

[Marc_G 92]

Hi folks,

 

About half the time I watch something, all the way through to the end (or, at least to the end of the Resume percentage), but it doesn't show up as watched/played and still shows up as an unplayed title.

 

I've noticed this mostly with TV series though I believe it has happened with movies as well.

 

My system uses MPC-HC to play all content, and I believe I started noticing this once I moved to using the external player.

 

Any idea what might be going on and how to troubleshoot?

 

Marc

[ebr 14923]

How to trouble-shoot would be to post a debug log from when this happens.

 

However, you mentioned TV.  What TV?  A 30 minute tv show is actually only about 20 minutes long if you have removed commercials.  If your max resume % is set to 90 you would have to play it all the way so that there are only two minutes left.  Some TV credits might be longer than that so confirm that too.

[Marc_G 92]

I'm thinking this is an AHA! for me. I apparently set my server settings to 95% (away from the default 90%) because sometimes I'm near the end of a movie at the end of my kids' "naptime" (nap, yeah, right) when they come running down. I then have to watch the last few minutes later. My change was to make it more likely that a late-in-the-movie stopping would still be resumable. I just went into the server settings after reading your note, and saw the glaringly obvious note "Titles are assumed fully played after this time."

 

Oh. Duh.  I guess that explains why short TV (Big Bang Theory, <25 mins) has given me this problem more than big movies. As you say, particularly with my 95% setting, credits not being watched could easily make it such that it's not getting marked played. I can either change back to a lower setting, or just ensure I skip to the end of a show before stopping it.

 

Is there a good description somewhere of how MBC interacts with MPC-HC as an external player for things such as monitoring viewing progress and anything else? I think I'm having some interference problems between the two (see: http://mediabrowser.tv/community/index.php?/topic/1685-mbc-messing-up-frame-step-in-mpc-hc/ ). There's the framestep problem referenced there, and sometimes I'll stop something halfway through and it doesn't show as resumable. It's quite possible I've bollixed something up on my end... I'm not yet confident in asserting there's a bug. I'd like to collect more observations before coming to any conclusion. Just like with this "played" thing, which was my own fault I'm sure.

 

Thanks for being so responsive!!

 

Marc

[ebr 14923]

We use MPC-HC's http interface to obtain progress information.  

[Marc_G 92]

To cap this thread off, I actually found two problems:

1. As ebr said, the resume percentage was causing issues, because I set it too high, and

2. While diagnosing another problem with MPC-HC (which is still unresolved), I had at some point unchecked the web interface port listening... or it was reset during an MPC-HC reinstall. This was a fairly silent problem, because I had left the "Remember file position" enabled in MPC-HC.

 

The unresolved problem is the jerky frame step that happens after I set up MPC-HC for WMC external playing. Haven't gotten that one sorted yet, but it interestingly doesn't seem related to the web interface checked/unchecked. I'll continue to work on this issue and if it has any bearing on MB, I'll post about it. It's quite possible it's some quirk unrelated or only tangentially related to MB.

 

MArc

[Luke 37095]

i could stlll be related to the http interface, perhaps more of a system resource issue. even though you had it unchecked, mbc is still sending out http requests very frequently.

 

you could try using the generic profile just as a test. in that case there will be no playstate or http requests, so just use it as a test for the stuttering.

[Marc_G 92]

Interesting!

 

Maybe I jumped the gun. Tests will continue... Thank you.  I think I just realize why some of my troubleshooting efforts might have been misinformed:

As a test, I exited MBC, then exited WMC, then tested the jerkiness. It was still there. Figured that ruled out MB as the problem. But, I forgot that this stuff is tracked at the server level, so exiting WMC doesn't necessarily change much. I would need to pause the server too... Time for new tests...

Edited November 3, 2013 by Marc_G

[ebr 14923]

Interesting!

 

Maybe I jumped the gun. Tests will continue... Thank you.  I think I just realize why some of my troubleshooting efforts might have been misinformed:

As a test, I exited MBC, then exited WMC, then tested the jerkiness. It was still there. Figured that ruled out MB as the problem. But, I forgot that this stuff is tracked at the server level, so exiting WMC doesn't necessarily change much. I would need to pause the server too... Time for new tests...

 

No, that's not true.  Yes the information is held on the server but it is the client (MBC in this case) that has to tell the server.  So, if MBC isn't running then no status reports are happening (to our server anyway).

[Marc_G 92]

Thanks. I thought maybe MPC-HC playing, with web interface on, was broadcasting to server independent of whether a client was engaged. Now I understand better.

 

Nonetheless, I've found the actual problem, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with Media Browser.

 

Basically, configuring the LAV audio decoder properties to enable SPDIF bitstreaming of AC-3 seems to cause the problem to start. Disabling AC-3 in there makes the problem go away, but then I'm just outputting stereo PCM over SPDIF.  I'll dig into the issue over on the Doom9 forum or other places and see if I can find a resolution. I'll report it back, eventually, in the Frame Step thread I started, to help anyone else who sees it.

 

Marc