[Closed] Access violation app crash

[Teddyboy]

I had a hard crash. I was going to watch some episodes of star trek the animated series. When I went to click on the title CMC froze and went into a race condition. I clicked on the title several times, and then it popped out and into star trek with no episode data with a access violation dialog. I was not able to screen capture it for you. This is something that may not be related to the crash, but when I restarted CMC, my glow around the titles went away.

I did copy it to the correct mymovies directory and it was working, and I even got the isometric boxes for box sets. It does not stick at all. I went into settings and set covers to CMC, saved and went into CMC then went back out again and reset it to mymovies. They came back but when I exit the program it's gone. I don't like CMC skins they are to cluttered, and they slightly crop the artwork. If I wanted to look at a DVD or blue ray case I'd go to best buy or frys to look at them. You need to provide another option for a standard mmovies skin. The others are way to busy for my taste. It's reminds me of blockbuster video.

At this point I don't trust the app.

[Pauven]

I had a hard crash. I was going to watch some episodes of star trek the animated series. When I went to click on the title CMC froze and went into a race condition. I clicked on the title several times, and then it popped out and into star trek with no episode data with a access violation dialog. I was not able to screen capture it for you.

There are very few things that can cause CMC to slow down. When you start CMC, the entire Movie and Music databases are loaded into RAM, which provides real-time access to all of the metadata. The only thing that isn't loaded into RAM is all of the artwork images for your collection (i.e. folder.jpg, front-cover, back-cover, fanart, posters, etc.) - these are always loaded on-demand, only when they are needed to display on your screen.

The loading of these images is synchronous - meaning that CMC attempts to load each image, one-by-one, waiting for the file system to return the image before CMC proceeds to the next image or processing step. What this means is that if there is a delay in your file-system (or NAS) to provide the image, CMC hangs while waiting on that image.

This is the main reason I created the artwork cache feature. On my NAS (Unraid), the hard drives spin down fairly quickly, so any request for an image requires that the server first spin up that hard drive. This makes it look like CMC is hanging for 5-10 seconds. But with the local artwork cache, the image is loaded in a split-second, fast enough that it feels near instantaneous. Plus my NAS doesn't have to spin up any drives just to browse my collection, so win-win.

What you are describing sounds like either you have artwork caching disabled, or more likely got an artwork cache miss. A cache miss is when CMC doesn't find the image in the local cache, and automatically reverts back to the original source to find the image, which might require a NAS to spin up drives before it can provide that image, and while it is waiting patiently for the image CMC appears hung to the user. I do plan to improve this behavior in the future, but for now this is what it is.

If you recall, the spinning Sync icon indicates that artwork caching is still in progress. It's very possible that you simply exited CMC too quickly, before the Star Trek TAS artwork got cached (I recall that you were working on this and other TV Series recently, perhaps this new My Movies artwork didn't get fully cached after you fixed it in MMCM). So your attempt to open the Star Trek TAS required an image to be loaded that wasn't in the cache (for whatever reason), and CMC 'hung' waiting on that image to be delivered from the original file location.

When you kept hitting buttons during this time when CMC was waiting on your file system / NAS to provide the requested image file, all these extra inputs caused an Access Violation error in CMC. An Access Violation error is when a program attempts to access something that doesn't yet exist. Button inputs always pre-empt current processing (like jumping in line in front of someone else who was there first), so CMC attempted to process your extra button presses before it was really ready to handle them, and tried to access something that had not yet been created, and ultimately generated an Access Violation error.

There is no harm to an Access Violation error, but I have found that once one occurs, it is best to close CMC and re-launch it, as it never seems to recover on its own and you will continue to receive weird error messages until you restart CMC.

This is something that may not be related to the crash, but when I restarted CMC, my glow around the titles went away.

This is 100% unrelated.

I did copy it to the correct mymovies directory and it was working, and I even got the isometric boxes for box sets. It does not stick at all. I went into settings and set covers to CMC, saved and went into CMC then went back out again and reset it to mymovies. They came back but when I exit the program it's gone.

This is a bug, but not the kind of bug you're expecting.

First, the My Movies Cover Profile does NOT have the isometric boxes for box sets. My Movies never had this feature, this is something brand new I added for CMC v2.2. So when CMC is set to Cover Profile 'My Movies', when you launch CMC it will not have isometric box sets. This is working as designed. The only Cover Profile that should have the isometric box set images is 'CMC'.

The bug, then, is that you are seeing the isometric box set view on anything other than Cover Profile 'CMC'. When you assign Cover Profile 'CMC', it loads the isometric box set artwork into memory, and then if you change the Cover Profile to 'My Movies' without closing CMC, then the box sets are still loaded and you get this interesting hybrid, where you have isometric box sets being displayed in the legacy 'My Movies' Cover Profile that never had support for this feature - this is wrong but I see why you like it. Then, as soon as you close CMC and restart it, those isometric box sets go away because they are not part of the 'My Movies' cover profile.

In addition to CMC caching the isometric box set view when you toggle from Cover Profile 'CMC' to 'My Movies', it is also caching the background glow effect. And just like the isometric box sets, the glow disappears when you restart CMC because it is not part of the 'My Movies' Cover Profile.

I just now tested copying the DVDGlow.png file into the My Movies Images folder, same as I suggested for you to try, and it did NOT work to restore the background glow effect. So my advice was wrong, sorry, but it was worth a shot. I think you thought that it did work because of the caching effect I described above, and you had switched between 'CMC' and 'My Movies' and that's what made the glow effect appear, and not the copying of the DVDGlow.png image.

The real solution here is for me to do a code fix to allow CMC to display the background glow effect for the legacy My Movies/3rd party cover profiles. I changed how the glow effect was handled recently and didn't realize that it was only showing for the two CMC stock Cover Profiles. I also need to revise the code to unload the isometric box set view when you change the Cover Profile to one that doesn't have it, as you should have never seen the isometric box views for the 'My Movies' Cover Profile.

I don't like CMC skins they are to cluttered, and they slightly crop the artwork.

Fair enough. That's why I adopted the My Movies Cover Profile solution, so you can choose the one you like, or even make your own.

If I wanted to look at a DVD or blue ray case I'd go to best buy or frys to look at them.

I know that you're just trying to be funny, but it is coming off as rude and disparaging now. I spent dozens upon dozens of hours creating this artwork for the CMC Cover Profiles. It's fine that it isn't your cup of tea, but your comments putting them down are unnecessary and easily misconstrued.

You need to provide another option for a standard mmovies skin. The others are way to busy for my taste. It's reminds me of blockbuster video.

Excuse me? I don't need to do anything. Life is too short.

I don't provide mmovies skin (including your typo, assuming you mean 'My Movies'). That artwork is provided by Binnerup, not me, and out of respect for Binnerup's property I do not copy or otherwise modify his program's data. I simply allow CMC to read any Cover Profiles that already exist on your PC, to give you more options if for some reason you don't like what I provide with stock CMC. This includes the 3rd party provided 'Original - TomX', 'Tabbed - Stylisticz', and 'Plastic', which were all created for My Movies and not for CMC. The one you seem to like I believe is called 'Default', and is the My Movies default Cover Profile. It is special, as it doesn't exist in the normal My Movies Cover Profiles add-in directory, but rather the My Movies program directory itself, and it is not available as a separate download and lacks the xml definition file. Which is to say I already jumped through a lot of extra hoops to even make it possible for you to use it.

What I do provide is a way for you to create your own cover profiles. It is very easy to do. You would start by making a copy of the 'CMC' folder in the CMC 'Cover Profiles' directory. Then you can copy in the artwork from My Movies that you like better than the artwork I created (feel free to create your own!). Finally you would create the xml file. You can copy the CMC.xml file and name it to whatever you want, then edit it to point at your new folder. The last thing you would need to do is edit the PositionX, PositionY, MaxHeight and MaxWidth values, which specify the overlay position of the cover artwork on top of each cover image.

Since the Cover Profiles XML file is spec'd by Binnerup, you can follow their guidance if you need more info on how to customize Cover Profiles: https://www.mymovies.dk/how-to/written- ... tomization

The only thing that is different in CMC's implementation of the Cover Profiles is the new <BoxSet> tag I added to CMC.xml, everything else is as designed by Binnerup. You can put that <BoxSet> info into any Cover Profile, and copy the BoxSet.png and BoxSetGlow.png images to the profile's folder. If you compare CMC.xml and CMC (no BoxSet).xml, you will see that this is the only difference.

At this point I don't trust the app.

I have spent over two years, and thousands upon thousands of unpaid hours, writing CMC as a labor of love and a gift to the HTPC community. You might be confused thinking I'm somehow making money off of CMC sales, but I assure you that I don't. In addition to providing my labor for free - which isn't just time spent programming but also time spent maintaining the website and time spent helping users (including the dozens of hours I've spent helping you alone) - I have expenses like server hosting fees, 3rd party add-in licensing fees, annual developer tool licensing fees, and insurance. Users purchasing CMC licenses help cover expenses, but it is not enough and I do have to pay some expenses out of pocket.

And yet I still provide a better service experience than Binnerup. I don't have a team of 16 employees ignoring your requests for help. It is just me, in my spare time, providing essentially free help 7 days a week, nearly any hour of the day. And yes, I do have a real job, and this isn't it.

I don't ask for much, but in no way shape or form do I have to tolerate your derogatory comments. If you don't want to use CMC, fine, don't use it. No one's making you. If you want a refund of the $22 you contributed, just let me know and I'll be happy to return your money. Personally I find it insulting that you act like I somehow owe you something, when simple math would reveal that at minimum wage, $22 would barely cover 3 hours of support, and I've given you so much more.

I didn't go into your home and insult something that you spent thousands of hours creating and graciously shared with me. So I don't understand why you think it is appropriate for you to come into my home and do just that. Perhaps it is the insulating effect of internet anonymity, or perhaps it is the new norm ushered in by Trump's public displays of his narcissistic disorder. Perhaps it is this new age of entitlement, where consumers think the world is owed them and that a buck somehow buys them the right attack anyone who fails to live up to their expectations.

Regardless of the reasons why you think it is appropriate to come here and make fun of the artwork I create, make demands like I owe you something, and make statements that you don't trust my programming - may it be known that I will not tolerate it. CMC is a solid, safe app that is customizable to suite your idiosyncrasies. Sure, it has a few rough edges (what do you expect from a single guy attempting to program a WMC replacement from scratch in his spare time for free), but nothing that warrants the rhetoric you are posting here.

Microsoft, Inc. <--The multi-billion $ company with hundreds of thousands of employees who took WMC away from you

Binnerup Consult <--The small 16 person company who said you weren't worth creating a WMC/My Movies replacement

Paul <--A real person, the only one in the entire universe creating a WMC+MyMovies replacement app that you don't trust and like to poke fun at


PS - I'm locking this topic because I'm not interested in anyone's responses to what I have written. I said my piece, and I consider the conversation done.