MrSco
-
Posts
112 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Articles
Downloads
Gallery
Blogs
Posts posted by MrSco
-
-
1 hour ago, jestermgee said:
I'm using WMP, only default theme and still it will just lock up 100% of the time if I leave it running for an hour or so. Basically I kind of have to now disable this feature if I want any of my family to play it since if you leave it, walk away you can bet next time you switch over it will just be frozen and have to switch it off and on again.
Doesn't seem to be video related as I have seen it just lock up on a game where there may not even be a video, just switches to the game then it stops on that game. As mentioned, it is still half responsive in the BG, if I press the BACK button then wait maybe 2 minutes it goes back, then the whole system freezes. Will also note it seems to be placing a huge load on the system since the fans in my small mini PC are basically flat out which only occurs when there is a decent load. In typical unattended mode it's using barely any resources but when in this frozen state its consuming something.
I wish it had have been possible to test bigbox mode in more detail before investing since as nice as it is, it's not useful if it isn't reliable.Have you checked that WMP is selected in both launch box and big box settings? There are settings for both. Also, have you checked the video files for corruption? Also, have you tried letting attract mode run with videos disabled? Also, there is a debugging log option in launch box that may shed some light on things too…got a log file to look at?
-
4 hours ago, C-Beats said:
Yeah when we moved to .NET 9 it cleaned up stability in WMP but tanked it for VLC. There IS a prompt now last I knew in BB when you try to set playback to VLC (WMP is default) that tells you crap could break.
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?
-
On 6/3/2024 at 10:12 PM, C-Beats said:
If you're not already, use VLC as the media player. WMP is fairly unstable comparatively. Also what version are you on? I know we had code changes fairly recently to help with 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
-
1 hour ago, C-Beats said:
There have definitely been times where the app hasn't be as stable, but as of the current release our internal testing last I knew is showing it is. I'd try to update to latest and try again. If you're not seeing it as such let us know via the bug report system.
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
-
23 minutes ago, C-Beats said:
AttractMode using WMP and the default theme should be stable.
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
-
16 minutes ago, jestermgee said:
Have also had the same happening, new install, dedicated system for BigBox.
I have it setup on my test bench running while I work.
It was running attract for about an hour and I noted the screen was frozen, could not CTRL+ALT+DEL either but keyboard numlock I could toggle on and off. The PC fans were also running high so seemed something was working the CPU.
I left it alone for another few minutes and eventually the screen switched to another screen but the whole system then locked up and became unresponsive.
I am a new user, only setup BB 2 weeks ago and this is the 4th freeze this has had, usually when I have it connected to the TV and switch to our apple TV to watch something, switch back to play some games with the family and the thing is again frozen. I would honestly just disable attract however then you are left with a game stuck on screen constantly looping the same demo video which in some cases can make you go insane. Was almost going to build a dedicated cab but can't have it locking up.
Probably more of a FR, but I would LOVE to have an attract mode that didn't scroll through lists and instead just faded inout between different games (from a selection of pre-selected playlists). This is how my vpin does attract, it runs all day sometimes and has never crashed or frozen in 2 years (running pinup popper). Does deflate me a little since I invested in this solution based on a recommendation from my brother so I hope there is some focus happening to investigate the stability of attract mode.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.
-
On 6/27/2024 at 4:39 PM, BigSnoots said:
I figured it was a longshot asking, but I'll keep trying different things and experimenting. If I find a solution, I'll update this post for anyone else looking 🙂 Launchbox has been working really well so I'm gonna stick it out and tweak my setup till it's perfect!
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
-
18 minutes ago, C-Beats said:
When you do so, can you successfully restart Big Box or do you have to restart the computer first?
After I kill launchbox and big box, I can just start them again and it works without having to restart the computer
-
1
-
-
9 minutes ago, C-Beats said:
Yeah, it's a thing we keep a pretty active eye on. Unfortunately there are a lot of variables that affect stability and it's not always a straight line to the solution.
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.
-
3 minutes ago, C-Beats said:
What theme are you running? We test in default and last round of testing both Jason and Faeran were able to keep machines running for a week without issue after the latest round of changes.
Default theme. As you can see from the multiple threads, many people are having the same issue for a very long time now.
-
8 hours ago, C-Beats said:
If you're not already, use VLC as the media player. WMP is fairly unstable comparatively. Also what version are you on? I know we had code changes fairly recently to help with stability.
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
-
On 2/15/2024 at 2:08 PM, arcademode said:
Yeah it's a bummer man. I'm starting to side with @faulkkev here, Bigbox is a paid product and the fact it's crashing while using attract mode isn't good since it's a pretty basic feature. This thread hasn't been updated in nearly a year so is this crash problem just not a priority or what? One would think such a crash would be high priority.
EDIT:
Good gracious, it appears to be some kind of ongoing issue and in some cases for several years. It seems there have been fixes along the way, no telling what or why though.
Here is another (older) thread reporting attract mode crash issues:
18 minutes ago, Retro808 said:I highly doubt Jason or the team are not interested. Last I spoke to them about this he was not able to replicate it to be able to track down what might be an issue. This was something that plagued me for quite a few years. Between 6 total cabs/builds running BigBox it would affect each them differently or not at all. On 2 of my cabs it ended up being corrupt video files (took some testing but eventually I found which platforms had the culprit files). On one other it just stopped being an issue. Two of them never even experienced the issue. I have not had a single crash in any cabinet in well over a year.
Have any of you tried removing your video folder and running BB to see if you get any crashes? Not saying this is the true issue, but it is one known to cause this for some users?
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
-
2
-
-
On 2/15/2024 at 2:08 PM, arcademode said:
Yeah it's a bummer man. I'm starting to side with @faulkkev here, Bigbox is a paid product and the fact it's crashing while using attract mode isn't good since it's a pretty basic feature. This thread hasn't been updated in nearly a year so is this crash problem just not a priority or what? One would think such a crash would be high priority.
EDIT:
Good gracious, it appears to be some kind of ongoing issue and in some cases for several years. It seems there have been fixes along the way, no telling what or why though.
Here is another (older) thread reporting attract mode crash issues:
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.
-
On 2/10/2022 at 1:03 PM, faeran said:
For anyone that has this issue, and has already made sure that under Options > Sound > Attract Mode Master Volume, you have that value set to something greater than 0%.
Please send us your BigBoxSettings.xml file (Located in LaunchBox\Data). You can post it here or PM myself and @C-Beats.
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.
-
2 hours ago, MrSco said:
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 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
-
1
-
-
On 4/26/2021 at 2:47 PM, JohnnyK said:
Well I did the update, AND removed those files... so it could have been anything. I dont know what the update fixed from .10 to .11 that would have solved my issue. But maybe Jason knows. All I know is the only meaningful thing I did was remove those odd video files, Images and then updated.
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!
-
On 7/3/2020 at 7:32 AM, MrSco said:
I’m running the new 11 update and I setup a webcam to watch attract mode and catch the crash happening. It happened after about 3 hours of attract mode running. After restarting bigbox I tried browsing the section of games it died on (satellaview) but they all displayed fine (some video snaps and some image snaps) and no crash.
the only other thing I can Think of that could be causing it is a program I use in the background to control the volume and default audio devices via hotness... Volume2... https://github.com/irzyxa/Volume2
could you maybe try running that program in the background to see if you experience issues with it? Maybe the volume control hooks in bigbox are fighting against volume2 randomly?
it does indeed seem to be something with my Windows environment though...I’d like to figure it out and not just format the computer and it starts working without knowing the cause.
Great updates lately! thanks for the help!
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?
-
4 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:
That is really quite interesting. It's been ages since I've tested with FLV files, so that could actually be the culprit. We'll investigate.
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
Big Box - Crashing while in attract mode
in Troubleshooting
Posted
you can scan your video files with a powershell 7 script like the one I used above.
Another thing of note, over all these years and all the crashes I've had over multiple different systems, windows 10 and windows 11... never did the bigbox attract mode crashing also crash or freeze the computer. I was always able to just alt tab and pull up task manager to kill bigbox.exe or the mere act of alt tabbing would kick in the windows (not responding) alert asking to wait or kill bigbox. After killing the frozen bigbox.exe, I've always been able to just start bigbox again immediately. So that leads me to believe you have some other system stability issues with your system hardware and system os... maybe also run a windows memory diagnostic on your ram...