Isolate any codec issues to help with crashes and performance issues.

MadBoris · Post by **MadBoris** » Mon, 19. Dec 05, 14:14

The voices you mentioned are all specifically handled seperately, and have nothing to do with the soundtrack folder unfortunately.

One directshow filter mainly handles all those, except I have seen an ASF ACM Handler jump in between the file and the decoder causing these types of issues.

There are other possible reasons as well, but it will all be much clearer for each individual on their own machine in a few days when my tool is finished up.

Jokey77 · Post by **Jokey77** » Tue, 20. Dec 05, 22:22

bumped

Da_Junka · Post by **Da_Junka** » Wed, 21. Dec 05, 12:42

Right I found no change by renaming the soundtrack folder but by renaming the MOV folder I nearly doubled my fps, so where do I go from here.

MadBoris · Post by **MadBoris** » Wed, 21. Dec 05, 12:54

Da_Junka wrote:Right I found no change by renaming the soundtrack folder but by renaming the MOV folder I nearly doubled my fps, so where do I go from here.

The intial post suggests people use a tool called filemon to track down what X3 is actually using that might effect performance, but unfortunately people have to know what to look for and how to interpret the results. But in a couple days a new tool will be available that will be much more user friendly and just clarify problem areas. Sometimes a different Mpeg splitter coud be to blame here, but your best bet may be just to hang loose for a couple days to avoid deep troubleshooting.

Da_Junka · Post by **Da_Junka** » Wed, 21. Dec 05, 13:51

Nice, Ill wait for this new wonder program then it sounds good.

NewAgeMobile · Post by **NewAgeMobile** » Mon, 26. Dec 05, 21:21

The simple fact of the matter is that DirectShow uses what is called a filter graph to render media files. And setting them up using the DirectX provided internal auto build system will tend to end up going for a bad choice if there is one.
Firstly it goes for a filter with the highest merit, and the DirectX ones tend to have a low one. For example the MPEG1 splitter is 0x60000, and you will often end up with one on your system that has a higher merit. Changing the merit of the DirectX splitter should NOT be done since it has been givin this merit value in the SDK (0x60000 is also the mimimum merit value that the sdk says to look for when looking for the MPEG1 splitter).
Secondly, if you have a (for example) MPEG1 splitter with a merit that matches the quiarts.dll one, DirectShow tends to go for that over quartz.dll. This may just be down to it claiming a better performance.
It looks like ths will affect any DirectShow playback.
The SDK also provides methods for constructing custom filter grids. For example, you can tell it what type of filter to look for, along with a minimum merit, and it returns all the capable filters on a computer. You can check some properties such as their name & add the one you want to your grid. You then look for the next filter (i.e. MPEG video decoder), and add etc.

see Using the System Device Enumerator and
Using the Filter Mapper on MSDN.

It is quite clear to me that the solution is to enumerate the filters properly, and use only the required ones. This may well not get past a bad version number, but it will sort out the commonest problem in the X series of games. And it will likely stop people from messing up their systems.

pkd · Post by **pkd** » Tue, 27. Dec 05, 02:32

Why is this thread not a sticky?

MadBoris · Post by **MadBoris** » Tue, 27. Dec 05, 17:13

pkd -X- wrote:Why is this thread not a sticky?

This thread is not a sticky, because the tool I made to do this is.
This process in this thread was far too complicated for most.
The tool is not complicated, and in fact, if people use it responsibly they won't mess up their systems.
Here is the DShow Viewer tool for X3:

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=113628