Xibo Player Error Windows 11 - Player Freeze

[Sam3]

Hello,

Player Version

4 R402.1

Xibo CMS Version
Version 4.0.7

Issue

I have 1 display connected to my Xibo CMS and its currently scheduled to run 1 layout containing 1 playlist.

The playlist contains 4 images and 1 video. The images are under 5mb and the video is 34mb.

The Xibo player on my windows 11 mini pc runs perfectly for the 1st 30 min - 1 hour.

However, after that time, the xibo player freezes at the last frame of the video file and I get this error from the xibo watchdog:

“System.Exception: Unable to find status file in
at XiboClientWatchdog.Watcher.Run()”

Can anyone help with this? All I want to achieve is to have the playlist continuously loop.

These are the latest Logs I have saved:
WatcherWatchdogToo many active processes

And

WatcherWatchdogNo active processes

Any help would be appreciated!

[Sam3]

Here are the other screenshots:

Playlist Screenshots:

Scheduling Screenshots:

[Sam3]

Player Options:

[Sam3]

Here are the errors I got from pressing the “i” key:

[jngo]

You can check the following
1/ Video clips: Use a software called Handbrake to convert to the type that is compatible with the built-in Windows Media Player. Xibo supports recommend using the “Fast1080p” setting in handbrake to convert the video clips. Xibo confirms that it uses Windows Media Player to play the clip so if your clips are not compatible with WMP, it will not work in Xibo. In Windows 11 Pro, the WMP is called Legacy Windows Media Player, at least in our environment
2/ Xibo for Windows is currently x86-bit therefore, it can only utilized max of 3-4GB of computer RAM regardless how much more RAM your computer has. Unfortunately, at this time, it is the only option for Windows. Be mindful again, with the resolution of the images too. The smaller size the better
3/ Add Xibo player to any anti-virus and/or firewall’s exceptions or allowed list.
4/ Update all drivers in your computer, especially graphical card
5/ Remove and Re-add your player to the CMS
6/ After you have done all of the above and still not being able to run normally, you can ask for paid support

[Sam3]

Awesome let me try that out.

But what if I want the video to be 4K not 1080p?

As the video is sourced in 4K and its a 4K TV.

[jngo]

Using handbrake, go to Dimensions > Resolution and Scaling > Resolution Limit > 2160p 4K Ultra
This way, it would preserve the 4K resolution while keeping the codec compatible with WMP
However, in our environment, we did not have a lot of luck with 4K videos. We have a Dell Intel Core i5 9-gen, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, Intel graphic card but the Xibo player crashed after a while (2-3 days) playing 4K clips. When it crashed, the app restarted itself again and you will know if you see the Windows Task bar appears at the bottom of the screen. If you click anywhere in the screen, the Task bar will disappear. We use this way to determine if the app crashed or not.
Anyway, good luck and please report back your results so we can all share

[Sam3]

Oh darn that sucks about the 4K resolution videos running on the xibo windows players.

I might look into the linux xibo players and see if that is a better option.

I’ll keep you posted.

I made the handbrake changes.

Now I’m going to wait and see if the xibo player on my windows 11 mini pc freezes or not.

Thanks!

[jngo]

We did try Xibo player for Linux but it does not seem to work for us.
We ended up with the commercial version (paid) of Xibo Player for Android.
We installed the app on our hardware, which is a Android box 4GB RAM/ 32GB ROM, Quad-core Cortex CPU, Android 11, rooted. It runs a few 4K video clips, bunch of high-res images, weather widget, world clock, all are pretty slick, no issues for a straight almost 2 months by now. So we use those Android versions for production and stop the Windows PC

[Sam3]

Oh interesting, do you have remote access with the android boxes? And they are 4K output?

[jngo]

Our Android box hardware has 4K output
For remote connect, you can try Airdroid (commercial) or, for free version, you can try “scrcpy” which will work along with SDK developer tool (Google search)

[Sam3]

Okay sweet, would you mind sharing the link for your Android box?

Seems pretty hard to find a good quality Android box on Amazon, a lot of the reviews mention hardware failure after a few weeks.

[Sam3]

So its weird, when I use the Handbrake “Fast 1080p30” with 4K resolution, the player runs but eventually crashes and gets restarted by the watchdog.

And when I use “Fast 1080p30” with default settings, the player runs but eventually crashes and gets restarted by the watchdog.

Its the exact same result.

Very strange.

[Sam3]

From my task manager performance tab I can see that when the images play, the CPU and GPU are at about 10-30% usage.

But when the video is playing it jumps to 90%-100% usage for both the CPU & GPU.

I’m assuming that would cause the crash?

Image Playing:

Video Playing:

Any suggestions.

[Sam3]

I just got these logs:

"2024-03-18 09:46:48MainStack Trace: at System.Windows.Media.Imaging.WriteableBitmap…ctor(Int32 pixelWidth, Int32 pixelHeight, Double dpiX, Double dpiY, PixelFormat pixelFormat, BitmapPalette palette)
at CefSharp.Wpf.Rendering.WritableBitmapRenderHandler.<>c__DisplayClass8_0.<CreateOrUpdateBitmap>b__0() in C:\projects\cefsharp\CefSharp.Wpf\Rendering\WritableBitmapRenderHandler.cs:line 145
at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.InternalRealCall(Delegate callback, Object args, Int32 numArgs)
at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.TryCatchWhen(Object source, Delegate callback, Object args, Int32 numArgs, Delegate catchHandler)
at System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherOperation.InvokeImpl()
at System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherOperation.InvokeInSecurityContext(Object state)
at MS.Internal.CulturePreservingExecutionContext.CallbackWrapper(Object obj)
at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state, Boolean preserveSyncCtx)
at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state, Boolean preserveSyncCtx)
at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state)
at MS.Internal.CulturePreservingExecutionContext.Run(CulturePreservingExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state)
at System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherOperation.Invoke()
at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.ProcessQueue()
at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.WndProcHook(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, Boolean& handled)
at MS.Win32.HwndWrapper.WndProc(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, Boolean& handled)
at MS.Win32.HwndSubclass.DispatcherCallbackOperation(Object o)
at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.InternalRealCall(Delegate callback, Object args, Int32 numArgs)
at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.TryCatchWhen(Object source, Delegate callback, Object args, Int32 numArgs, Delegate catchHandler)
at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.LegacyInvokeImpl(DispatcherPriority priority, TimeSpan timeout, Delegate method, Object args, Int32 numArgs)
at MS.Win32.HwndSubclass.SubclassWndProc(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam)
at MS.Win32.UnsafeNativeMethods.DispatchMessage(MSG& msg)
at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.PushFrameImpl(DispatcherFrame frame)
at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.PushFrame(DispatcherFrame frame)
at System.Windows.Window.ShowHelper(Object booleanBox)
at System.Windows.Window.Show()
at System.Windows.Window.ShowDialog()
at XiboClient.App.RunClient(Boolean screenSaver) in C:\Users\User\Documents\Source\xibo-dotnetclient\App.xaml.cs:line 116
at XiboClient.App.OnStartup(StartupEventArgs e) in C:\Users\User\Documents\Source\xibo-dotnetclient\App.xaml.cs:line 79
2024-03-18 09:46:48MainUnhandled Exception: Startup: Insufficient memory to continue the execution of the program.
"

Log Analysis

The log entries point to a couple of key issues:

1. Creation of a WriteableBitmap object failing: The stack trace you provided is part of an exception that occurs when the application attempts to create a new WriteableBitmap object, which is a part of the .NET Framework’s System.Windows.Media.Imaging namespace. This is used for rendering images in WPF applications. The error occurs within the CefSharp library, which Xibo uses for web rendering, indicating a problem when attempting to render content (possibly related to video playback).

2. Insufficient memory error: This message directly indicates that the application is requesting more memory than the system can provide, leading to the crash. This could be due to the high resource demand of video playback or a memory leak within the application or one of its components (like CefSharp).

Any suggestions? I have 8GB of ram but the xibo player can only use 3-4GB given its x86 bit.

And I have no idea how to fix the WriteableBitmap object failing.

[jngo]

Yes, we have the exact same problem. There is another older post about this issues here:

Video crashes player

Before completing please check that the time, date and timezone have been correctly set on the device running the Player. To be completed by the original poster: Player Version windows 4 R401.0-401 this has been happening from many versions now, I have just hoped it would resolve itself with the new 4.0 versions. Issue When ever I include a video in a layout the player player that layout a few times and then crashes. Sometimes the player locks up the machine. I did capture an error in the logs…

From what I understand, there is a potential memory leak and also, something specifically with Intel Core i3/i5/i7 that they need to deal with. Perhaps there might be a fix in the near future.

As I mentioned, our Windows PC has even 16GB RAM, Intel core i5 9th-Gen and still have that problem. Xibo CS cannot do anything for this, unfortunately at the moment. We did pay for the support to troubleshoot however, we dropped it and move to Android box, as I mentioned earlier

We go with this hardware, and have not had any issues since (or yet!)

MINIX X35-i Max 4K Ultra HD Industrial Android Player, WiFi 6/4GB DDR4/32GB eMMC...