Hi,
I've been using Dopus for more than 20 years now and I can say that I'm a medium-weight power user, but I can't get the file list pane to display any music file's (MP3 or FLAC) metadata. The data is there and correctly formatted, since it's displayed in the metadata pane as you can see from this screen capture.:
Is there something I must do in the settings for this to work, a specific view ? I can't find any info on this, it seems to work for everyone but me!
Thanks for your help,
Roger
If you use File >Exit Directory Opus, then go to that folder directly, without opening any others, does the data appear then?
Another thing to check: Copy the file to the desktop and see if it works there.
Hi,
Thanks for the superquick response.
The files are indeed on a NAS, but it's the same if I copy them locally.
HOWEVER, when I followed your first suggestion (file>exit), it works perfectly when I come back! Honestly, it's the first time I see this data appear, it never did even after rebooting the PC and starting DOPUS for the first time. Is there something I should do to keep it working, even if I start by opening other folders ?
Thanks,
RP
It probably means something is hanging on the background thread which gets file information, so it stops making progress.
It could be part of Opus itself but could also be a video codec/splitter or similar component something else has installed which is getting stuck on a particular file.
If you make some process snapshots (when it's in that state where the file information isn't working), we might be able to use them to tell you what’s going wrong:
I have none of the problems you describe (excessive CPU etc). Dopus hangs very rarely, and usually when I do something stupid like remove a drive it was reading or some such.
Right now, all the music files' metadata is read perfectly. I'll watch out if and when it disappears, particularly after I've done video editing (as you suggest a video codec), and in that case I'll do the process snapshots like you suggest.
In the meantime, thanks a lot for solving the problem so quickly, I couldn't find any other resource online mentioning this issue.
Cheers
R
A DLL something has installed could be calling Sleep() on the file-info thread for all we know, which would block the thread from progressing without using any CPU. More likely, something is deadlocking on a mutex or critical section.
If the problem happens again, please make the snapshots while it's in that state, so we can see what's going on. The solution you have isn't a fix as you'll still run into the problem if you read whichever folder has the file that's triggering the problem.
Hi again,
Ok, I managed to reproduce it fairly easily. The steps to do that fastest are:
2 more bits of info: if I try to rename this avi file while Dopus is running, it's refused bcse "used by another process". If close Dopus, then remove this file and restart the process above, the same happens with the next avi file in the list. None of the 2 is the first avi file, they're the fifth.
I made 5 dumps compressed as per your instructions, I'm sending them through Wetransfer to crashdumps@gpsoft.com.au with a link to this thread.
Thanks for your help!
R
Thanks for sending the snapshots!
It looks like the problem is within one of the Video For Windows DLLs while it's processing AVI files. It's waiting for a resource which is locked, I suspect because it crashed while processing a previous video while the resource was locked, and so failed to unlock it properly.
There's probably not much you can do to fix that, other than disable the Movie plugin (which would mean no movie metadata would be displayed, but other metadata should then no longer be blocked). The issue could still be caused by a codec/splitter but it's not easy to tell which one it is.
In the longer term, we are going to stop using that Windows component for obtaining video metadata and switch to a better library from someone else, but that change is still in the early stages of development.
Hi,
Thanks for the quick explanation, I think we've pretty much circumscribed the issue. I do video editing and video capture from analog regularly, and crashes do happen unfortunately.
I have 2 questions for you then:
Isn't there any way for me to find and unlock this file that the DLL has locked ? Or perhaps replace the Windows DLL ? Obviously, rebooting the PC doesn't change anything, plus most video files reside on my NAS, not on the computer.
If I want to disable the Dopus video plugin that reads the metadata, how could I do that ? It's probably some DLL in C:\Program Files\GPSoftware\Directory Opus, but which one ?
Video metadata is useful, but not as important to me as image or music metadata is. Plus, if you fix it in the future it's good enough for me!
Cheers,
RP
Have you considered remuxing the avi files into mp4?
Exiting the process which has the lock is the safest way. (If it's dopus.exe that has the lock, File > Exit Directory Opus should release it.)
Just un-tick it under Preferences / Viewer / Viewer Plugins.
Hi, yes of course but it's a generational thing here since it's been going on for 30 years! The first files came from analog HI8 cassette captures, then from DV cassette captures, and of course the last generation that came from HD SSD video cameras is already in MP4.
I convert the AVIs to MP4 only after I've finished editing them to store the files (before I was doing it in mpg.) However for sources of not-yet edited files, I'm reluctant to touch the AVI as it's the original captured "lossless" file. Probably stupid since it's just in 720 x 576 DVD format after all, but still...
I should probably convert them all at this point, but there's a big, big bunch of them... And then there are all those 8mm, Super 8mm and 16mm movies from my parents that I had professionally converted... to AVI!
So yes, I might do it at some point, but there are 6000 files, space is cheap (just over 800G) so there isn't a particular incentive to do it.
Perhaps you could suggest a solid batch converter ? Right now I'm using the paid version of Freemake and Handbrake, and they seem to be both quite good.
Thanks for your interest,
Cheers
Roger
I didn't mean converting, just copying from one container to another. FFmpeg does it fast and free:
ffmpeg.exe -i {filepath} -c copy {filepath|ext=mp4}Oh, sorry my mistake!
But I tried the command line you suggest with the latest ffmpeg build, and I get an error each time: If I don't put "|ext=mp4" in quotes it's a windows error (command not recognized), and if I do I get an ffmpeg error "Unable to find a suitable output format for 'c:\temp|ext=mp4'
c:\temp|ext=mp4: Invalid argument".
Could you perhaps give me a concrete example ?
Thanks for your help!
RP
This should work as a standard command as well as a DOS-button. Are you running it on a file on the NAS? That'd be my first guess.
Set the button to DOS and change it to
echo ffmpeg.exe -i {filepath} -c copy {filepath|ext=mp4}
pause
so we can see what gets passed to ffmpeg.exe.
The command goes in an Opus button. If you're trying to run it directly from the Command Prompt in Windows then it won't work.
Ok, thank you for the clarification, I wouldn't have guessed on my own!
Well, I managed to get it to work, after some fumbling, only it produces a 0 bytes MP4 file - see attached screenshot, if I missed something. I am using the latest ffmpeg build. I'll continue the video-related conversation with lxp, because it interests me to see this through!
The Dopus button-related part seems to work as intended, it's the ffmpeg part that sticks...
Cheers
Hi,
Thanks for the suggestion, but the above doesn't produce any meaningful results.
If I translate this to a valid DOS command line in the cmd window though, it's correctly executed but I get an ffmpeg error as you can see in the screen capture below. If you can make something of it...
Cheers
The Opus and FFmpeg part is alright, the video is the troublemaker.
You could try ffmpeg-n5.0, I think the project made some progress in that field. But some bizarre stuff like ancient Windows media video streams might never make it into mp4.
Additionally, you could try to remux the videos first into .mkv with MKVToolNix and then into .mp4 with FFmpeg.
If you lose metadata on the way, use ExifTool to copy it to the final files.
Video is often more art than science 
Ok, I tried with ffmpeg 5.0 (you're right in fact I didn't have the latest version), but still no luck, same result whether from the original AVI or the remuxed MKV version with MKVToolnix.
And my AVIs are not THAT old, they were coded in 2010!
To be very honest, I always doubted that I could just repackage the AVIs to MP4 with ffmpeg without any actual format conversion, but I wanted to explore this possibility as much as possible. I might have learned something!
Thanks for the help anyway.
RP
