[RESOLVED] PBX unusable due to extreme stutter.

[wrd1972]

Just recently tried to use PBX and all of a sudden, it is chop filled with stutter. And so much stuter, PBX is totally unusable. If I launch any VP table through the VP editor, the game is silky smooth with absolutely no stutter at all. I dont recall making any recent changes within PBX at all. FYI, I do have a PINDMD3 installed if it matters.

I had PBX 3.36 installed and just updated to 3.42 and the issue remains. I have turned off all AV and NON essential stuff. Problem remains.

Attached are the diag files. Again, no issues at all playing VP through the editor. Please let me know if you need anything else.

 

Thanks

log.txt

PinballX.ini

[Ginsonic]

Weird 

Three first aid hints: (if not already done):

• Install LAV filters
• Install MadVR
• Apply 4GB patch to PinballX.exe (http://www.ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php)

 

[Draco1962]

Please keep in mind that we cannot troubleshoot PinballX if patched by a 3rd party program not blessed by Tom.

[wrd1972]

Agreed i am not ready for that. Anything else you can add regarding the stutter problem draco?

[rablack97]

Can you be more specific about what's choppy pbx itself, or the table being execute via pbx.

 

[Draco1962]

Do you have a topper or monitor installed using the topper function? If not, it is showing enabled so try disabling it.

If you do, try disabling it and see if doing so makes a difference. 

[wrd1972]

When the stutter occurs, the screen freezes solid and you get a repeating audio effect (glitch). Some stutters are longer than others but the long ones can occur for several second. The table never freezes permanently, but the stutters make gameplay impossible within PinballX. Happens on all VP tables.

Yes I am using a topper. Disabling it did not help.

[Draco1962]

Have you looked into Event Viewer (through Windows) log files to see if there are any clues there? Something just doesn't sound right and I don't know that it is necessarily PinballX that is causing it specifically. That it only happens when launching the tables via PinballX would immediately lead one to believe that it is PinballX but my gut is telling me that PinballX may only be the victim of an as yet identified conflict.

[wrd1972]

okay. I will poke around a bit more.

Thanks

[wrd1972]

Okay I disabled topper support. No improvement.

I did change the PBX setting to windowed instead of full screen and that seemed to totally resolve the stutter. So as long as PBX runs in windowed, no stutter. But I must have ful screen for my Pincab.  Again, everything runs 100% stutter free through the VP editor.

 

Thanks for the help guys.

[Carny_Priest]

PinballX can run windowed, full screen. Fact is, I've never run PinballBX exclusive full screen so that I could get working video backglass support for FX2. I do launch VPX as exclusive, full screen. And it works just fine.

[hlr53]

CloudHead over at vpforums has some interesting results regarding video hardware acceleration.

http://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=38853#entry390457

[wrd1972]

Just checked out the link. If I understood it correctly it help with the browsing of the tables and the video playback. Cant tell if it speaks to the actual playing of the game itself. BUt will check it out tomorrow. Funny thing is, this did not happen before. Although I have not really used PBX for months. Just can say for sure when something broke.

[wrd1972]

What about a clean install?

How can I do a clean re-install of PBX without having to do all of the game manager work again?

[Draco1962]

Copy the contents of your PinballX folder elsewhere, do the install, then copy them back to the same path. But to be honest, you won't see any improvement. I think running windowed-fullscreen is your best bet and how most of us run PinballX.

[wrd1972]

Success.

I am 99.9% confident the stuttering issue is now resolved. I am reluctant to call it totally resolved because Murphy will certainly bit me in the ass if I do.  I ended up upgrading the entire disk from Windows 7, to Windows 10 and it just made all of the difference in the world. But still cant explain why PBX worked perfectly fine on W7 for the longest time.

 

I really want to thank everyone here for the assistance. Now I can focus more on making tables rather than working on the cab.

[Draco1962]

Could be a memory management issue with Win 7. I have noticed that Win 10 seems to handle that a lot better for most apps.

[wrd1972]

Well the stutter is back. Sigh!

But nearly as bad as with W7. Is there a program or logging program or something I can use to track down whats causing this. Got to be some way to pinpoint the root cause for this?

 

Thanks

[Draco1962]

Not aware of anything other than the log.txt file, Windows Event Viewer. COuld be any number of things since you upgraded and it was working fine for a few days. Have there been any updates from MS or your GPU driver? Have you looked at the GPU settings to see if something that might have been tweaked that wasn't previously or if you had made changes, went back to default settings?

[wrd1972]

Another interesting did-bit. VP10 is  nearly stutter free. VP9PM is unplayable due to stutter. But VP9PM through the editor, plays stutter free.

Will look at settings.

[wrd1972]

I really think I found the solution to the PBX stutter. It was related to my Bitdefender Security suite, but NOT the AV. Turned out to be  the "Advanced threat defense" function of the security suite. Apparently this function saw PBX as a threat and was somehow impacting its performance and causing the stutter. When I disabled the "Advanced threat defense". Stutter was REALLY gone as far as I can tell. Re-activate it, stutter freaking city man.

Thankfully, there was a feature in the ADT do add the PBX and VP executables to a white list, and that is allowing the ATD to remain active to do its normal of preventing hi-jacks and other bad stuff. Back when I was troubleshooting this weeks ago, I deactivated the AV, but not the ATD. Wish I had...obviously.

So I have a very high confidence that the issue is now resolved. I will report back in a week to hopefully, declare it completely resolved. Thanks again to everyone who chimed in to help.

-B

 

[Draco1962]

Awesome! Glad you got this one sorted!