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**jubilex** · 2011-10-29, 19:09

Is this accurate?

I'm watching movies on a projector in fullscreen mode because I don't get smooth playback in Windowed mode.

But whenever something happens over on my pc, like a popup window for Windows Update or firewall or antivirus or whatever not only do I lose focus on XBMC, i.e. become unable to control it, but the screen disappears entirely. Extremely disruptive during a movie obviously.

I feel like I must be missing something. This can't be how everyone watches movies, is it? I can't run in windowed mode because of performance (even though I am using DXVA and back when I used MPC-HC I had no problems running strictly in software with ffdshow).

>>X<< · 2011-10-29, 19:27

jubilex Wrote:I feel like I must be missing something. This can't be how everyone watches movies, is it?

No its not, they stop anything that's stealing focus from doing so which is the only way if you want to use true fullscreen

You can use a short cut to bring back focus though

**jubilex** · 2011-10-29, 19:54

I have since setup a shortcut to get it back, but that's still a huge fail when I have people over to watch a movie and it cuts out to my desktop in the middle of it while the sound keeps going.

>>X<< · 2011-10-29, 20:26

Yes its not a solution I only mentioned it because you said you also lost control, I guess your just have to stop whatever is causing it

I'm not sure if it still happens if explorer.exe isn't running I guess it depends on what's doing it but if it doesn't maybe you could use something like eventghost to disable explorer.exe start XBMC and also to exit XBMC and start explorer.exe

But as I said I don't know myself if disabling explorer.exe would stop it or not ?

cruzannavy · 2011-10-30, 03:06

jubilex Wrote:I have since setup a shortcut to get it back, but that's still a huge fail when I have people over to watch a movie and it cuts out to my desktop in the middle of it while the sound keeps going.

This is what i did, before i had a dedicated HTPC.
One way to avoid losing focus etc.. i simply created another profile / login on my (then) laptop. I named it HTPC and used event ghost as the shell for that user, this stopped windows from loading and running all the extra programs etc... i had event ghost start XBMC automatically when i logged in. I would just switch between user to get back to my regular laptop to do whatever and then when i wanted to watch a movie switch back to the other profile. should be rather painless. setup some shared folders, or jsut give the other profile access to the folder. set eventghost as the shell and autostart xbmc...

Ur thoughts?

outatouch0 · 2011-10-30, 14:54

jubilex Wrote:I'm watching movies on a projector in fullscreen mode because I don't get smooth playback in Windowed mode.

I don't know much about your setup or if it has to do with using a projector. I offer my two cents as an outside the box kind of thinker...

Is there a piece of hardware on your HTPC that would allow you to improve your performance? If so, perhaps you could TRULY fix the problem.
Video Cards are relatively inexpensive. See the hardware discussion forum for more info.

>>X<< · 2011-10-30, 14:59

cruzannavy Wrote:This is what i did, before i had a dedicated HTPC.
One way to avoid losing focus etc.. i simply created another profile / login on my (then) laptop. I named it HTPC and used event ghost as the shell for that user, this stopped windows from loading and running all the extra programs etc... i had event ghost start XBMC automatically when i logged in. I would just switch between user to get back to my regular laptop to do whatever and then when i wanted to watch a movie switch back to the other profile. should be rather painless. setup some shared folders, or jsut give the other profile access to the folder. set eventghost as the shell and autostart xbmc...

Ur thoughts?

ok that means disabling explorer.exe should also work then

cruzannavy · 2011-10-30, 17:27

>>X<<' Wrote:ok that means disabling explorer.exe should also work then

Agreed disabling explorer should work. But, instead of having to launch the task-manager to relaunch explorer when needed or hotkey a button to launch explorer, i just created a separate login to solely run xbmc. and then used my reuglar loginwhen i needed to use it to change stuff, use utorrent etc... That was a a while ago, when i didnt have a dedicated htpc. now i have 2 dedicated, Asus EEEbox 1501p and Acer AspireRevo AR3700-U3002 and i use RDP with simultaneous multiple user login support via my laptop to administer whatever i need, so i never have to touch either box to do anything.

**jubilex** · 2011-10-30, 18:00

Some good suggestions here that I will try, thanks.

I have to admit I'm a bit baffled as to how an HTPC program could have this problem. XBMC is overall awesome, I like it far more than Meedios (which I'm switching from) overall, but it seems to lack some very key features for HTPC software. Lose image when something happens on desktop; outputting in PC colorspace/levels with no way to change that; inconsistent labeling of multiple monitors so it's a huge nightmare trying to get it to start on the correct one; and sketchy performance -- with just MPC-HC I have zero issues with playback in full software decoding mode, while with XBMC I cannot run in software-only mode at all due to stuttery playback, can't run in windowed mode due to stuttery playback, have to use DXVA and then get the pixelization after skipping/fast forwarding, etc.

It's a bit frustrating. But otherwise it's so good that I am reluctant to switch back to Meedios.

>>X<< · 2011-10-30, 18:52

XBMC uses DirectX and as far as I'm aware this only has two modes windowed and fullscreen and fullscreen mode cannot be shared with anything else this is not XBMC's fault Smile

The software playback problem is due to the version of ffmpeg in Dharma not supporting multithreading so not XBMC fault I believe ffmpeg now supports this so will probably be ok in eden ?

You might want to try using DSPlayer as it will solve some of your problems as you could use a filter that does support multithreading in any case using DXVA with DSPlayer you shouldn't get problems skipping or using fast forwarding

I use Rev 553d719 with MPC-HC video filter and have none of the problems with skipping or using fast forwarding and I can also set colorspace in my GPU and it respects those as well

**jubilex** · 2011-10-30, 19:33

Interesting, thanks. I did try an Eden nightly build with no more luck. I have the feeling I may end up having to use XBMC with MPC-HC as the external player, but I am hoping to avoid that since I already have a bit of an Autohotkey scripting nightmare getting XBMC to open on the correct displays, and adding an external player would mean more scripting for MPC to accomodate the correct monitors and audio outputs. Also having the player inbuilt was very nice in terms of remembering subtitle settings etc. But I'll do what I have to do.

Will give your suggestions a try tonight, thanks again.

>>X<< · 2011-10-30, 19:53

If you try DSPlayer learn to use it before you say it doesn't work Shocked

because it works really well if you do I've had Zero bugs with Rev#553d719, I'll tell you now its configured by default to use ffdshow for audio so if that's not on your system nothing will play, you can change this to MPC-HC audio filter instead very easy to do and those filters are included so no reason to install anything

Rev#553d719 is below

http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=760856&postcount=6

Or there's a version merged with a recent nightly build not used this myself, your also find a link to the wiki on that page as well

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=106629

**jubilex** · 2011-10-30, 23:33

Beautiful, thanks again. I do have ffdshow installed and configured already.

**jubilex** · 2011-10-31, 07:52

Did some quick tests with latest DSPlayer build and playback looks good so far. Only problem seems to be that it doesn't seem to remember subtitle selection and doesn't display them in the same position/style/size as default player does, which is a real problem since it seems like DSPlayer insists on putting the subs at the bottom of the screen rather than the bottom of the video. More tests tomorrow when I'm fresh, but hopefully this can be worked out to be my solution, although I see in the other thread subtitles can still be a problem, in which case I'll need to keep looking.

>>X<< · 2011-10-31, 14:11

Nothing you can do about their position but if you use haali or lav splitter you can set either of those to always default to your preferred language but only on internal subs