Windows Media Player V11.0.6 Windows Vista - Taking Forever To PlayMP3 Files

Windows Media Player V11.0.6 Windows Vista - Taking Forever To Play MP3 Files



A few years ago I posted this topic in this news group - seems to have disappeared - but I wasn't too clear in that post anyway!

As the thread title now states, this issue concerns MP3 and not WAV or other lossless file formats.

Any ideas now that I have been more specific?

 

Is WMP searching for a codec to play it, online ?

Is the content protected by DRM ?

What do you see when you click the file ? Window appears,
any decorations appear ? How can you tell your double-click
registered ?

*******

See the posting by "ianastas" here. WMP10/11/12 have a licensed
MP3 codec. If you installed a codec pack, perhaps you now have
two codecs installed to do the same thing ?

http://download.cnet.com/mp3-codec-for-Windows-Media-Player/3000-2169_4-10630559.html

I thought there was some scheme to add "weights" to codecs.
If two codecs are installed, the codecs are considered in
some kind of priority order. And that's a means of managing
situations where a user has loaded too many of them.

It's possible your problem is unique to your particular
set of installed codec packs.

Paul

 

Paul:

1st thing I did two years ago was to get WMP as "off the grid" as possible in its settings.

As far as codec(packs) goes, the only thing I have installed is LAME for my Audacity and Exact Audio Copy programs. Does that count as a codec pack?

 

It says here, LAME is an MP3 encoder, but not a decoder.
So that's getting close to being something that might
interfere. But in your case, it would be a decoder that
plays in WMP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAME

*******

When I play a .mp3 here, I seem to be using the CODEC that
came with the media player. As near as I can tell.

Get a copy of this tool...

http://gspot.headbands.com/v26x/GSpot270a.zip

and it has a list of the codecs in one of the menus.
As well as telling you the decode chain if using
installed codecs. It lists a "merit" value for a
codec, implying if two codecs are installed having
the same function, the codecs can be rated by their
merit number, and the best one picked.

http://i58.tinypic.com/28kswwl.gif

In my example, a Fraunhofer Institut codec is being used,
L3CODECX.AX . And that's an decoder (whereas LAME
would be an encoder as far as I know). That is likely
the officially licensed one for WMP.

I also have a copy of Winamp - it popped up when I
double clicked that file, and I don't even remember
installing that. That might be an example of a program
that uses a built-in decoder, rather than looking
to the system to provide a decoder. Some programs
do that.

I don't expect LAME is the problem, but perhaps you'll spot
something when you go through the CODEC list the above
program can display for you

Paul

 

Thanks! Very informative.

Where can I see a list of codecs that Windows Media uses? OS is Vista SP2.

 

Windows Media Player can use any of the hundred plus ones
that came with the OS. Most of them are pretty sad ones,
such as codecs that function as "splitters". So if you
watch a movie, the first element in the chain would be
a splitter, followed by a codec for audio and a codec for
video.

With the GSpot software, you check your OS just after
you installed it, to see what the "unadulterated" list
is. Then later, compare the current system, to see what
software may have added along the way.

In your case, I'd just skim through the list, to see if
there is anything MP3 related.

That tool is just the tip of the iceberg, in the sense
that it makes you aware of the component parts of your
OS. But doesn't provide the tools for working with them
at all. I've never had to "solve" a CODEC problem here,
so haven't needed to go further than casual examinations
of media using GSpot. You'll have to do some Googling,
to discover how the tool chain uses "merit" and how a
user modifies "merit" to stop a conflict if one is present.

I don't even know, if you can use tools like Process Monitor,
to capture the movie filter chain building process, and see
what it is up to. There is a tool called "Graph Edit", which
again, demonstrates the chaining of these things, to achieve
a desired result, but I don't know how you work on the
diagnostic side of things. I don't know of an easy way to
help you figure out what is busted. I would certainly
try with Process Monitor, because it does capture Registry
access, and the names of things in those registry entries,
tells you what the software is up to. So this is one of my
favorite tools, to collect enough data to do Google searches
with.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645

Even when your computer is "idle", the stupid OS reads
maybe 100-200 registry entries *per second*. Just out of
boredom. The log collected by Process Monitor, rapidly
fills with irrelevant crap. You remove the tick box
in the File menu, to stop a capture. You use the "Clear"
function, to erase the trace and collect another one.
When you are about to play your music, you tick the capture
entry in the File menu again, to do a trace, then go back
to attempting to play your music. When the thing has
finished malfunctioning, you stop the trace again in
Process Monitor, then scroll through the trace at your leisure.

You don't need to define a filter using the Filter window
to use the thing. For the first run, just dismiss the
filter window and let it capture everything. You can add
filter terms, as you recognize the need to concentrate on
just one program. So by telling the filter to only capture
WMP events, you can reduce the clutter in the display. But
for your first run, don't freak out if the Filter window
pops up.

That's how I dig up hints, when something doesn't work right.

*******

Building graphs, is how Microsoft software figures out
how to play your music and movies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphedit

Example of a filter chain - in this case, the "MPEG Audio Decoder"
would be a CODEC. The video decoding is done by something
in the video card. GSpot is doing this sort of thing as well.
Only the display GSpot puts on the screen, is simple text.

http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/tou...rms_da7d/6. graphedit_rendereddvrms_thumb.png

Programs like WinAMP, may use their own subsystems and use
a different approach to decoding. Not every software
uses the GraphEdit approach. WinAMP might easily play
your music, when WMP is completely busted. With the
availability of third party applications (WinAMP and
VLC), you can simply avoid broken OS stuff.

Paul

 

I should add that it eventually does play the MP3, but only after 45-60sec.

Subsequent mp3 requests play immediately; it's only the first one after turning on the machine that I get gray hairs waiting for.

 

So then maybe you see WMP sending packets off
to Microsoft, looking for information related
to the material it's about to play ?

When I tested here, the network size of things was
relatively quiet.

I did a test in a virtual machine here, using Vista SP2
and WMP11. My MP3 played in only a few seconds. No 60 second
delay. I collected a ProcMon trace, and I could see things
like what might be the setting up of a Protected Media Path,
kicking the Audio subsystem, an attempt to load a
screensaver (which fails, because the VM doesn't
have accelerated video for any visual effects).
So my test isn't exactly like yours, because
my WMP11 cannot deliver any visuals.

But still, in terms of real time response, it
started playing in say, five seconds. Just a
guess, because I was staring at the ProcMon trace
at the time.

And the funny thing is, I couldn't see any
explicit calls for CODECs in there. The registry
accesses use a ton of CLSIDs, but it would take
me weeks to translate all of those into potential
file names. So I could easily miss details like that.
There were around 145,000 events in the trace I was
looking at. And as is usual with Windows, as soon
as you start doing something you want to do, all sorts
of background activities start up. Like Windows Update
preparation activity, and other crap. Maybe a little
file indexing thrown in for good measure.

*******

You can attempt to look on the Event Viewer, but
the chances of gaining useful information from there
are almost zero. If it was throwing an error, it
probably wouldn't do it so quietly, as to leave the
only trace as an Event entry.

*******

Do you normally use file shares in your setup, like
playing music off your NAS ? Perhaps the delay, is
an attempt to reach a totally irrelevant file share
source, before it decides to continue with the
command to play your current file.

And that's another capability WMP has. It can function
as a streaming server, to play music on a device outside
of your computer. Do you have any DLNA devices
pestering your computer ? A TV set for example,
may be able to ask the computer about your
music library (that WMP can see).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dlna

Paul

 

Again, the long delay is after requesting only the first MP3. After that, it's typical speed - fast.