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[treefog]

All my streams (Including Real PNM) work ok now.

But Brian's http://real.xobix.ch/live/ssatclass.ram stream stopped playing after 7min. and 21min, no juddering just stopped. Xmplay locked up on each stop and I had to use Windows Task Manager to close Xmplay (ctrl/alt/del).

Played one of my Real PNM streams for 1.5hr with no problems.

[treefog]

I just got the juddering on Real PNM stream http://www.radioowensound.com/liveam.ram .

The stream played ok for over 100min’s and then started juddering.

Tried to restart the stream but it would not play. Tried to play other streams with no success.

Xmplay closed ok with its close button (X), but would not reload.

Checked Windows Task Manager:
  Windows Task Manager/Applications did not show xmplay.exe .
  Windows Task Manager/Processes showed xmplay.exe running.

Killed xmplay.exe Process and Xmplay loaded ok.

[treefog]

I got the same juddering problem on Real PNM stream http://www.radioowensound.com/liveam.ram after a 45min. run. This time I could not load Xmplay after killing the xmplay.exe process, had to reboot to get Mxplay to load.

Got the same juddering problem after a 90min. run. This time I did not kill the xmplay.exe process, I just rebooted. On windows shutdown the Not Responding Ending Program form came up. After clicking End Now a form came up showing an xmplay.exe memory allocation error. As the form closed quickly and the machine rebooted I could not capture the address information for you.

Hope this info helps you.

[Fraggie]

I have no idea what's going on. Please try to increase "internet streaming buffer" in XMPlay options and see if that helps.

[Brian]

Yes, buffering certainly seems to be part of the problem. I tried pushing the level up to the max of 30 (previously I had it at 5) and the Swiss Classic stream I mentioned above has now been playing cleanly for over an hour. Of course this means that it also takes that much longer for the stream to start playing at the outset, but I guess I can live with that; and I can try progressively reducing the buffer again and seeing what happens. However, I think it's fair to say one would expect underbuffering to produce breaks in the stream, not the kind of weird behaviour treefog and I have been experiencing, so it would be very helpful if you could continue to wrestle with the problem, please. Perhaps there's some aspect of XMPlay's architecture involved here that Ian or Sebastian Mares could comment on, please?  Many thanks.

[Fraggie]

Perhaps there's some aspect of XMPlay's architecture involved here that Ian or Sebastian Mares could comment on, please?

I fairly doubt it would crash on HTTP streams...

[treefog]

I increased the internet streaming buffer from 15 to 30 for this test with stream http://www.radioowensound.com/liveam.ram.

Stream started juddering after 47min's.

Notes:
When the stream is juddering the time continues to count. Clicking on the pause button stops the juddering sound and the time counting, and the play/pause button rapidly switches back and forth between pause and play. When I click the flashing play/pause button Xmplay switches to play mode and the juddering sound starts and the time starts counting. Clicking the play/pause button back and forth between modes several times caused Xmplay to lockup and required End Task (ctrl/alt/del) to close XMplay.

For a test of Xmplay I let an .ASX stream run continuously for 12hr's over last night and had no problems.

My Hardware:
Home built machine, Intel motherboard P4, 1.8Ghz, 512Mb, XP Pro (sp2)
HP ZE5475 laptop, Intel P4, 2.4Ghz, 512Mb, XP Home (sp2)
Two old HP Vectra's, Intel P2, 600Mhz, 256Mb, XP Pro (sp2)

Testing XMplay ver 3.3.0.3 with xmp-ra.dll(beta 3):
I use the two HP Vectra's for testing my software (my sand box) and have one setup for testing XMplay.
When testing Xmplay on this machine I reboot the machine (clean start) then start Xmplay and let it run untouched until it crashes.

I can also reproduce the juddering crash/lockup problem on my Home built machine and HP Laptop. Doesn't look like a hardware problem.

[treefog]

Internet streaming buffer set at 30 for this test with stream http://www.radioowensound.com/liveam.ram.

Stream started juddering after 38min's.

This time I let XMplay continue running the juddering stream for another 20min's and it did not lockup or crash, just kept playing the juddering sound. As before when I clicked the pause/play button several times XMplay locked up.

Do you think a Beta tester familiar with the inner workings of XMplay would help you resolve the problem? All I can do is report what I see as I have no clue of what's going on within XMplay.

If you have anything specific you would like me to check or report feel free to ask.

[treefog]

Just had a thought, am I using the same DLL's as you?

My DLL's:
14_43260.dll ver 6.0.7.4994
28_83260.dll ver 6.0.7.4995
atrc.dll        ver 10.0.0.2567
cook.dll       ver 10.0.0.1873
ddnt3260.dll ver 6.0.7.2737
dnet3260.dll ver 6.0.7.2737
raac.dll        ver 10.0.0.790
sipr.dll         ver 10.0.0.2564
pncrt.dll       ver 6.0.0.0

If my DLL's don't match yours, zip yours up and I will do a test with your DLL's.

[Fraggie]

I have been playing http://www.radioowensound.com/liveam.ram for over 2 hours with buffer setting 3 with no problems.

Here is a debug version which will try to catch any probable problems while streaming from PNM protocol (so please test only with PNM) and report them by message boxes. So if anything gets reported please post it here.

http://dhost.info/pieknyman/bin/debug/xmp-ra.dll

Thanks for your time.

PS. Your DLLs are the same as mine.

[Brian]

My only added, non-technical observation is that this problem never occurs when using Tara and the same dlls. So by a process of logical deduction, the problem is either with xmp-ra.dll, or is due to incompatibility between XMPlay and some Real Audio streams when relying on a native plugin, or a combination of the two.

[Tsorovan]

[kind of useless post, this]

[treefog]

Test with xmp-ra.dll (Debug Version)

Internet streaming buffer set to 15 for this test with stream http://www.radioowensound.com/liveam.ram.

The stream started juddering after 108min's

No mater what I did I could not get any debug messages to popup.

Something different with this dll is that the stream will judder for a minute or two, then revert back to normal play, then in a minute or two back to juddering. I have had the stream running for the past 220min's with the stream changing back and forth between normal play and juddering.

I captured an mp3 of the transition from juddering to normal play. You likely have no idea what our juddering word sounds like, maybe if you hear it you will have an understanding of what we are talking about. Not wanting to interfere with XMplay, I connected the line output to the line input of another machine for the capture.

You can download juddering.mp3 from my server.

Brian: Would you also have a listen to my juddering.mp3 and let us know if my juddering sounds the same as your juddering.

I did a test yesterday with two machines playing the same stream at the same time to see if something in the stream is triggering the problem. No luck, one machine started juddering at 47min's and the other machine kept playing the stream normally.

Ps:
XMplay just locked up at 232min's with no debug messages. Needed to use ctrl/alt/del to close XMplay.

[Fraggie]

Well, it seems it's not a networking problem after all. I managed to get this juddering on a local file... Geez...

[Brian]

The juddering was similar here, although nothing like as bad as in treefog's sample. Also, I haven't had the problem since I pushed up the streaming buffer. I would reiterate that all the streams I listen to are Real Audio 6.0, so I have no idea what would happen with earlier or later versions. I never have local files in this format. My money is on an incompatibility between Real Audio and XMPlay when relying on a native plugin, although I realise that's a rather unspecific claim.

[Fraggie]

I think I fixed juddering with local files. Please check if this update also fixes your issues, treefog.

http://dhost.info/pieknyman/bin/xmp-ra.dll

[treefog]

Test with xmp-ra.dll (Your New One. Mar. 30/06)

Internet streaming buffer set to 15 with stream http://www.radioowensound.com/liveam.ram.

Started the stream at 7:50am local time.

Stream continues to run with no problems at 9:15am local time.

I will be away today but will let the stream continue to run for the day. I should be back home around 7:30pm today and hope that I can report no juddering or crashes.

Note: My local time in Canada is EST (UTC/GMT -05:00 hours).

[Brian]

Yes, I think we're making headway - congratulations! The Swiss Classic stream (the only one previously juddering here) has been playing smoothly for over two hours with the buffer set at my old level of 5.

[treefog]

Got home and found that my test machine had shutdown.

Checked the history on my web servers UPS and found that we had a power bump at 2:20pm and that's what shutdown my test machine. I have UPS power on my DSL modem, router, switches, main machine, laptop and web server, but not on my two old test machines.

I have set up a test that I will run over tonight and I will give you a report tomorrow morning. I will try to report by 9am local time (UTC -05:00 hours) Mar.31/06.

I am running Real streams with xmp-ra.dll (Beta 3, Mar. 30/06) on three machines.

To see if this is a protocol problem each machine is running a Real stream with a different protocol.
 
Test Streams:
http://www.radioowensound.com/liveam.ram PNM protocol
http://real.xobix.ch/live/ssatclass.ram RTSP protocol
http://www.xstream-tv.ca/chuo.ram HTTP protocol

Hope I have some good news for you tomorrow.

[treefog]

Results after overnight xmp-ra.dll (Beta 3, Mar. 30/06) test.

http://www.radioowensound.com/liveam.ram PNM protocol stream was locked up displaying 193min's (3.22 hours).

http://real.xobix.ch/live/ssatclass.ram RTSP protocol and  http://www.xstream-tv.ca/chuo.ram HTTP protocol streams still running with no problems after 827min's (13.78 hours).

As http://real.xobix.ch/live/ssatclass.ram and  http://www.xstream-tv.ca/chuo.ram are both running Read Audio 6 (Cooker/G2 codec) and http://www.radioowensound.com/liveam.ram is a Real Audio 5 (Sipro ACELP-NET codec) stream this may not have been a good test.

I would like to rerun the test with a PNM protocol Read Audio 6 or 4 stream and a NOT-PNM protocol Read Audio 5 stream. This would narrow the problem to either PNM protocol or Read Audio 5. Do you have any links I can test with?

I can't figure out why you can't reproduce the problem. Do you have a clean machine that you could install XMplay on for a test? This is a long shot but may be worth a try. I have had problems in the past when testing programs on the same machine used to compile the program. Most of the time the problem was not including a required DLL in the setup program and this would not apply in this case.

Anyone willing to do some beta testing?:

  Setup XMplay with xmp-ra.dll (Beta 3, Mar. 30/06) and test the following stream.
  Radio station CFOS-AM http://www.radioowensound.com/liveam.ram

  If you don't like the content you can test with the sister station (I get the same problem on both)
  Radio station Mix106-FM http://www.radioowensound.com/livefm.ram