video causing system to freeze

[lucasvandijk]

i'm currently using Displaymonkey here at the office. all seems to be working fine only the moment i use any video file in a video frame the whole system just slows doen. like each click is taking a minute for the website to respond, the moment i remove the video frame all works again smoothly.

[michaelmalmgren]

Lucas, when you refer to the whole system do you mean the computer that runs the DM presentation or the DM computer that host the web and/or database server?

Video content may be very resource heavy depending on the video file format in combination with the hardware (graphics card) that renders the video. I would recommend experimenting with different types of formats, resolutions and/or hardware.

[lucasvandijk]

tried already a lot of options, seems that the host that runs DM the moment i create a frame with video content it sort of freezes, also all the screens displaying other content then the video frame instant freezes as wel, the moment i remove the frame with the video it start working all smooth again

[michaelmalmgren]

Lucas, do you mean that web page containing the video frame in DMM (http://displaymonkey_managment) or do you experience this behaviour in DMP (http://displaymonkey) as long as there is a video frame part of the presentation?

[lucasvandijk]

both, seems the whole displaymonkey system freezes the moment there is a video frame active, thanks btw already for the quick responses so far!

[michaelmalmgren]

I see but are you using a different computer when running the presentation than the one that DM and DMM are installed on?

[lucasvandijk]

In both cenario's it hapens when i use external the dm and dmm page and when i used it through localhost/apps/displaymonkey on the host it is hapening, is it posible that some local (windows) firewall setting is blocking this or something?

[lucasvandijk]

Hi Michael,

So now I disabled the windows firewall on the host, but the issue still exist. i tried to create below a slightly more detailed explanation of the problem i'm faccing.

The moment i put any video on any of the displays is starts buffering (see picture 1)

The moment it start buffering i see in the task manager of the DM Host that all network connectivity is dropped see (picture 2) on this moment also all the other screens not displaying the video frame, all the content disappears and the screen becomes white with only the background i've set.

once the video is buffered which takes like a minute for a video of maybe 10mb the content on the other screens comes back and also in the task manager the network comes back a live. (see picture 3)

[michaelmalmgren]

Lucas,

Check the number of maximum worker processes that are defined for the application pool that runs the DM and DMM applications. Try increasing it to 4 or 5 if lower and see if that makes any difference. Also you may want to create an application pool specifically for Display Monkey so that it is not shared by other web applications if that is the case.

You will find this setting under IIS - Application Pool - Advanced Settings.

[lucasvandijk]

Hi Michael,

I have now changed the maximum worker processes from 1 to 4 which seems to partially solve the problem. when i create any video frame the whole system keeps runing and doesn't freeze, however it still takes a couple minutes to load a video with the 1,2,3 screen until it's being played. any advise on that?

[lucasvandijk]

what i now notice is that the CPU usage on the host of DM constant goes to 100% in taskmanager while bufering the video.

[lucasvandijk]

and once the video is cashed it starts playing however after a couple of minutes is starts loading again.

[michaelmalmgren]

Lucas, try to set caching option for video frames to value greater than 0.

You find this in DMM - Setup - Other - Application Settings - Default cache expiration for new Video frames

[lucasvandijk]

default cache expiration i have already set on 120 in the past

[lucasvandijk]

hi Michael,

just started with the whole installation of DM from Scratch on a new PC with higher specs (I7-4770 3.4GHZ + 16GB RAM) but still the moment i create a video frame it start buffering very long and the CPU usage spikes up to 100% on the host.

[michaelmalmgren]

Lucas, browsers work quite differently when it comes to rendering video, what browsers have you tried with what video formats?

[jre08]

Lucas, I was having the same issue with Internet Explorer, so I switched to Google Chrome. Hopefully the new Edge (Chromium) will fix this, however my clients are windows 7 and don't have access to the new Edge browser yet. So I have to stick with Chrome for now.

Edit:

Oh in my research of why the buffer (1, 2 ,3) --> It is just a .gif file with different frames (repeating) if I'm not mistaken

[EssBee278]

I had the same issue on several different clients with different browsers. It's definitely related to the addition of video. Server runs slow and several items stop working e.g. images disappear on other pages. Something definitely broken with videos.

[lucasvandijk]

Hi @EssBee278,

What i just noticed is that when i use the same video file in 2 different Canvases then it seems to create a conflict which causes problem i'm now testing with video 1 on canvas 1 and a copy of video 1 on canvas 2 this seems to improve.

To me it seems that when the system tries to cache the video for canvas 1 at the same time it tries to cache that same video for canvas 2 it creates something of a conflict. could you try the same and see if this changes something at your side.

Kind regards

[EssBee278]

Thanks for the response Lucas. I only have the one canvas and had only loaded one video and got the same problem you had, so I don't think it's related to the number of videos or canvasses - but you can never rule that out! Think I'll just leave videos off the agenda for now.