[RESOLVED] First Time CCC Install and Run

[Teddyboy]

Okay so this is weird. I switch inputs and wake my HTPC to see that it has synced with CCC and has loaded all data and covers for my movies. It was still syncing because the sync icon was still turning and the little jpg icon was in visible in the middle of its. When CMC finished syncing there was no exclamation point in the middle of the sync icon. I still have connectivity to the CCC share, but I still get a timeout error when I test for CCC connectivity after it had finished syncing. The last sync date stamp was visible in the configuration page.

I closed CMC and restarted it. The sync icon had the exclamation point in the middle of the sync icon. I was able to smart sync, and it was able to complete the sync and the exclamation point disappeared. I still get a timeout error when I test for CCC connectivity. The CCC share is still connected as verified by the sync and when I test for it. When I went to the configuration page CMC, the last sync date stamp was blank. When I synced the date stamp appeared.

I closed restarted CMC one more time and the sync icon had the exclamation point in its middle. I was able to smart sync but I got a access violation. The sync did not complete and the exclamation point remained. I tried syncing again pressing the button quickly several times and it took several moments for it to catch up. I'm not able to get it to smart sync or do a full sync. It's trying to do a sync, but it's hard to tell as it gets stuck for several seconds.

Sometimes if I push buttons on the remote or mouse to fast, CMC will hang and get into a race condition then pull itself out of it.

It looks like might be some odd corner case lurking around causing issues.

[Pauven]

Very interesting results. I'll look at the code today to see if I can make sense of this. Thanks.

[Pauven]

Sorry for the delay.

I checked the code, comparing the Connectivity Test procedure to the Sync procedure, and they were 99% identical. I only found one difference:

On the Sync, the Timeout is increased by 2 seconds beyond what is configured for the "CCC Connection Timeout". So if you have the timeout set to 2 seconds, then the Test uses 2 seconds, while the Sync uses 4 seconds.

So if your connection is slow to be established, that could explain why the Test is failing while the Sync is succeeding. I programmed it this way so that the Sync, which is more important than the Test, is more robust. For example, increasing the Timeout from 2 to 4 seconds might fix the Test, and bumps up the Sync to 6 seconds, making it even more robust.

From your screenshot, I see you currently have the default of 2 seconds configured, so definitely try increasing this value. Be sure to Save this change.

I've also tried different timeout values from the default 2 seconds. I went all the way up to 60 seconds, and it still timed out.

I'm not sure why this didn't work before. Perhaps something else changed too since you last tested increasing the timeout. Regardless, definitely try increasing it again, Saving the change, and see how that works out.

By the way, there is a downside to increasing it too high. When you start CMC, if the connection fails, the startup hangs for the entire duration of the configured Timeout. So if you configured 60 seconds, then when you start CMC, if the connection ends up failing then CMC hangs for 60 seconds on startup. Lower values make CMC more responsive in this scenario. There are times that the connection will fail for valid reasons (i.e. CCC is down, the CCC PC is down, the network connection is down, etc.), and you may find it frustrating to sit there for 60 seconds simply because you forgot to restart your CCC PC or something like that.

The 2 second default was just a good value based upon my own internal testing, but may not be appropriate for all users. Based upon what you've told me so far, I'd guess around 5 seconds might do the trick.

[Teddyboy]

No worries Paul. I’ve been buried in work. I’ll try extending the timeout to 5 seconds and see what happens. At this point I’m not going to invest in new hardware and software until I know that it operates in a stable fashion. I should not have upgraded until you where at least 3 or 5 point revisions into your 4.0 release cycle. Things where working okay before I upgraded. I’m happy that you finally got it rolled out because it’s what I’ve been wanting, but I always end up getting bitten in this process. HTPCs are a niche product.

I’m currently looking at a dune player attached to mymovies, but even that has its issues. Brian hasn’t touched the MyMovies dune front end interface interface in forever. It’s not a priority for him. Some users have figured out how to modify the xml file, and have come up with some nice interfaces. There is no information on the MyMovies dune xml file structure. It’s odd that he never really fleshed it out. There is Yadis for dune which is now abandon ware. The person lost the source code, so no one else can maintain it. He stopped developing it years ago.

I’ll give it a go when I get home and let you know the results.

[Pauven]

I should not have upgraded until you where at least 3 or 5 point revisions into your 4.0 release cycle. Things where working okay before I upgraded.

I'm not sure that waiting for v4.5 would have made a difference. There were some small tweaks in v4.1, but for the most part the code is (in my opinion) good and final. And so far nothing we've discovered with your setup has led to any code changes. While v4.2 has a few more minor fixes and changes, again this is nothing related to your challenges.

If for some reason CCC ends up not working for you, you can always go back to using CME and it will work just like before you upgraded. CME is 100% supported and is not going anywhere, so it remains a valid option.

I certainly hope we can get CCC working for you, so don't take this as me pushing you back to CME. I just wanted to make sure you knew that the old way still works, and you're not punished for upgrading. In fact, CME v4.x works better than ever (but still not as good as CCC).

I’ll give it a go when I get home and let you know the results.

Thanks. Fingers crossed.

[Teddyboy]

Well I put the timeout to 5 seconds and it works fine. Connection to the server and the database appears to be fine. I'm getting another problem now. Two issues. JRiver does not go into full screen nor does it quit when I press the button to quit it and go back to CMC. It's the same configuration that I've been using for a long time now. CMC should just put it into fullscreen mode. I'm getting access violations when I try to play a movie or a episode be it from a blue ray or DVD. It's not on every movie or TV series. It seems random, and I know that these titles play fine because I've viewed them in the past. Media corruption isn't the issue. One step forward two steps back.

[Pauven]

Enable debug logging, then try to play a few titles that produce errors, then send me all the Logs\DebugLog_PlayClick* files that were created.

Regarding Close not working, double-check the MCE Remote configuration, the Registry may need to be updated.

[Teddyboy]

No need to provide debug files to you. Upon further investigation, I found that MyMovies did not update some paths properly. How did I know that? I looked at the play click debug files. The movies exist, but the path was incorrect. Once I fixed one path in collection management, the rest of the movies that had improper paths where corrected. That was 95 movies that had the wrong path. The movies will now play without a access violation.

The access violation dialog box is not technically a CMC error. It’s actually just complaining that it can’t find a movie to play. I wish that it wouldn't throw me out of the interface with a windows dialog box. I wouldn't have known to look for incorrect paths had you not told me to generate the debug files so you could take a look. Now you don't have to look. Maybe you should consider making it more graceful and keep it inside CMC. If it can't find the path then CMC should say that it can't find it. A example of this is I have an offline disc Ultraman: The complete series. I put it into collection management and never got around to ripping it to my server. I forgot about it, and when I went to just now try to play it CMC tells me that it's a offline disc never leaving the interface. I took a look at collection management and sure enough it's not ripped to my server.

I updated the registry and the record button now is working properly. I wish I didn't have to always do that. Even if it's once a year, it's still to often. I made CMC always run with administrative rights, so hopefully I don't have to get out a keyboard and mouse. Now if it buttons stop working I can just go into settings and make changes and then reboot. I don't like leaving the interface.

JRiver still does not go full screen. Please take a look at that to make sure that the proper command is being sent to it to make it go full screen. That's not something that I can set in the settings page.

Other then Jriver not going full screen CMC is working. Please take a look when you get a moment.Thanks Paul.

[Pauven]

No need to provide debug files to you. Upon further investigation, I found that MyMovies did not update some paths properly. How did I know that? I looked at the play click debug files. The movies exist, but the path was incorrect. Once I fixed one path in collection management, the rest of the movies that had improper paths where corrected. That was 95 movies that had the wrong path. The movies will now play without a access violation.

That's awesome. Good work.

Here's a tip: In CCC, Settings > Metadata Export there is a tool at the bottom called "Validate File Paths for All Discs". This probably would have uncovered the issue too, and would make a good test now to make sure there aren't more titles with this issue.

The access violation dialog box is not technically a CMC error. It’s actually just complaining that it can’t find a movie to play. I wish that it wouldn't throw me out of the interface with a windows dialog box.

Well, yeah it definitely is a CMC error, and unhandled one at that. CMC should respond gracefully to bad My Movies data.

The problem on my side is that this is a brand new issue. Before CCC, CMC would scan your media folders, and every file path was always 100% correct. Now with CCC, that filepath is coming from My Movies, and I need to plan for bad data. So this is a brand new issue that only got introduced about 5 weeks ago, and only now am I realizing this is an issue I need to address.

Can you tell me what was wrong about those filepaths? I'd like to recreate what occurred so I can come up with a good solution.

I updated the registry and the record button now is working properly. I wish I didn't have to always do that. Even if it's once a year, it's still to often. I made CMC always run with administrative rights, so hopefully I don't have to get out a keyboard and mouse. Now if it buttons stop working I can just go into settings and make changes and then reboot.

I had a feeling that would be the case. Those seasonal Win10 updates always revert the registry, so twice a year is the norm. I've been planning to enhance CMC to prompt for Admin rights when you click to update, similar to CCC. I'll probably get to that in the next couple versions. Once I have that, I might also make it a bit smarter too, so that when CMC sees the settings were lost, it will prompt you to let it update automatically.

I don't like leaving the interface.

Perhaps an unintentional complement, but that's fantabulous!!!!!

[Pauven]

Okay, just to recap and make sure I didn't miss anything.

The CCC export was super easy to setup and ran without issues.

The CMC connection to CCC was very problematic and a nightmare to troubleshoot, but ultimately resolved by increasing the CCC Connection Timeout from 2 to 5 seconds.

The Access Violations were caused by invalid media file paths coming from My Movies. (I still want to recreate this, see previous post.)

The Close button not working was because Windows had restored the default remote configuration, and was easily fixed by updating the registry with CMC.

At this point, CMC + CCC v4.1 is working for you without issues?

EDIT: Sorry, forgot that you mentioned JRiver isn't opening in full-screen. I've noticed that for certain apps, they don't open full-screen at first, but if you toggle them to full-screen, afterwards they open full-screen. Does this work for you?