SOLVED: Long intro videos crashes Big Box (caused by Nvidia Shadowplay)

[Napoleon]

I am running latest 7.14 and have just started messing with Big Box Startup videos. Almost all videos causes Big Box to instantly crash directly after the video is complete and Big Box is launched. However, this only happens with longer videos. For example, the "Blue explosion" one is 8 seconds, and it runs no problem (I did notice however, that I can't skip this video to instantly launch Big Box). All the other ones (around 15 seconds and longer) make Big Box instantly crash after the video has ended. So I used Handbrake and re-encoded one of the longer videos, and cut it to 5 seconds - this solves the problem and Big Box can launch after video is complete. So this definitely seems to be an issue with longer intro videos (that are "skippable" I might add). I can run the longer ones if I skip and press enter in the middle of the video. So the problem only seems to occur if I let the longer video/s finish.

It doesn't matter if I put them i Startup folder or if I name them startup and ut them in Videos root folder. Also, changing between VLC and MPC makes no difference.

Any ideas?

[neil9000]

Hi and welcome to the community.

Hmm strange. The issue with you not being able to skip the 8 second video is probably just due to Bigbox not having loaded yet, and the reason you can skip on the longer videos is that Bigbox has had time to load at that point. As for the crashing I have never experienced that on my system. I have 4 videos in the startup folder and there lengths are, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, 20 seconds and another 20 seconds, I have never seen Bigbox crash when any the video's finished. Does Bigbox launch OK if you remove the startup folder?

[Napoleon]

Thank you, and thanks for the quick reply.

BigBox lanuches fine with the short startup video, and it doesn't matter if I have a Startup-folder or not. Launching BoxBox without any startup video works just fine (which is how I have been running it previously)

[neil9000]

Hmm, then I am a tad confused to be honest. FYI changing from VLC to WMP or vice versa has no effect on the startup video's as hits hardcoded into the program, that's just for video's once in the program. I'm going to tag @Jason Carr here as I am honestly at a bit of a loss on this one, it's the first time I have ever heard of this issue so i'm not really sure how to troubleshoot it, as I say I have no issues and have been using the feature since it was in beta and I haven't had a single crash like that. Do you get a error when it crashes at all, or do you just get returned to the desktop? 

[Napoleon]

I get an error message like "launchbox encountered an unexpected error...." with a text box containing a crash report (I guess?), but then it freezes and Windows shuts down the processes.

Edited December 1, 2017 by Napoleon

[neil9000]

Any chance you can grab a shot of the error you get? You can hold the windows button on your keyboard and hit the printscreen key to grab a screen cap which will be saved to your pictures folder.

[Napoleon]

[neil9000]

OK thanks for the image, I have never seen that error message before unfortunately, hopefully as I tagged Jason in here he will see this and offer you some advice. Sorry I can't help you more, but I really have no idea on this one.

[Napoleon]

I solved it!

I got a funny feeling that it might have something to do with Nvidia drivers since I saw some Nvidia processes also crashing with BigBox. I have been using Nvidia Shadowplay to record some games that Launchbox/Emumovies can't find videos for. When I disable the "In-Game Overlay" function in Geforce Experience, the crashes go away! Feels good to find the cause of the problem.

 

This might nontheless be valuable info I guess?

Edited December 1, 2017 by Napoleon

[neil9000]

Ah, yes good to know for sure. I have recorded my Bigbox before with the NVidia recorder and not got that error, but I will go and test now to see if I can replicate it here.

[Napoleon]

I am running latest Geforce Experience Version 3.11.0.73 and Nvidia Driver 385.69. I am intentionally not running latest Nvidia Driver since it causes issues with HDR movie playback.

When I re-enable (toggle) "In-Game Overlay", the crashes reappear. Just wanted to clarify my setup.

[neil9000]

Yeah this may be a driver issue, I just made two video's of me starting Bigbox and had no issues, but I am on the current driver.

[Napoleon]

Ok good to know. Thanks for your help.

 

Also, I am on WIndows 10.

Edited December 1, 2017 by Napoleon

[neil9000]

Yeah windows 10 here also, with the latest GeForce experience and the latest driver running  a GTX 1060.

[Jason Carr]

Good to know @Napoleon; thanks for that sleuthing. This has been reported by a couple other people, so it's great to get it identified.

[livemoonkey]

Did anyone ever figure this out?  I still crash when starting BigBOx.  Turned off overlay.... re-installed windows and drivers.  Reinstalled LaunchBox... nothing :(   

**Also crashes when clicking on "options" in launchbox menu.

[Jason Carr]

6 hours ago, livemoonkey said:

Did anyone ever figure this out?  I still crash when starting BigBOx.  Turned off overlay.... re-installed windows and drivers.  Reinstalled LaunchBox... nothing  

**Also crashes when clicking on "options" in launchbox menu.

Unfortunately it sounds like there's something else, unrelated to this thread, going on here. The above issues are no longer a thing.

Most likely it's faulty drivers or something of that nature, which unfortunately makes the issue difficult to resolve. It's also possible that you have an app running in the background that is poorly written and conflicting with LaunchBox/Big Box. So the first thing I would try is closing all background processes/apps via Task Manager to see if that helps, and then look for driver updates.