Active Movie Window Wants Priority

Wow. I googled this and the only thing I could find, after a lot of searching, was a couple people asking the same question with no idea how to fix it. I post this question here and I get a really good answer in under 2 hours.

Thanks Anithink!

On my computers, Mp3's open with wmp. I tried to change the association in wmp and couldn't find a 'File Types' area.

Both my laptop and desktop use that ffdshow. I didn't think of that and couldn't believe you pegged it. I think I remember seeing ffdshow in the tray when I have the active window problems. I went to DirectShow Control and found that while Morrowind.exe and Oblivion.exe were in the 'don't use' box, 'obse_loader' wasn't. So I added it to the list.

I'll test it to make sure on both computers it works. It will be hard to see quickly as there is no way to trigger it but time. (I ran through some cities and loaded some doors that sometimes cause it, and we're good so far!) I've got to imagine you've solved this issue for me, since you guessed it was ffdshow. This has been a problem for me for a very long time. I really appreciate you helping me with this! The promptenss, conciseness, and dead-on-ness was awsome! :D

This site rocks.

Thank you Anithinks!

Okay, so I left it running on my vista desktop and the window popped up again. I included a picture...

In ffdshow audio decoder I checked 'don't use ffdshow in" and my box is: vc.exe;gta3.exe;gta_sa.exe;hl.exe;hl2.exe;Juiced2_HIN.exe;morrowind.exe;oblivion.exe;obse_loader.exe;PES2008.exe;pes6.exe;RF_Online.bin;sacred.exe;sh3.exe;sh4.exe;war3.exe;

So now I did the same for my ffdshow video decoder..

Any ideas?

Thanks again

EDIT: It didn't have explorer.exe on it. I'll try it again now that I added explorer. 

I have a save that immediatly pops up the active window. I alt tabbed back into oblivion after making the above changes and the game crashed.

I then unchecked all my Better Music mods and loaded the save; the active window problem did not immediatly come up. Everything seemed fine.

So it is now looking like Better Music was interacting with ffdshow somehow. I did a clean save and rechecked Better Music, and I'm testing now to see if I'm movie free...

Nope, it doesn't work with better music... Trying completely without...

Completly without works. But I love Better Music. I'm trying a reinstall of Better music with a clean save...

I really think it worked. I'll continue testing, but I think it worked. I've switched music between cells repeatedly and entered a few battles, all which used to have a good chance of triggering it, and nothing yet. 

Thanks Anithinks! I've played with this thorn in my side for so long, never knowing when it would trigger, and then being afraid of the crash. I really appreciate this man!

GRRR!

It seems the problem isn't dead yet. I was in the shivering isles and doing fine, and then I went to enter a city and when the music should change, the game crashed. Every time I enter the city with Better Music on, it crashes. If I turn Better Music off, it works fine. I've reinstalled everything and nothing works...

Any ideas?

After scouring the internet for links between oblivion and ffdshow I found a link to this:

http://nightmare2013.brashendeavors.net/

What I'm hearing is that something is wrong with my codecs. When we disabled ffdshow, there now isn't an audio codec to handle my audio. So I guess that's making it crash. Though, why wouldn't it crash when Better Music is unchecked? I don't know....

I've poked around a lot. It has to be an audio codec.

"Problem

Game freezes for a few seconds when the music track changes within the game.

Cause

Audio codecs that are handling the mp3 rendering on your pc.

Solution

Remove or disable the conflicting codecs. These codecs include, but might not be limited to, Nero, Vodei, Moonlight codecs, as well as the ffdshow media decoder."

That's not my exact problem, but I've got to believe its the same root....

Another odd note: the game crashes when I get close to the settlement, weather I'm in water or not. This seems weird, because the music would only change if I were out of the water, since I have a different playlist for underwater. I saw a line in Sides EAx ini that had to do with so many buildings in an area....

It gets weirder, now I'm crashing in that area with or without better sound, which means the codecs actually could be fixed and this is a different problem... Oh man this is crazy!

Thanks, I'll look at this stuff Anithinks.

Last night I uninstalled and then reinstalled K-lite codec pack.

I found out that my crash was caused by OSR, which I had installed around the same time as debugging this. If only I would have uninstalled it before messing around with my codecs, I think everything would be working now.. At this moment obse won't start, but I remember that being a problem a site had talked about....

HeWhoWatches: When I first got my desktop a couple years ago, I tried to make it compatible with EVERYTHING. It has xp, vista, and seven installed (and used to have linux as well). The big codec pack I can think of is K-lite, but I think it has a bunch of others. Do you have a good way I could find out, so that I could tell you?

Thank you guys for helping me through this.

ps. Oh hey, Nightmares thing won't work on vista. I tried it. :(

So obse_loader.exe and explorer.exe are both blocked. Obse runs, but I still get an active movie problem!

The crash is gone since the removal of OSR.

I am downloadding the CCCP now. Quite an interesting site....

Here's an idea: Side says to only use vanilla mp3s. Working with Sot we use a program that coverts sound files into the basically vanilla mp3s to use as voice files. Do you think I could get rid of the problem by converting all of my files into vanilla mp3s and therefore work around the codecs altogether?

...Hold the phone, I blocked the ffdshow video in explorer and obse and it isn't doing the active window where it normally does....

I think I'll try converting all the files. The last thing was working well for a while, but when I loaded a couple of 'problem saves' the window came up. The saves were in an explore situation. Right now I'm converting my explore folder to 'vanilla' mp3s. I looked at an 'atmosphere' vannilla file and tried to match it as best as I could. I'm doing stereo, 64kps. I tried to test a file and didn't notice any big sound quality loss. This should get rid of any picture or additional mp3 information. We'll see how this folder goes, and if I don't encounter the sound problem, I may convert the rest of my music folder.

I've played over 300 hours of oblivion, and mostly I play new areas through mods. The music is one of the things that gets repetative, and to counter that, I've amassed a music folder of 2.5 gigs, seperated out into Better Musics many folders. This could take a while to convert....

I'm holding my breath. Thanks for working this out with me guys. :)

haha at HeWhoWatches.

Wow. I Think* that it worked. We'll see.

Switch sound converter didn't get rid of the metadata, and active movie popped up. That made me wonder why I hadn't just deleted the metadata itself. So I googled a metadata remover and found this free program ID3kill: http://www.ghacks.net/2008/12/21/id3-tag-remover/ 

guide here: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/remove-mp3-id3-music-tags-with-id3-tag-remover/

 I tested my explore folder and it seemed to work; I'm going to do the same for all my folders and continue playing, but I think it worked...

We'll see! ......

I've gotten some time to play oblivion today. I still had trouble after using ID3Kill, so I downloaded a different program called Mp3Tag. That got rid of more tags and is a much sleeker program. Then, though rare, I was still getting the issue. Then I checked out this site that talks about removing album art. I followed the instructions and found a TON of album art in my varius music folders. I'll continue to test and see if this solves the problem. I'm excited, because the album art pictures that I deleted (which were hidden/ seperate from tags) are the same pictures I'm seeing pop up....

ps, here's a link to Better Music. 

We're getting closer.....

EDIT: I played for quite a while, a lot longer than it usually takes to activate the problem. Nothing bad happend. I believe it's fixed. :D

Thanks Anithinks and HeWhoWatches!

Dude. Sweet! I was going to suggest it to you and HeWhoWatches, but I thought that may come off as a tad cheesey, after tearing most of my hair out trying to get it working, lol. The upside is I feel like I know this mod inside and out now.... :D

So I'd say install better music system. Then go into your origional oblivion folders and do the stuff to delete the album cover stuff. (This site has a great guide with pictures). When I did this on my laptop, I went in and changed the folder options to see hidden files and to NOT "hide protected operating system files". Then I went to my data\music folder and in the search bar I searched for ".jp" [sic] and then deleted all the jpeg files. Then I searched ".ini" and deleted all the 'desktop.ini' files (I think this prevents your computer from re-tagging the stuff). These steps are what finally solved my issue.

Then you can set up your music folders and be worry free. I played a ton today with no problems!

I've found some good stuff at tes nexus, search music, sort by downloads, I think there is a lot of good stuff. I also do video games. Download video game ost's of games you used to play, the more nastolgic the better. While some stuff doesn't work, a lot of it will, since its that same premise of background sound. Plus you go into a cave and hear a song that takes you back to the Snes. Oh, and movie soundtracks...

Lord of the Rings, MMOs, Pirates of the Carrabean, Morrowind, Daggerfall, Halo, Lost, Orgins Wolverine, Suprisingly: Disney movies are really good such as the Lion King, Skillet, Legend of Zelda, some Donkey Kong and Mario, etc...

I've done some techno or hard rock songs for dungeons or battle tracks, but I try to keep that to a minimum. I think you're right, oblivion-esc music works best. If you get a really old mario song or a really upbeat techno song it can totally ruin the mood... 

But it sounds like you already have a ton of music. ;)

Tip: Better music doesn't replace those origional folders, it suppliments them. If Better Music doesn't know if a Dungeon is a Cave, Aleyied Ruin, Castle, or Fort Ruins, then it will play the origional Dungeon folder music. So while you want to move most of your music into the localized folders, you still want those default folders to stay large enough to still provide some difference for when you're in, say, a morrowind cave. 

Next: make sure to mess with the Better Music System ini file. That is where you can turn on and off what folders you want to use. I use pretty much everything but a storm playlist and a playlist for some of the forest regions. here's how I sorted my music. (Which proves to be pretty fun!)

I made Aliyed Ruins sound magical and creepy, forts and castles have songs with big drums, caves sound crystaline or wet, homes sound soothing,  inns sound cheesy or really public, oblivion planes are rock, night/night public sounds sad with strings, underwater is a favorite with water themes from different games and soothing music (harps), sneak is sneaking music like Metroid or the Italian Job, riding music is epic music like LOTR, church music is like choir stuff, fighters is an upbeat castle, mages is really magical and fun, dark brotherhood is creepy music, cloudruler and the mountains are just epic-like halo...

There are things like the dark brotherhood that you want to keep serious, but then there are things that are really fun to make nastolgic, like underwater with a good DK soundtrack. Usually I'll get a game's ost and listen through it. When a song sounds like it belongs in a place I move it there.. In the end its not super consistent, but its close enough that it works, and you constantly feel like the music fits where you are. When I just had big music folders without better music, songs seemed to play at the wrong times. This really cuts down on that.

Haha, thanks for letting me rant about better music, now that it finally works again. Let me know if you have any install questions. Let me know how it goes too; if you find a good setup or think a songtype works really well for an area let me know so I can try it out. ;)

ps. Man, 4+ gigs! what stuff do you have? 

Geesh! That's awsome! Last night I searched music, sorted by downloads, and downloaded the first page... Sounds like you've got some good stuff. I'll definatly check out the site, I want to get up to 4 gigs!

When you say list out, are you looking for examples of how to install, or for like what music I'm using where so you can get a similiar 'uber ost'? I wish there was a way to convert my folder contents to a text list...

Google, you are very cool.

I found a guide here that told me how to make a list. (Another, simpler guide is here). I typed in "cd" and then drug my music folder onto the cmd prompt and pressed enter. Then I typed in "dir /s /b music.txt" It made a text file that lists every file in my music folder. :D Cool. You should try it ;)

Anyhow, that's my list of files. Basically you put the music in any folder that has a 'dummy.mp3' and don't delete that dummy folder. Hope that helps you out. ;)

ps. Which guys do you reccomend on that music site?

Cool. Check out the message I sent you too. ;)

I'll check out that then: I could see nordic drinking songs sounding cool for a tavern, and also sounding not cool... lol

Soooooo much musssiiiic!!! I'm starting to feel lost :/

I think I might do an initial sort of my new music, and then go back through the data\music default folders and move music files into other folders they fit in, like from dungeon to specific dungeons....

This is cool, yet overwhelming .... :/ :)

W00T! THat's awsome! I'm really glad it worked for you. :D You're welcome!