[RESOLVED] Freezing Videos in Pinballx

[Watacaractr]

Hello everyone. I apologize if this is posted in the wrong area but it's worth repeating as I can't find anything recent about the subject. And what I have found, there seemed like no definitive solution. Freezing, videos freezing while in attract mode. After first running PBX, all videos run perfectly, then after shuffling through a few tables, the PF freezes but the BG plays. Then, if I'm lucky enough for the PF to unfreeze, then BG freezes. The DMD screen freezes on and off as well while playing the default video "no DMD", obviously for those type of tables. Then there is the wheel table logos themselves not being recognized and reverting back to normal text. None of my videos have any audio and are all under 5mb each. After starting a game and returning back to PBX, it happens even quicker. PC has an i5-4790, nvidia 960 gpu and I'm running a 3 monitor setup with all monitors on gpu. I have downloaded all the updated codecs and newest version of pinballx. Installed and reinstalled VPX, FP, PBX, and have set all files to administrator and now I am completely stumped. Why does PBX only work part of the time? It's so perfect when I first run it and then the freezing just ruins it. I do have a start up video that was running perfectly until I ran pinballx today. Nothing. Goes straight to attract mode. So while certain parts work, others do not, and it's never the same. PBX actually crashes as well. Can someone point me in the right direction for finally solving this. I saw a post on here years ago and it seemed like there was never a solution then either. Please help if you can. Thank you in advance.

 

[Carny_Priest]

 

[bdormer]

Just a thought - depending on your OS.  If you are using Win10 - it tends to do A LOT of stuff in the background, starting a little while after you start up.  It sounds like you have enough horsepower - but check Task Manager and see what's using up your resources.  You can jump over to YouTube and find dozens of videos on how to clean up a W10 system to get the best gaming performance out of it.  You could also have a thermal problem, your power supply could be unable to pump out enough current (or be flakey) or some piece of hardware (mobo, gpu) could have a fault (you're not overclocking are you?  That can cause all kinds of chaos.)  Go by process of elimination.

[Koplings]

i had the exact same problem. it just started happening one day...... 

are you using a pindmd or a real dmd by chance?  I found that by swapping it out for another one the problem suddenly went away.  try changing the name of the video folder and real dmd video folder within pinball to something else temporarily so that only your wheel images, backglass videos and table videos show up in attract mode.  (i.e you don't want anything showing up on the dmd in attract mode - change the dmd related video folder names so pinballx cant find them).  Then let attract mode run for awhile.  If it doesn't crash then your problem source is the dmd which for me cause everything you described - weird....

That's what I narrowed it down to.  I found it didn't crash when I did this,  then I tried adding back the "no dmd video" folder (i.e the generic  pinballx attract video) and it started crashing again.  that's when I knew it was related to the dmd and tried swapping it out.  I swapped it out and no more crashing so for me it was some sort of hardware or interface problem.  Even if you arent using a real dmd try doing this and see if your crashing stops.  Its worth a try to narrow down your problem.  You could start with no video folders being found by adding a letter to all of them then one by one add them back till you start crashing again - that will at least tell you where your problem is.  Your specs should be fine to handle pinball and the 3 screens so its probably something really weird related to one of the screens/folders.....

when I cleaned the dmd connectors and put the old dmd back in again everything worked fine again.  don't ask me why I have no idea I can only say for me after hours of trying other things the ghost vanished and I hope he doesn't come back.  I have a high end gaming rig running my cab so I too was pretty stumped and frustrated......

worth a try for you as I went through a whole pile of pain rolling back windows updates, adjusting the performence settings etc to no avail.

[Watacaractr]

Hey guys, thank you for the responses. Sorry for getting back so late. I finally solved the freezing issue. I am running Windows 7 by the way. It seems the problem was actually in the hard drive itself. I have a Samsung 850 SSD and it was turned to "Rapid Mode". Come to find, rapid mode tends to use more of my system memory which was causing the freezing. All I did was disable "Rapid Mode" and I haven't had freezing since. Thank you all.

[Draco1962]

Thanks for reporting back with your solution!