Problems with Vista Media Center

[DavidW]

I have just installed the demo version of Dashware on my Visat Home Premium SP1 system to use with my DL1 data / MP4 video files and it works great, easy to use, great quality and very configurable.

I just have one problem - it has disabled the Vista Media Centre Audio Services, and stops Media Center from working (either playing back recording programs or viewing live TV). Uninstalling the Dashware has immediately fixed the problem - is this due to some clash with audio codecs used by Media Center? I've seen the previous post about Movie Maker not working on Vista, but this does
not seem to be a problem on my machine.

Any suggestion for a fix to this issue. If I can fix this problem I will definitely purchase a full copy of the software.

David

[MarkVaden]

Hi David,

It sounds like there is a conflict with one of our codecs and some of the codecs on your machine. In the short term the easiest solution is to lower the merit of the MainConcept Codecs. The easiest way to do this is with a utility called DirectShowFilterManager. It can be downloaded for free at http://www.softella.com/dsfm/index.en.htm. Once downloaded run the executable. Click on the company column to sort by company. Double click the first MainConcept filter to bring up
the filter properties dialog. Drag the merit slider down to do not use. Click the Set Merit button and close the dialog. Make sure that you only change the MainConcept filters that were installed by DashWare. You can see the install path in the module column. Repeat this for every MainConcept filter whose module column indicates it was installed by DashWare. I have attached some screenshots that show what to do.

I realize that this is a bit of a paing, and we plan to address this in the installer of our next release. Let me know if you need any more help, or if you have any problems.

-Mark

[DavidW]

Mark,

Thanks for the response - I'm away on business at present, so I can't try this today, but I'll try this on Friday when I get home and let you know the outcome.

David

[Rolf]

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Hi David,

It sounds like there is a conflict with one of our codecs and some of the codecs on your machine. In the short term the easiest solution is to lower the merit of the MainConcept Codecs. The easiest way to do this is with a utility called DirectShowFilterManager. It can be downloaded for free at http://www.softella.com/dsfm/index.en.htm. Once downloaded run the executable. Click on the company column to sort by company. Double click the first MainConcept filter to bring up
the filter properties dialog. Drag the merit slider down to do not use. Click the Set Merit button and close the dialog. Make sure that you only change the MainConcept filters that were installed by DashWare. You can see the install path in the module column. Repeat this for every MainConcept filter whose module column indicates it was installed by DashWare. I have attached some screenshots that show what to do.

I realize that this is a bit of a paing, and we plan to address this in the installer of our next release. Let me know if you need any more help, or if you have any problems.

-Mark

[DavidW]

Mark,

I've made some progress, but found some new issues. I changed the Merits on the filters installed by Dashware down to Do Not Use (00200000), this fixed the problem with the Media Center after I had rebooted the PC, but now Dashware won't read my video files with message "invalid media format specified". I have tried recoding the files into an H264 format and it works OK, but for some reason the raw video files that worked before, don't work any more. The video is recorded on a Neuros PVR in MPEG4 format (manual states 640 x480 MPEG4+AAC-LC 30fps) I have a short video clip 1.5MB that will not load as an example I can e-mail you if you let me have your-mail address.

David

[MarkVaden]

Hi David,

Sorry for the inconvenience, I had you set the priorities too low. At this point I think the easiest thing is to uninstall and reinstall DashWare. Then set any MainConcept filter with a merit higher than unlikely (00400000) to merit = unlikely. Also if you could email me the video that would be great. My email address is mark@chasecam.com.

-Mark

[DavidW]

Mark - I've done the following

1. Deinstall dashware
2. Reboot PC
3. Check Media Center works OK
4. Reinstall Dashware
5. Reboot PC
6. Confirm problem with Media Center has returned - error message "Windows Media Center Receiver Service" has stopped working. Media Center freeezes if try to play TV from Happpauge tuner
7. Reset priorities of all Dashware filters that were greater than 00400000 to 0040000
8. Reboot PC
9. Problem with Media Center still remains
10. Reset priorities of all Dashware filters that were greater than 00200000 to 0020000
11.Problem with Media Center is now fixed
12. Reboot PC
13. Media Center still working OK and will run at same time as Dashware
14. Dashware still unable to read the Raw video format produced by the Neuros recorder, but works fine on H264 recoded video

I have e-mailed you screenshots of the error messages and all filter settings so you can see what else is installed on the PC, plus a short sample video of inside of my garage taken straight from the recorder without any post processing.

I do now have a working Dashware program that coexists with all other software on my PC, although I need to recode all my videos before using them.

Thanks for the help so far.

David

[MarkVaden]

David,

Thanks for trying that out. I will look at your raw footage today. We are preparing to release a build this weekend - that will contain some features/bug fixes and also new codecs from MainConcept. The new codecs are supposed to address some compatibility issues with other codecs (according to the codec publisher MainConcept). Now that I have your video. I am hopeful that the new codecs will exist peacefully with your other codecs and we will not need to mess with merits. But if we have to do the merit thing - I can figure it out now that I have some sample video.

-Mark