MrSco

Yea that prompt is probably only good if you actively change the setting. Not if your setting was already set to VLC from last year when it was the recommended stable setting. So whatever update rolled out that deprecated VLC, silently made everyone’s setup less stable without warning them their current setting is not recommended. was it mentioned in the release notes that pop up on new versions to warn users their video setting may need to be changed for stability?

so I guess i switched my bigbox video setting to use VLC a year ago as directed by @C-Beats ... and more recently when I checked the setting, I only checked in LaunchBox settings, not also in BigBox and BigBox had it still set to VLC from last year's testing... So now BigBox AND LaunchBox are both set to WMP for video playback and I've had BigBox attract mode running for over 24hrs and no issues or crashes. Its the longest it's ran without crashing in a long time. I'm gonna let it go for another couple days over the weekend to be sure, but it seems like the code base has fully switched back to VLC being garbo and wmp being stable now. ... maybe pop a warning to users who have VLC still set in their settings warning of instability with a check box to not remind again if they wanna keep vlc garbo... cause if thats really the issue, thats pretty bad to allow users to make their settings unstable by having updates roll out without warning the user their settings are no longer ideal... they'd have to go into the settings and see that VLC is now labeled (Deprecated)... which I'd argue is useless to most users who have no idea what that word means lol

This has been happening for years. Tested after every update and on multiple systems. Always running the latest version. You can see the history in this post and others

Tested many variations over the years. Even this one. Crash city. Such a shame cause it’s an amazing app otherwise. It just can’t play videos for shit

I wouldn’t hold your breathe. It’s been busted like this for many years now and across many devices. Lots of others having the same issue. The only workaround is to use a theme that has attract mode not play any videos. Super lame in 2025 we can’t play some videos without crashing.

that didn't take long... crash again... The program BigBox.exe version 13.21.0.0 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Security and Maintenance control panel.

crashes have started happening very frequently in attract mode now. even with default theme. within minutes or an hour at most. It used to at least run for some hours before crashing. I can't believe this has been busted like this for so many YEARS! In an effort to get to the bottom of it, I asked chatgpt for some incite based on the event viewer errors (not very descriptive most of the time). I also wrote a powershell script to test all the video files for corruption... it found two corrupted videos even though the videos played fine... I'll attach the script and the busted videos in hopes it will shed some light... Application: BigBox.exe CoreCLR Version: 6.0.3624.51421 .NET Version: 6.0.36 Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception. Exception Info: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at SharpDX.XAudio2.VoiceShadow.VoiceVtbl.OnVoiceProcessingPassStartImpl(IntPtr thisObject, Int32 bytes) Faulting application name: BigBox.exe, version: 13.18.0.0, time stamp: 0x670d0000 Faulting module name: unknown, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x00000000 Exception code: 0xc0000005 Fault offset: 0x00007ffccad25773 Faulting process id: 0x2154 Faulting application start time: 0x1DB5B7A6AF92289 Faulting application path: H:\Arcade\LaunchBox\Core\BigBox.exe Faulting module path: unknown Report Id: 13e25831-29f3-4802-83a5-84da61c57c95 Faulting package full name: Faulting package-relative application ID: The program BigBox.exe version 13.20.0.0 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Security and Maintenance control panel. i'm getting these errors randomly while bigbox is running in attract mode idle... just randomly stopping on different games to play their videos and display their artwork It appears that BigBox is encountering an unhandled exception within its audio processing code—specifically in the SharpDX.XAudio2 layer—while it’s in attract mode. The error message: > **System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.** > **at SharpDX.XAudio2.VoiceShadow.VoiceVtbl.OnVoiceProcessingPassStartImpl(IntPtr thisObject, Int32 bytes)** suggests that something in the audio “voice” processing for your media playback isn’t being properly initialized or is being prematurely disposed. In practical terms, when BigBox rotates through the various games and their associated videos or artwork, an audio callback (or a resource that the callback expects) is missing, leading to a crash with an access violation (0xc0000005). I'm gonna run another attract mode test and see if it crashes now. will report back. Check-VideoCorruption.zip corrupted_videos.zip corrupted_videos_found.txt

same issue here on 13.20... attract mode usually doesn't crash for some hours, but now it crashes within minutes every time. please fix

Adding a delay of 5 seconds in a ahk script that launches demulshooter instead of launching the exe directly from additional apps fixes the issue.

did you ever find a fix for this? I'm having a similar issue but it seems to happen randomly and almost every time if I launch demulshooter as an additional app before the emulator... no demulshooter and black screen issue never happens

After I kill launchbox and big box, I can just start them again and it works without having to restart the computer

Oh I completely understand. Besides that the software is amazing and I recommend it to everyone. The crashing is the one pain point and stands out for me since everything else works so great. one thing that seems more unique to my crashes then others is 95% of the time when it crashes there is no error message. Others seem to get an error message. I’ve had error messages and Event log entries and posted them in this thread above I believe. But most of the time, The bigbox process just locks up and all videos freeze and controls are unresponsive. I have to kill from task manager.

Default theme. As you can see from the multiple threads, many people are having the same issue for a very long time now.

Yep. On latest version of everything. Including launchbox 13.14 and using VLC as video setting. Coming up on a decade of this issue persisting. Something is fundamentally broken with continuous videos playing in bigbox. I smell memory leaks or a race condition. But from what I’ve tested my library isn’t the issue. BigBox software is.

I'm on default theme now on a brand new computer with brand new windows install on a nvme ssd. I renamed my Videos folder to Videos_disabled and ran attract mode for 3 days no problems with images only.... but with videos playing i'm lucky if i get 8 - 12 hours. I also ran all my video files through ffprobe and moviepy with a python script to check for bad video files and no errors thrown... import os import subprocess from moviepy.editor import VideoFileClip # Replace 'folder_path' with the path to the folder you want to check folder_path = 'H:/Arcade/LaunchBox/Videos_disabled' def check_video_files(folder_path): print('starting...') for root, dirs, files in os.walk(folder_path): for file in files: if file.endswith(('.mp4', '.avi', '.mkv')): file_path = os.path.join(root, file) try: clip = VideoFileClip(file_path) except Exception as e: print(f'******Corrupted video file: {file_path}******') else: clip.close() result = subprocess.run(['ffprobe', '-v', 'error', '-show_entries', 'format=bit_rate', '-of', 'default=noprint_wrappers=1:nokey=1', file_path], capture_output=True) if result.returncode != 0: print(f'******Corrupted video file: {file_path}******') check_video_files(folder_path) so it seems like bigbox attract mode fails playing video files after some random amount of time. but we already knew that... for years now. I wish it would be fixed. I think @Jason Carr mentioned he did attract mode stress testing with videos playing, but not sure how long

I believe I tried images only years ago. Probably in the thread above somewhere. It’s almost definitely related to the videos playing. That’s the only reason I run attract mode is for the videos. I even tried deleting all the media and having launchbox redownload it all fresh. I even setup a webcam to watch the screen so I could capture when it was dying but it was always a different video/game. It shouldn’t be a mystery to get a bunch of videos to play continuously in shuffle. Wtf

Yep. It’s super lame that bigbox can even run attract mode for a day. It’s just playing videos. I even upgraded the entire computer to an amd 7840hs with 32gb of ram and an nvme 4TB ssd. Computer is a beast but bigbox dies trying to do attract mode for an extended period of time. It’s been like this for years. 6 years or more. @Jason Carr doesn’t seem interested in fixing it.

Thanks. That must be a new setting. Me likey.

I’m having this issue now with the newest version of launchbox. All audio settings are correct and all audio works until after the first game gets switched away from. Then no more sound until I hit a button to stop attract mode and then sound from videos play again.

i spoke too soon... just got a crash... at least there's an error message now? also when it crashed RAM usage was around 12gb out of 16gb and after it was around 4gb used out of the 16gb total. so it looks like a memory leak. I recently upgraded the nuc to have 16gb of ram (instead of 8gb)... Value cannot be null. (Parameter 'obj') App: Big Box Version: 11.11 Type: System.ArgumentNullException Site: Int32 GetGeneration(System.Object) Source: System.Private.CoreLib at System.GC.GetGeneration(Object obj) at Meta.Vlc.Wpf.VideoDisplayContext.Dispose(Boolean disposing) at Meta.Vlc.Wpf.VlcPlayer.<>c__DisplayClass123_0.<VideoFormatCallback>b__0() at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.InternalRealCall(Delegate callback, Object args, Int32 numArgs) at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.TryCatchWhen(Object source, Delegate callback, Object args, Int32 numArgs, Delegate catchHandler) at System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherOperation.InvokeImpl() at MS.Internal.CulturePreservingExecutionContext.CallbackWrapper(Object obj) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state) --- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown --- at MS.Internal.CulturePreservingExecutionContext.Run(CulturePreservingExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state) at System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherOperation.Invoke() at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.ProcessQueue() at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.WndProcHook(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, Boolean& handled) at MS.Win32.HwndWrapper.WndProc(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, Boolean& handled) at MS.Win32.HwndSubclass.DispatcherCallbackOperation(Object o) at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.InternalRealCall(Delegate callback, Object args, Int32 numArgs) at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.TryCatchWhen(Object source, Delegate callback, Object args, Int32 numArgs, Delegate catchHandler) at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.LegacyInvokeImpl(DispatcherPriority priority, TimeSpan timeout, Delegate method, Object args, Int32 numArgs) at MS.Win32.HwndSubclass.SubclassWndProc(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam) at MS.Win32.UnsafeNativeMethods.DispatchMessage(MSG& msg) at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.PushFrameImpl(DispatcherFrame frame) at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.Run() at Meta.Vlc.Wpf.ThreadSeparatedImage.<>c.<get_CommonDispatcher>b__8_0() at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state) --- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown --- at System.Runtime.ExceptionServices.ExceptionDispatchInfo.Throw() Recent Log: 8:48:44 AM Exception

Same here. No crashes in 48 hours. Could be .11 or removing the .flv files. well done sir on identifying the flv! I’ve been dealing with this for 2 years! I was able to remove the relaunch loop from my startup script! thanks to everyone on this thread for their ideas and help and especially to @JohnnyK for figuring it out and @Jason Carr for making the most epic front end software evar!

i went back to check what video file types i have for Ninento Satellaview when i got this crash recorded happening in real-time, but they are all .mp4 ... so i'm not sure its it... but maybe its queuing them up in the background?

quite... i have about 142 .flv video files out of 18,000+ total videos... so that indeed would be random AF if .flv causes the crashes

@JohnnyK here ya go... #SingleInstance ignore SetWorkingDir, H:\Arcade\LaunchBox\ ;get the exe we should run. launchbox or bigbox target := A_Args[1] if (target = "") { target = LaunchBox } targetExe := ".\" . target . ".exe" targetName := target . ".exe" Launcher: ;launch the frontend and wait til it closes to continue RunWait, %targetExe% Process, WaitClose, %targetName% if (target = "BigBox") { Gui, Font, s18 Gui, Add, Text, x10, Relaunching BigBox in... Gui, Font, s32 Gui, Add, Text, vCountdown_text x160, 5 Gui, Font, s14 Gui, Add, Progress, vMyProgress x10 w300 Range0-5 Gui, Font, s24 Gui, Add, Button, w300 h75 Center, Cancel Gui, Show, w320 h240, Relaunching BigBox while (A_Index <= 10) { GuiControl,, MyProgress, %A_Index% GuiControl,, Countdown_text, % 11-A_Index Sleep 1000 } Gui, Destroy Relaunch: ;launch the frontend and wait til it closes to continue goto Launcher } GuiClose: ButtonCancel: if (target = "BigBox") { Gui, Destroy } RunWait, %comspec% /c taskkill /F /IM autohotkey.exe, , Hide ExitApp

If you look in the earlier posts in this thread I posted an older version of my script. I’ll try and post my updated script when I get back home later. most likely you’ll need to customize it for the startup apps you are launching but the relaunch feature is in there and you can rip out the rest