It is the first time ever – because probably I am not as experienced as Geraint – I witness availability of IMediaSample interface without availability of IMediaSample2. One might be curious what kind of software could provide such a weirdo in 2010? It is latest and greatest Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder 3.1.

Additionally to this, they decided to provide garbage in AM_MEDIA_TYPE::formattype field of IAMStreamConfig::SetFormat. They perhaps learned that standard Audio Capture Filter will ignore it anyway, so why bother then?

Having fixed that, Tone Source Filter based virtual audio device is now compatible with Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder 3.1 and it is possible to send audio to remote Flash Media Server, e.g. such as Ustream.tv service (over RTMP protocol, as implemented by FMLE).

Among things beyond of any understanding are those presented by Asustek/Asus engineers. While hardware is more or less OK, software is often confusing. Asus Eee PC 1000HE, out of which I own one, comes with Asus Eee PC Tray Utility 5.1.1.4008.

A helper application to provide quick access to certain hardware control functions, it is OK. No, you don’t have an option to close it and even if you kill it from task manager, another Asus utility will immediately relaunch it. It is a kind monther care from Asus who are just sure that they know the right way.

The laptop las an LCD of 1024×600 pixel reoslution, and, as it usually happens, most accurate, sharp and best looking image is on the display when screen resolution is also set to 1024×600. That is, one virtual screen resolution pixel that matches exactly one physical pixel on the LCD matrix. Do I  need to be so much detailed on the obvious things, because everyone knows this as it seems? Everyone but Asus engineers who for some reasons sell laptops that automatically switch to default resolution 800×600. Even if you change resolution to desired one, the laptop will switch it back  sometimes when you logon, when you reboot, when you use fast switch user capability… Could it be more stupid than that? Perhaps it could, but this way it is already rather annoying.

After less than two months, the hotkey which switches LCD resolution sunk down while it was only used for one thing: to bring back resolution of 1024×600, which beyound of any doubt had to be default resolution without any justification to fall back to a different one for no reason. The key is definitely not going to last for too long.

Out of curiosity, I started the utility on my desktop, where it immediately blinded me by turning off both of my Asus monitors and left me no other way to press reset button to reboot the box.

I thought that there might be an update for the utility on Asus Support website because this kind of thing had to be fixed with apologies and sincere promises to never happen again. I was reluctant to use Asus Update utility because it is more refined masterpiece of stupidity. However on the website, there is no utility in downloads at all. It could be a part of another downloadable package, but there was also no obvious indication that would give a hint what update is required.

So that only solution left was to anatomize the crapware and think of a workaround to at least for some time extend the life of the hotkey. The utility below, PostAsTrayCommand, will look for Asus tray icon utility to be running and will post a requested command (this way it can also be used to switch on or off wireless LAN, or the camera) to the utility.

To switch resolution to 1024×600, a command of 32797 has to be posted. The screenshot below gives an idea of other values, which might be useful:

To post a command, it needs to be started from command line “PostAsTrayCommand.exe 32797″ and it makes sense to add it to Startup group to be automatically launched on logon.

A Visual C++ .NET 2008 source code is available from SVN, release binary included.

Another example of a negligence with a cost of incompatibility and enormous amount of support time. Ahead Nero installs a number of DirectShow filters into $(Program Files)\Common Files\Ahead\DSFilter directory. One of the files is NeResize.ax and it hosts a Nero Resize filter. Let us take a closer look:

CLSID: {30002E0C-C574-481E-A5DE-90AE54A79E10} (note that Nero 8 ships the same buggy stuff with new CLSID of {3D0A27C9-B4D6-487B-AFE4-E3CABD4B81F9} – 11.05.2010)
Merit: 0×00400000 (MERIT_UNLIKELY)
Input Pin’s Media Type: major type GUID_NULL, subtype GUID_NULL
Output Pin’s Media Type: major type GUID_NULL, subtype GUID_NULL

The filter is clearly a video filter:

So the filter register itself under a merit that allows taking it during Intelligent Connect, it registers using media type wildcard which is clearly widely than the filter can affectively operate with and the most interesting part is: with certain video media types the filter crashes (memory access violation) during pin connection negotiation process. That is, inaccurate filter may be crashing third party software it has nothing to deal with at all.

*** Unhandled Exception
Process: 0x000001d4, Thread: 0x00000ce4, Date: 6/29/2009, Time: 11:20:56 AM, Application: C:\Program Files\...
Module: C:\..., Product Version: 1.7.1.1, File Version: 1.7.1.20014, File Time: 23.06.2009, 19:02
Code: 0xc0000005, Flags: 0x00000000, Address: 0x05fc6c65
Parameters: 0x00000001, 0x15be9030

** Call Stack
NeResize!05fc6c65 DllUnregisterServer +21909 @05fc0000
NeResize!05fc7888 DllUnregisterServer +25016 @05fc0000
NeResize!05fc7204 DllUnregisterServer +23348 @05fc0000

Additionally to that the filter does not allow its insertion in debugging environment, and it seems even with Visual Studio running without a debugging session active. Which means that developer may be unaware of issues until incompatibility comes up at a later stage such as testing, or at production site.

It is not the first Nero filter which is bringing real problems. Basically any user who want to keep his system far from issues while still having Nero installed, needs to do find $(Program Files)\Common Files\Ahead\DSFilter directory and immediately rename it to some ~DSFilter in order to invalidate all Nero filters registration.

A few quotes from Guidelines for Registering Filters:

Avoid specifying MEDIATYPE_None, MEDIASUBTYPE_None, or GUID_NULL in the AMOVIESETUP_MEDIATYPE information for a pin. IFilterMapper2 treats these as wildcards, which can slow the graph-building process.

Nero Resize does specify and obviously slows the system down.

Choose the lowest merit value possible. Here are some guidelines:
…
Special purpose filter; any filter that is created directly by the application: MERIT_DO_NOT_USE

Nero Resize uses higher value and thus affects proper applications.

Software developers will be safer to prevent from DirectShow Filter Graph Manager considering the buggy filter to be used during Intelligent Connect by implementing IAMGraphBuilderCallback interface.

I envy those who can pass this…

By the way going disabled way was of little help because the audio hint was hardly better recognizible…

Once again, there was a need in Nokia software to backup phone contents before sending new phone to service. The new phone, new model, latest firmware has Bluetooth subsystem failing to connect to PC’s bluetooth, to bluetooth headset etc. – it’s worth a separate story itself.

So Nokia PC Suite, the latest the greatest version 7.1.18.0. An attempt to backup phone contents leads to infinite loop with 100% CPU consumption on a single thread and Next button (BTW it’s referred to as Next but has no text label in GUI, just for better user experience):

I don’t have any idea who makes software nowadays, but how can it expected to be reliable?

Intel DG33FBC motherboard, onboard Realtek ALC888 High Definition Audio. I am tracing AUDIO_STREAM_CONFIG_CAPS capabilities reported by onboard audio capture board, one of them:

AM_MEDIA_TYPE:

majortype {73647561-0000-0010-8000-00AA00389B71}, subtype {00000001-0000-0010-8000-00AA00389B71}, pUnk 0x00000000
bFixedSizeSamples 1, bTemporalCompression 0, lSampleSize 4
formattype {05589F81-C356-11CE-BF01-00AA0055595A}, cbFormat 18, pbFormat 0x002911a8
pbFormat as WAVEFORMATEX:
  wFormatTag 1
  nChannels 2
  nSamplesPerSec 8000
  nAvgBytesPerSec 32000
  nBlockAlign 4
  wBitsPerSample 16
  cbSize 0

AUDIO_STREAM_CONFIG_CAPS:

guid {73647561-0000-0010-8000-00AA00389B71}
MinimumChannels 1, MaximumChannels 2, ChannelsGranularity 1
MinimumBitsPerSample 8, MaximumBitsPerSample 16, BitsPerSampleGranularity 8
MinimumSampleFrequency 11025, MaximumSampleFrequency 44100, SampleFrequencyGranularity 11025

Media type sampling frequency is 8 KHz (correct) but associated capabilities structure still report different sampling rates and granularity (crap), it is in fact 11025..44100 Hz for all capabilities, including those with sampling frequencies from a different row.

While new NTFS Links propery page is looking for contained junction points, it shows an animated picture to indicate opertation in progress. The picture is a stock resource and is taken from shell32.dll resource type “AVI” name 150. It is an Audio Video Interleave (AVI) file embedded into binary resources as is.

What is however interesting is that being saved as a file and double-clicked, it appeared to be crashing the player process. What might go wrong with a stock resource, is it FFDShow again? This was the first guess and yes, it was FFDShow again. This is a “video only” file with video encoded with MS-RLE compression, FOURCC ‘RLE ‘. Microsoft provides a VCM codec for the format through msrle32.dll.

However, as already discovered, FFDShow register itself under extremely high merit and for this reason is preferred as a video decoder and attempts to handle the decompression itself. But it fails, and miserably enough to crash the hosting process.

The registration under unfairly high merit defeats the purpose of DirectShow’s powerful Intelligent Connect approach. “Why do you need a video decoder? You have FFDShow Video Decoder, forget about the others. Oops, sorry, I don’t like your file.”

Is there any way to stop the villain? Of course, there is.

To start, I tried to disable the decoder through FFDShow Video Decoder native interface and give it a last chance. Video decoder offers decoding properties to choose from, and it looked as if it can stop serving as decoder for the mentioned video format.

Still with the disabled settings, it kept unsuccessful attempts to decode and process crashes. So another workaround, and it is in fact a proper one, which should be done from the start (and I would also prefer that it was done by FFDShow itself), is to lower decoder’s merit to a level at which it would honor specialized decoders so that Intelligent Connect could fall back to FFDShow in case there is no bettter alternative. MERIT_UNLIKELY seems to be a good one for this codec:

This fixes the issue by letting DirectShow choose stock video decoder for MS RLE video encoding.

I decided to download a beta of Windows 7, so many people shared their positive impressions of. I am not quite sure I will have time to actually evaluate it, but for the case I would feel like, it is always nice to have the .ISO image ready for a try.

There was nothing worth a word until I reached the download screen which opened an extremely awful Java applet that pretended to be a download manager. It seemed to be a new spin of technology and sort of I don’t need a nice download manager anymore because direct HTTP links are out of fashion. It started pumping bytes (actually thanks for that) and I my attempt to copy/paste a direct link into my DownThemAll FireFox plugin was vain.

At some 20% the download froze without a notice. The download did not even ungray the resume buttons before I restarted FireFox process and then any attempt to resume led to weird message boxes. Frankly at this point I almost lost the desire to actually complete the download. But left a last chance to have it completed by IE. Internet Explorer (expectedly!) preferred ActiveX control to Java applet. It’s GUI was a bit less scary and it took over incomplete download and…

An attached debugger showed a call stack (oops, I did not save exact call stack) in Manager.exe process in C runtime module, in a CString class method… It went no further than this crashing at exactly the same point until I manually deleted the incomplete download, when it again repeated a weird message box and then finally restart the download from the start. That was enough for me and found a .torrent with the exactly the same file on thepiratebay.org, which I am quite sure will download without a problem.

Isn’t it incredibly stupid that significant amount of work was invested into unnecessary task, ugly user interface, buggy implementation (freeze, incapable download manager, weird messages, crash) with a solid residual of inability to conveniently download the thing, while the file could be just put onto regular MS download service?

I recently advised to take a look at new beta version of Skype software, which I have to use nevertheless I would prefer Jabber for instant messaging if I would be free to choose. I was told that finally multiple chats are hosted in a single window and it is extremely convenient. While this looks hardly an advantage particularly to me, I still wanted to take a look at new fresh better Skype out there.

I am still very much disappointed by the trend of rewriting GUI. For god sake, who the hell needs that every single vendor mimic Vista’s GUI elements on his own? Why the hell would I want Vista buttons on Windows XP? They are still there as if there is no way to put an extra button to switch between compact and full view.

It may look that it is not worth whining around as this is a minor thing just to make it this way and not the other. Here is the Skype team achievement in imitating Vista interface on XP:

Window’s non-client area sometimes is calculating incorrectly and layout is updated so that menu has an extra empty line. The company massively invests in custom GUI that comes out crappy going out of uniform OS look and in additionally it is still buggy after passing QA. Yes, it is still a beta but it still gives a great idea about how things are cooked: a lot of work behind the scene and bugs are still here as a result.

Improved usability is questionable to say the least. A quick glance revealed issues:

• area for typing in chat text is surprisingly small, even on expanded large enough window
• roster has persistent useless (for me) items which were optional previously
• roster has another GUI glitch most likely caused by new look
• groups reworked as a dropdown list and if previously I could – this was very useful – multiselect groups to be visible by clicking them with a Control key being hold, this is not an option anymore, thanks for that

Update: luckily there is “Classic Windows” option!

FFDShow is already known for it issues (including for example mentioned one). Today’s featured one is related to its Video Decoder. A great deal of FFDShow related issues amy be worked around with a single shot by listing the image name as an FFDShow exclusion under registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU\ffdshow; blacklist

but I felt relaxed and the problem re-occurred from Windows service where HKEY_CURRENT_USER was not available/applicable.

FFDShow Video Decoder registration looks like:

It is immediately clear that the filter registered with extremely (and definitely unreasonably, breaking guidelines) high merit in conjunction with generic video media type will be taken as a possible decoder in every single graph rendered. At the very least, this is a perofrmance issue, similar to frequently reported like this recent one: How to reduce time during pin connection on vista ultimate using RenderStream function…?.

However the real problem was that the filter was accepting connection on my source pin and pretending it could be a valid decoder instead my own one (definitely registered with a proper merit of 0×00800000 (MERIT_PREFERRED). Did it actually decode? No, just sent blackness on the output… It seems that it is getting a good manner to distance from this crapware by implementing IAMGraphBuilderCallback interface on the graph builder site and reject consideration of FFDShow A/V Decoders as candidates.