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Author Topic: Issues opening multiple files?  (Read 318 times)

LazyTomato

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Issues opening multiple files?
« on: January 01, 2025, 09:53:54 PM »
Heya, I've started using WACUP about a week or two ago, since I've always loved Winamp but it was kind of painfully outdated at this point.

Loving it so far, and loving all the extra skin support and modern fixes that it has. But I've been having an issue that base Winamp didn't have.

I don't really use "media library" features in players as much as other people, and more often than not I simply manually browse the organized folders of my music collection, enter album folders, and click "play all" from Windows explorer itself.
(Windows 10 by the way)
On Winamp, this always worked perfectly fine, queuing everything in that folder (and recursive subfolders if applicable) in order and playing it with no issues. Same thing if I manually highlight a specific set of files and right click>play those.

But on WACUP, I can never seem to get it working properly even after checking through settings.
If it's not open already, it just immediately opens an instance of the player for every single song, all at once, lagging the hell out of my system and peaking my audio as it plays everything at the same time.
If it IS already running, it doesn't seem to get all the songs properly, it'll either be missing some songs at the start and/or end or just have them queued in inconsistent orders, there doesn't seem to be much of a pattern to how it breaks when it's running.

I already have it set to disallow multiple instances from the settings by the way, so I take it it has to be a bug of some kind.
I'm on the latest public preview build as of this post, is this being looked into on betas? Or has there been attention brought to the issue already, at least?

dro

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Re: Issues opening multiple files?
« Reply #1 on: January 02, 2025, 02:55:29 AM »
What version of Windows are you using?

MarkRH

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Re: Issues opening multiple files?
« Reply #2 on: January 02, 2025, 05:09:25 AM »
Well, LazyTomato did say:

(Windows 10 by the way)
So my guess would be they are on Windows 10 Home or Pro.
As far as the issues go, not sure. I tend to just Enqueue my entire Media Library into the main playlist and let it play stuff at random.

dro

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Re: Issues opening multiple files?
« Reply #3 on: January 02, 2025, 08:15:11 AM »
This is why I shouldn't reply at 3am in the morning when I can't sleep. Will have a proper re-read later today when I'm hopeful more with it.

LazyTomato

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Re: Issues opening multiple files?
« Reply #4 on: January 02, 2025, 05:23:05 PM »
What version of Windows are you using?

Windows 10 Pro, yeah. 22H2.
MORE specifically, version 19045.4412 of that, since I haven't updated in several months and usually prefer to do that manually just in case updates break something the moment they come out.
So, at least theoretically, it shouldn't be an issue caused by some incompatibility with a recent update of Windows 10.

dro

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Re: Issues opening multiple files?
« Reply #5 on: January 06, 2025, 01:27:10 PM »
I already have it set to disallow multiple instances from the settings by the way, so I take it it has to be a bug of some kind.
I'm on the latest public preview build as of this post, is this being looked into on betas? Or has there been attention brought to the issue already, at least?
It's come up a few times though I don't know how common of an issue it might be as I often seem to not get direct reports about issues (aka having to trawl through social media posts) so thank you for taking the time to report it.



If multiple instances are being launched then my first hunch is it might be due to a permissions issue or a form of process isolation which would then prevent the handling that's run on loading to try to find existing wacup instances to fail as that's how that stuff generally behaves afaict. It however doesn't seem to account for how you've described things as seemingly starting all of those instances at the same time instead of it being a gradual cascade from the first to last instance.

My other hunch especially with what you've described about files missing when it is already running could even be due to the processes that have been spawned potentially failing / silent crashing. This might be more likely & from feedback from one tester with the current beta vs issues seen with the preview build seemed to resolve what was a slow / laggy response to start & iirc that was sometimes causing other instances to begin due to the timeout that's in place to deal with hung / failed processes timing out.



One thing you could try out is seeing in Task Manager's details view & sorting by exe name if any werfault instances (windows error reporting handling) are appearing at around the same time as you're triggering trying to get the files into WACUP.

I also could do with knowing what skin you're using & if you're using a modern style skin another thing is to try using a classic skin just to see if the reduced loading overhead of those skins makes any difference or not (I suspect it likely won't & is something else going on).

Final thought for now is if you've got the local library enabled & if so roughly how many items are in it. As going to preferences -> media library & temporarily trying this out with the whole media library disabled might also be useful to rule out some ideas I've got.

LazyTomato

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Re: Issues opening multiple files?
« Reply #6 on: January 08, 2025, 11:49:13 PM »
...Forgot to check here for a few days. To respond to your points though...

It however doesn't seem to account for how you've described things as seemingly starting all of those instances at the same time instead of it being a gradual cascade from the first to last instance.
Yeah, I tried it again just to be sure and indeed they seem to open all at once. Though, paying closer attention now, I'm noticing it's not EXACTLY one instance per song. It's multiple instances, each with a seemingly arbitrary queue of like two or three of the songs that were on the folder I clicked "play all" in.

One thing you could try out is seeing in Task Manager's details view & sorting by exe name if any werfault instances (windows error reporting handling) are appearing at around the same time as you're triggering trying to get the files into WACUP.
I left that open on the side while doing the "play all" thing, ordered by ascending process name just to have W ones at the very top, and I didn't seem to notice anything like that at all. Just the like 6 or 7 or however many WACUP instances were popping up all at once.

I also could do with knowing what skin you're using & if you're using a modern style skin another thing is to try using a classic skin just to see if the reduced loading overhead of those skins makes any difference or not (I suspect it likely won't & is something else going on).
I've been on the standard "modern" skin, the... sorta-skeuomorphic one that was already iconic to stock Winamp? Switching to the classic skin doesn't make any difference on this though, still has the exact same multi-instance issue.

Final thought for now is if you've got the local library enabled & if so roughly how many items are in it. As going to preferences -> media library & temporarily trying this out with the whole media library disabled might also be useful to rule out some ideas I've got.
I didn't check how much stuff was in it but it's set to point to my music library folder on Windows which has like... Idunno, at least a hundred-and-something GBs of music I've collected over the years.
I did try disabling the library feature entirely from the settings since I don't make much use of it, but that didn't change anything either.