Shift any program you like into high gear (Tim Allen-like grunt)

[fluggo99]

Well, try as I might, I couldn't get a single program-- MSP 5.2, MSP 6.0, Premiere, or AVI_IO-- to successfully play back my 45-minute cutlist without getting the jitters real bad. Heck, not a single one could get through the first file.

So what do I do? I think it's either memory management or programs interfering with one another. So I upgrade to 256 MB of RAM. Nada. I shut down most non-essential processes. Still nada.

So my diabolical mind, desperate, devises a program to set any program's priority class at its startup. Note that any program can change the priority of its individual threads, but a high-priority thread in an idle-class program is still an idle-priority thread.

So I use my program to shift AVI_IO into the high priority class. I didn't see a blasted change. So I shifted it into the realtime priority class (which makes it higher than the system itself). The jitters still happened; just a little later.

Nuts. So I went with plan Q: Media Player. Media Player plays every file almost perfectly. No cutlist, but hey, I can break up the files in such a way that I can play one, and then when it's done, pause the VCR, swap out the next file, unpause and go. Shifting it into high or realtime makes the playback near perfect. Ah, well. Perhaps I'll never figure out what's wrong with my setup.

So what might your interest in this story be? Well, y'know, nothing. Except that here's my priority shifter program. A bit of a pain to experiment with, but after I'm done with my laundry, I might fix up a GUI version.

<a href="http://www.fluggo.com/pub/priority/priority.cpp">priority.cpp</a>
<a href="http://www.fluggo.com/pub/priority/priority.exe">priority.exe</a>

How to use: The format is <font size="3"><kbd>priority h "c:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\mplayer2.exe"</kbd></font> or whatever you choose for the program. The first letter is the priority class you wish:

<table border="0" cellpadding="2"><tr><td width="100" bgcolor="#000080"><font color="#FFFFFF" size="2">Letter</font></td><td width="300" bgcolor="#000080"><font color="#FFFFFF" size="2">Meaning</font></td></tr><tr><td width="100" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><font size="2">I, i, 0, 1</font></td><td width="300" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><font size="2">Idle; program receives no attention unless nothing else is going on</font></td></tr><tr><td width="100" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><font size="2">N, n, 2, 3</font></td><td width="300" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><font size="2">Normal; programs start in this class by default</font></td></tr><tr><td bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><font size="2">H, h, 4</font></td><td width="300" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><font size="2">High; better than normal</font></td></tr><tr><td width="100" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><font size="2">R, r, 5</font></td><td width="300" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><font size="2">Realtime; program receives all CPU power whenever it does anything (slightly dangerous :P)</font></td></tr>
</table>

[This message has been edited by fluggo99 (edited 10 September 2000).]

[CMB]

hey.. i used to have a similar problem..
now if im gonna playback a file..
ill reboot, then ctrl delete everything even powerdesk just leaving systray and the other one whos name i forgot..

have you streamlined your pc for playback?
ie..
no power management.
Disabled write behind cache
set role as network server
set no screen saver
16 bit windows backdrop
have it set so nothing goes on stand by
have auto detect on the cd roms swtiched off

any or all of this can cause problems..
even powerdesk..

mine plays back ok now.. let me know how you get on

[fluggo99]

> ill reboot, then ctrl delete everything
> even powerdesk just leaving systray and
> the other one whos name i forgot..

I do the same thing, except for PowerDesk. That's something to try.

> have you streamlined your pc for playback? ie..
> no power management.

yep

> Disabled write behind cache
> set role as network server

nope, I'll try those

> set no screen saver
> 16 bit windows backdrop

yep, and no backdrop

> have it set so nothing goes on stand by
> have auto detect on the cd roms swtiched off

Yep, yep; I have taken most precautions here. I have this suspicious feeling that anything I missed will not greatly affect the outcome, but, what the hey, what's a few more days testing when the video is already months late?

[fluggo99]

Your suggestions have further improved my situation, but the jitters remain unsolved. They have now been pushed back to eleven minutes into the video, but they remain. Over the next few days I'll try optimizing my cache and trying different software again.

Can anyone else help me here? Or has the limit of Matroxusers.com expertise been reached?

[Eric VanHeest]

I get incredibly bad playback when I try to play back a video with uncompressed 44 kHz/stereo audio. If I compress the audio (using MP3 or whatever), and stuff that back into the video file, then it plays back perfectly (even if the video is uncompressed). I don't have any idea what's going on there, but since compressing the audio doesn't take much effort, I haven't bothered to try to figure out what's happening.

[Greebe]

Process Viewer 2000 allows you to set the priority, view what's running, and much much more http://www.teamcti.com/pview