Thanks for reporting! It was broken in 0.2.0 as well, but it could crash only occasionally.

---

Shpeck v0.2.2
(obsolete links removed)

Changelog:

• Fixed: Crash on files with sample rate < 44.1 kHz or on song change between files with different sample rate.
• Fixed: Reporting possibly invalid waveform/spectrum data from files with non-standard channel count.

I wonder what those "beta versions" everybody else is using are for...

Too lazy to update? I'm still on beta3 for 0.9.4 lol.

No, I meant the usage in software development process generally, so that uninterested people can use some kind of stable version, upgrade only once a while to another stable version and don't be bothered with unstable new code. I thought I should try that too, once.

Great plugin but i still have have problems with using it inside a box (UI element).
Maybe it isn't implemented yet ... or i'm just too dumb.

I created my own layout (0.9.5.1) and have a section with the standard spectrum-visualisation.
Now i want to put the milkdrop (or any other visualisation) right into that box (instead of build-in spectrum-visualisation).

I go to layout-editing mode, choose "replace ui-element" but i don't see a way to pin the visualisation to that box.

Anyway ... keep on working ... as i said before - it's a great plugin

Currently, Shpeck works as a part of the layout under Columns UI/Panels UI only.

Support for 0.9.5+ default UI elements will be added when the SDK for creating third-party components with this functionality is released by the fb2k developer.

That will happen when the interface is finalized and most useful UI elements are sanely developed, without the risk of dozens of shitty components appearing and attracting innocent users.

ok .. .thank you

Hi,

I am using winamp 5.52 and foobar 0.9.5 and latest shpeck.

I only see AVS plugin. Not milkdrop. My directory is c:\program files\winamp

copy the file
nscrt.dll
from
c:\program files\winamp
to your directory where foobar is installed
(like c:\program files\foobar2000)
just copy it into the same folder, where foobar2000.exe is.

After a rescan for plugins of shpeck you'll see all of the new vis-plugins of winamp

thx a lot!

Maybe add directions to the first post for us noobs?

how can i open shpeck plugin via command-line?
this don't work:"C:\Archivos de programa\foobar2000\foobar2000.exe" /command:"Shpeck - Start 'Geiss 2[1.0] / Geiss 2[1.0]'".which should be the command?

Maybe.

`foobar2000.exe /command:"Shpeck - Start 'MilkDrop 1.04 / MilkDrop 1.04'"` works fine for me. Something breaks with the square brackets, or with Geiss only, perhaps?

Is there anybody with Shpeck and AVS working right under Vista?
I can see only black screen and no visualization. Though when i select certain AVS presets i can see blinking or something like that. Like half of visualization is missing.
But AVS working OK with Winamp.
And everything is fine with foobar+shpeck under WinXP.

Please, Yirkha! Can you do something with that? Save my poor soul

No, as there is no Vista in my proximity, your soul is doomed.

Anyway, do you use it in a CUI/PUI panel? Does it help if you try to resize the Shpeck window?

Though I've never tried to resize the window, I tried to run the visualization in fullscreen. Still black screen only.
And it's under ColumnsUI.
Forgot to mention this: though I can't see visualization itself, I can see controls on top of the shpeck window.

I was wondering: does anybody use the latest version of G-Force? Does it run embedded or does it still run in its own window?

Thanks a lot for this. I have a problem with Milkdrop not responding to my keyboard though. The F-keys work fine (F1,F2,etc.), but regular keys like space and other numeric/alphabetical keys don't respond.

I thought this had something to do with resizing, because it's quite messy when running in a panel (normally, the plugin creates the window itself with the width and height it wants, now I force it to live in a window created externally and to conform to the given size). But if it doesn't work in the full screen mode as well, it has probably some other cause - looks like the sound data are not getting through. I don't have any other ideas how to resolve this.

You might want to add some more information, particularly how do you run the plugin (in a stand-alone window or inside a panel).

This component instills wootage in my heart. Nullsoft Tiny Fullscreen runs error-free and smoothly.

Small notes (though I think some of them can't be solved within the plugin):

- Nullsoft tiny is a spectrum vis, exactly like FB's default, and the first 5-10 or so pixels are the exact same slanted gradient pattern as in FB's spectrum window when you start it. It also appears on Stop. No anomalies between songs, though, which is good.

- Shpeck Tiny shows the same upward streaking as FB's defauls spectrum. It's as if Bob Ross came by with his big brush and brushed gently upwards. I'm not sure how that happens. The plugin does the calculating, not FB. Or does it? Possibly related to issue 1.

- FB keys are disabled. I've mapped Ctrl+Left and Right, and a few others, to Next, Prev, volume up etc., but they don't work in Tiny Fullscreen. It's a bit of a shame because not having keyboard control in fullscreen is half the purpose defeated.

This is a feature of the foobar2000 core. The component asks for the spectrum data. If they are not available yet (as they are not computed when no visualisation needs them), it can ask for some kind of "dummy" data to show in the meantime.
I can easily just show nothing in that case, if the consensus is that it's better. Actually, I already do it that way in case of oscilloscope data, because it looked bad in the "Classic Spectrum Visualisation" I tested.

First, let's see how horrible the Winamp visualisation plugins interface is. They can ask for either the waveform data (oscilloscope), spectrum data, or both. And none of these methods are really realiable.
The spectrum data is only 576 values wide, presumably because of some old MP3 optimalization. Now that both limits the resolution considerably, particularly for the fullscreen display, and also makes it difficult to supply, because all normal FFT output has always been sized in powers of 2. (Shpeck just uses the 512 values wide one and stretch it a bit.)
Because of how bad the spectrum data are, I noticed the plugins tend to use the waveform data and compute the spectrum itself. But this is not ideal as well - each time, the plugin gets only 576 sample values. To get the precise spectrum for CD Audio, for example, it would need to be called exactly 44100/576=76.5625 times per second, which is not too feasible.

Now back to your question: If that plugin uses the spectrum data, there is not much I can do. It's foobar2000 which prepares it. All I could do is to use the 1024 values wide one and shrink it instead of stretching the lower resolution data, but I doubt it will have much impact - as you wrote yourself, the built-in visualisations looks the same, and they are using the data directly and in a perfectly sane way.
And if the plugin computes the spectrum itself from the waveform data, I can't do anything at all. Blame it on Nullsoft.

I generally have no control over keyboard input in plugins. Or, to be precise, I do in case of plugins running in an embedded window, because they forward the unknown keystrokes to my parent window, but that isn't the case for fullscreen mode and the Tiny Vis.. However, some plugins might also be forwarding the unknown keystrokes to the faked Winamp main window - I don't know if that really happens, but I'll look if it works and include it in the next version if yes.

In some plugins, the classic Winamp controls (ZXCVB for prev., play/pause, stop, next or how it is, arrows for seeking/volume, etc.) seems to work at least, but that is unfortunately not the case of the Tiny FS vis you are using.

Edit: And of course, you can always use foobar2000 global hotkeys everywhere, including fullscreen.

Thanks for the elaborate reply.

When tiny runs in winamp, I have full control over playback, so I'm fairly certain there's some way for Shpeck to pick up the keystrokes and turn them over to the proper authorities.

All right, here is your new version.

Shpeck v0.2.3
<obsolete links removed, see the first post in this thread for information about the latest version>

Changelog:

• Keyboard shortcuts not processed by plugin are correctly forwarded to the main window now
• Blank spectrum data are used when they are not available instead of the fake "gradient"
• Contents of the default Winamp installation directory is scanned automatically on first run
• Fixed preferences page layout ("Available plugins" listbox border, scrollbars, etc.)
• Using better method to get icon for "embedded windows"

Edit: Meh, I just realized that some people might need the new Microsoft's run-time library since I switched to MSVC++ 2008. So, if the component doesn't load at all (messages about side by side assemblies, "unable to load component", foobar2000 asks whether to remove Shpeck's settings, etc.), grab the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package.

cool thx
I needed the msvc++ pkg

Hi, you already solved the problem, but since I had long time suffered the exactly same behaviour (small pause at every ~4 seconds), I decided to find what was causing it.

Somehow (at least in my case) this is related to Convolver DSP component and playback thread priority:
If i disable the Convolver component, visualisations run smoothly, but it is no option for me as I really need that component. Then I found that the playback thread priority on fb2k's advanced options can be set to 3 or less and the visualisations run fine again, even if using Convolver. If I set the priority to 4 or more the pausing starts (default priority is 7). Setting the priority low leads to occasional skipping of audio when there are other programs consuming cpu-time, so this isn't the best solution either.

Can Yirkha help on this issue, maybe visualisations' priority can be somehow set higher?
I will report this behaviour on Convolvers thread also, maybe there is something on that plugin causing it. Shpeck-component isn't the only one suffering from this issue as the built-in ones are affected too.

Environment:
2.2GHz Athlon, 512MB RAM, Windows XP SP2, foobar2000 0.9.x, foo_vis_shpeck 0.2.x

Thanks in advance

Good work, you identified what's causing the problem - thread priority setting.

Plugin's main thread is intentionally lowered to "one step below normal". It sounded reasonable for me to lower the priority of additional visual eye-candy and leave more responsiveness to user interface, working threads, etc. - after all, it seems that the built-in visualisations are going the same way.

Would a checkbox on Shpeck's preferences page called "[x] Don't lower plugin's thread priority" be satisfactory?

Yes, that would propably work fine Maybe this helps other users too.

Thanks for a quick reply.

I have installed the msvc*80.dll but version 0.2.3 still don't work. I have to go back to 0.2.2. After I installed I found the *.dlls in the folder WinSxS of Windows is this correct?

Right, although the only needed DLL is WinSxS/x86_Microsoft.VC90.CRT_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_9.0.21022.8_x-ww_d08d0375/msvcr90.dll.
You might also try downloading just this one DLL and putting it to the foobar2000 instalation folder (i.e. where the foobar2000.exe is). But it's not recommended, after all this is what they were trying to avoid by introducing the side-by-side assemblies, and you'll need it soon anyway, when more newly compiled programs will start to appear.

Is strange I instaled the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package but this didn't install this .dll, maybe is an old one that I have.
Yes this is because the one I have is an old one. Is working.
Thanks for the support.

Fractal_Mortality, T&L, ...: Please download version 0.2.4 beta 1 from here (Edit: link removed) to verify whether the thread priority really has effect on your problems with random pauses. (Nothing has changed except for that aforementioned checkbox.) I have tried the Convolver DSP, but I wasn't able to replicate the behavior described by you.

I now tested 0.2.4 beta 1 and noticed that the setting almost removes pausing when using priority 4, so it definitely does something, but unfortunately doesn't help enough. Roughly 1/4 of the pause remains and when using higher playback priority (5-7) the effect remains the same as before.

Maybe foobar2000 itself forces visualisations/plugins to use low priority and it leads to this problem with some computers?

No, it only forces the decoding threads to use higher priority (by default), so that the playback does not stutter, which is a common good practice.

Anyway, are you using the standard "Convolver 0.3 for foobar2000 0.9x"? And with what impulse response file? How big FFT size? I'd still like to replicate the issue here.

I'm using the standard Convolver http://www.foobar2000.com/components/foo_convolve.zip and my current impulse response file is: 512 KB, 131072 samples, 1 channel, 262144 FFT points (32bit/48kHz). I have exported it from RoomEQWizard to lessen the enhanced 50Hz range which is causing trouble with my room.

And now when you mentioned the impulse response file, I tried even a 8MB MP3-file as a response and it didn't cause the pausing. With the 32bit file foobar2000 uses 0-10% CPU (I expect it isn't too much?) and with a smaller 8bit file under 5%. Tomorrow I will try to make a 16bit response file if it would solve the issue.

Thanks for the help

All right, I was experimenting a bit more, among other things changing processor affinity of foobar2000 to one CPU only and then, I finally saw the periodic pauses. I run the Process Monitor and as I expected, they were indeed occuring always when the next batch of samples was decoded (and pushed through the DSP engine).

Unfortunately, Convolver, due to its nature, negatively affects playback performance. Have a look at the following image:

The part to the left of the pink marker is with Convolver enabled. It can easily be seen that both CPU usage and I/O throughput (source file reads) are in spikes. I don't fully know how Convolver internally works, but this is probably because it always reads, decodes and stores aside quite a lot of sound data, processes them and then does nothing for a while - it just needs the big number of adjacent samples.
This amount might be seen as the memory usage difference in the picture, and also as the delay between the point I removed Convolver from the list of active DSPs and when the data started to be read again. Of course, it can be heard when manipulating with Convolver, too.
Without Convolver, as you can see, the source file is read, processed, played, and so on in small amounts every now and then. There are no big spikes anywhere and everything is quite smooth.

Anyway, it has nothing to do with my component, it rather affects the whole system and Shpeck only rides on the same train. Any other application would exhibit the same pauses, if doing some continuous work where they can be seen as easily as here. I tried a few unrelated convolving plugins in other audio applications and they were showing the same CPU usage spikes when using large impulse response files. I can't do much with it, I'm sorry. You can try changing impulse response size or other parameters, different equalizing DSPs or visualisation plugins.

After installing that msvc90 package everything works fine!
I can finally see the AVS visualizations correctly under Vista!
Thanks, Yirkha, for this great plugin!

I've just made Shpeck v0.2.4 beta 2. Although there are a few fixes here and there, the biggest change is in the titlebar of embedded windows - the background color, text color, font and the control buttons are now customizable, which might help to better integrate them into existing OS or *UI themes.
The default colors are now retrieved from the system settings, background color being the "button face" color, text color being the "button text" color and font being the "default GUI" font. The internal button images are used by default (with added transparency, so they blend somewhat to the background color), but any other BMP file should work.
(download link Edit: link removed)



Edit: Added screenshot.

When I put the .dll in the components directy I get the following message when I start foobar..


Failed to load DLL: foo_vis_shpeck.dll
Reason: The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log for more detail.

"Side-by-side assemblies" is the new DLL dependency mechanism. What you need is probably the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package.

That did the trick! Thank you very much Yirkha for this GREAT plug-in

What DSPs would you recommend leaving enabled in order to achieve best results with Spheck?

Shpeck (or rather the plugins running in its emulation) is not generally dependent on DSPs. On a "single core CPU", any concurrently running program doing some exhaustive action every now and then, thus resulting in similar spikes in CPU sage, can make the animations not always smooth.
Speaking about foobar2000 DSPs, the only one exhibiting this behavior that I'm aware of is the Convolver.

When having Spheck activated in a panel foobar keeps giving me an error-message when exiting foobar (at least most of the times).

Its says:

Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library

Runtime Error!

Program: [path]\foobar2000.exe

R6025
-pure virtual function call

Any idea what the problem might be?

I'll be able to say more after getting all the necessary approvals to install PanelsUI again here.
In the meantime - which visualization plugin are you using?

the error seems to occur regardless of selected visualization plugin -happens with AVS or Milkdrop2

I wasn't successful in replicating the issue yet.

(Yes, I realized it deals with a panel in Columns UI only, not with that "other UI component".) However, no matter how which version I tested (latest "stable" v0.2.3, v0.2.4 beta, and the latest internal build, nothing happened. Which version do you use, by the way?

What I was doing was essentially adding a Shpeck panel to a horizontal splitter, choosing MilkDrop2 or AVS, playing with it a little bit, leaving the panel shown or hidden, with focus on the plugin's window or playlist, etc., then closed the application. Are there any ideas what more should I try?

Also, I assume no classic foobar2000's crash dumps were generated. But when you quit the program and that error message appears, is the rest of the UI still shown or is it closed already?

Thanks.

Edit: Added the query for version used, I almost forgot again.

I use Spheck in Tabbed Panel Stack Mod with some other visuals (with splitters) -maybe that's important? -but it happens whether the tab is active or not. (but not everytime -and I couldnt find out how to force it)
I'm using the latest Version of Foobar and Spheck (v0.2.4 beta 2) but the crash already occured in older versions of foobar and Spheck.

When I close foobar it takes a few seconds to shut down (i guess because of my very large library) -the UI is already gone -only the systray-icon is still shown (until shutodown is complete or ist crashes which takes about the same time I estimate) -actualy the error seems to pop up shortly after the icon disappers.

I transfered an Installation of foobar to another PC and the problem persists.

-I dont know if its important but after I close the error messege I get another error-popup (partly german) that tells me "unknown software exception" (0x40000015) at 0x0201d42b

And no, there are no crash dumps generated -sorry

I tried "Tabbed Panel Stack Mod", but had no luck either. I'll propose another way to crack this problem.

If you can, please keep Process Explorer somewhere handy. When the error happens again, leave the first "pure virtual function called" message displayed, run ProcExp and find foobar2000 process. If you double-click it, a tabbed dialog will appear.

The area of interest is the tab called "Threads" - there should be one or only a few threads still active. The one of them responsible for the crash is the one which is waiting for your input in the error dialog. You can find it by trying them one after another and clicking the "Stack" button. The victim will have some ntoskrnl/win32k/ntdll stuff at the top, but under that some intelligible MessageBox-like names in USER32.DLL.

Then you can select the whole stack dump (e.g. clicking the first line and pressing SHIFT+PAGE DOWN or whatever) and copy it here in a neat [​codebox]. Or, if you don't see any foo_vis_shpeck.dll or vis_milk/avs.dll down the list, this probably doesn't have anything to do with this component. (The "Start Address" field in the list can also be useful to know who is responsible for creating the offending thread.)

Alright, here you go:
Hope that helps and thanks for your efforts

Excellent. Now, how it happens:

• Whole application is being closed.
  CODE
  ...
  kernel32.dll!ExitProcess+0x14
• Windows are unloading one component DLL after another.
  CODE
  ntdll.dll!LdrShutdownProcess+0x142
• PanelsUI is cleaning its stuff as well and tries to call some function from the foobar2000 core, even though everything is closed already.
  CODE
  foo_ui_panels.dll+0x9460b
  foo_ui_panels.dll+0x945a1
  foo_ui_panels.dll+0x9d4a9
  
• It fails and shows just the error message.
  CODE
  foobar2000.exe+0x9bef0 == _purecall
  foobar2000.exe+0x9f039
  foobar2000.exe+0xa673e
  USER32.dll!MessageBoxA+0x45
  ...
  

I'm sorry, definitely a foo_ui_panels problem.

Yeah, I was expecting that when seeing this List.
The problem seems to have vansihed though when Spheck is deaktived. I will have a close look on foo_ui_panels and see if I can figure anything out.

Many thanks again for all your efforts and keep up the great work.