M3U Locking up Music Player

[DuncanCW]

My Music directory is located on a USB drive with over 10000 songs in more than 1000 directories. I have no problem playing individual songs on alblum directories. When I select the m3u's which worked in MediaMVP's software, there is a quick flash on the GB-PVR 99.12 beginning with the word Exception, followed by a large black block box covering the the rest of the error message and with Windows Media Player controls along the bottom. Nothing plays and GB-PVR must be closed and restarted. I haven't been able to figure out where the conflict is arising. A sample m3u and logs.zip are attached.

Thanks for you assistance,
Chris

[DuncanCW]

I downloaded a skin which moves the windows media player to a different part of the screen allowing me to see the full error message.

"Error: Exception from Hresult: 0xC00D132B"

From looking at the logs, when I select an M3U file, it seems ALL available songs on the hard drive are added to the queue instead of just the ones in the m3u file.

[sub]

Does it do this with the built in Music Library? I just tried it here and it worked fine for me, but your logs look like you're using some other music plugin.

[DuncanCW]

I use gbpvr primary to replace the built in software for the MediaMVP. I'm still trying different things, such as Music Library 2, however, the response time is too slow (counted in minutes sometimes) and it doesn't like to stop or pause the music. I have reverted to using the MediaMVP software until this issue is resolved.

I also receive an error message in Music Library 2, but I do not know if its associated with m3u's, yet. I have tried all the music plugins in an attempt to get around this. The only thing the other offer we want is the display of album art, which the screen saver plug in provides.

I have also reinstalled Windows Media Player 11, Hauppauge's Media MVP software, and GB-PVR multiple times in an attempt to figure this out. Once, it ran 3 m3us before I received the error message, but i haven't been able to reproduce the success again.

The attached logs are after I uninstalled GB-PVR, deleted the directory, and reinstalled GB-PVR. No Plugins or Skins have been added. I rebooted after installation was complete. I then went to the built in music player, selected Playlists, then a very short playlist of 15 songs. The hard drive churns as it adds approx 14K of songs to the play queue. Then I get the exception error and see a windows media window which I cannot move to see the exception error or close either.

Thank you for a great program and your assistance!

[sub]

Is the K: drive a local drive, or network one?

[DuncanCW]

K: is local... a USB drive connected to the computer on which gb-pvr runs.

I used to run GB-PVR on the same computer it is now, but accessed the Shared Music directory on another computer on the home network using the same playlists in the same folder they are in now. Due to the computer fan dying, I removed the hard drive and put it into an external USB enclosure and connected to the GB-PVR computer.

I have the m3u's in a directory under the parent music directory so they are accessible from all computers on the network. The m3u refers to all files relative to the position of the m3u file, i.e. up one, over and down. This was working no matter which player I used until now.

Based on your question, I saved two of the m3u's on the C: of the GB-PVR computer with the USB drive attached. K:\My Music replaced the ..\ at the beginning of each line in the m3u and the files play in GB-PVR.

Unfortunately, this breaks Windows Media Player and WinAmp on the other computers. Mapping K: on the other computers allows me to play the m3u's, but I cannot create playlists from the other computers, because they insert the Shared name \\Jerrymediapc\music (k)\ instead of K:. This results in a long long delay in Windows Media Player and winamp chokes.

The other users create the playlists on their computers, how can I continue this without the slowdown?

Why doesn't relative addressing work on a usb drive, but it does on a shared drive on the network?

What is I missing?

Thanks again for your assistance,

[sub]

Does setting <UseWindowsMediaPlayerForAudio>false</UseWindowsMediaPlayerForAudio> in config.xml help?

[DuncanCW]

Yes. It helps. I can play the playlists on K: without crashing or having to resave them on C:. I noticed I loose visualizations. No biggy, because they don't show up on the MediaMVP anyways. Do I loose anything else? Is there another fix where I don't loose anything?

When I clicked one of the 2 m3u's on the c: drive, I noticed GB-PVR.exe.log shows both m3u's are parsed and all songs are added to the song queue. So when I click on the m3u's on the K:, it's probably not adding all 14000 songs, only the thousands in various playlists in the same directory. It still results in a long pause before music plays.

What would be the reason for this type of recursive parsing and adding of all songs in m3u's in the same directory? It doesn't save the information for later use, because when I choose another m3u, it adds all the songs to the queue again.

[sub]

Yes. It helps. I can play the playlists on K: without crashing or having to resave them on C:. I noticed I loose visualizations. No biggy, because they don't show up on the MediaMVP anyways. Do I loose anything else? Is there another fix where I don't loose anything?

This fix effectively tells it to use Directshow instead of WMP to play music. I'm not sure why its having problems with this file on your machine when you use WMP, so sorry - no alternative at this stage.

When I clicked one of the 2 m3u's on the c: drive, I noticed GB-PVR.exe.log shows both m3u's are parsed and all songs are added to the song queue. So when I click on the m3u's on the K:, it's probably not adding all 14000 songs, only the thousands in various playlists in the same directory. It still results in a long pause before music plays.

What would be the reason for this type of recursive parsing and adding of all songs in m3u's in the same directory? It doesn't save the information for later use, because when I choose another m3u, it adds all the songs to the queue again.

Does setting <MusicLibraryAutoQueueFiles>false</MusicLibraryAutoQueueFiles> help?

[DuncanCW]

Changing the setting to <UseWindowsMediaPlayerForAudio>false</UseWindowsMediaPlayerForAudio> in config.xml eliminated the Exception error, but lost visualizations. In my current configuration, this is acceptable.

Changing the setting to <MusicLibraryAutoQueueFiles>false</MusicLibraryAutoQueueFiles> eliminated some of the delay experienced when GB-PVR parsed a large group of m3u's in the same directory.

Thanks to Sub for all the help!