Thread: mediate ice - new free DirectX based front end

Well, I just ran into something... I tried installing mediate on my carputer, but when I run it it says:

"Critical DirectX error encountered.
Failed to find suitable alpha blended texture format."

I do have DX9 installed...

Logfile:

Code:

09:37:13:095 INFO: mediate Preference settings are as follows:
09:37:13:095 INFO: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?>
09:37:13:095 INFO: <ClientPreferences>
09:37:13:095 INFO:   <ThemeName></ThemeName>
09:37:13:095 INFO:   <DVDVideoFilter></DVDVideoFilter>
09:37:13:095 INFO:   <DVDAudioFilter></DVDAudioFilter>
09:37:13:095 INFO:   <AudioDeviceName></AudioDeviceName>
09:37:13:095 INFO:   <DisplayFrequency>0</DisplayFrequency>
09:37:13:095 INFO:   <DisplayAdapter>0</DisplayAdapter>
09:37:13:095 INFO:   <ScreenWidth>800</ScreenWidth>
09:37:13:095 INFO:   <ScreenHeight>480</ScreenHeight>
09:37:13:095 INFO:   <ScreenRefreshRate>0</ScreenRefreshRate>
09:37:13:095 INFO:   <TextureFormat>0</TextureFormat>
09:37:13:095 INFO:   <VideoRenderer>0</VideoRenderer>
09:37:13:095 INFO:   <VideoFrameThrottle>1</VideoFrameThrottle>
09:37:13:095 INFO:   <FullScreen>no</FullScreen>
09:37:13:095 INFO:   <WideScreen>no</WideScreen>
09:37:13:095 INFO:   <HideWindowBorder>yes</HideWindowBorder>
09:37:13:095 INFO:   <MaximizeWindow>no</MaximizeWindow>
09:37:13:095 INFO:   <TimeFormat>h:nn am/pm</TimeFormat>
09:37:13:095 INFO:   <DateFormat>dddd dx mmmm</DateFormat>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <LoggingLevel>INFO</LoggingLevel>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <LoggingFileCache>yes</LoggingFileCache>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <ShowDiagnostics>no</ShowDiagnostics>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <SaveGraphToFile>no</SaveGraphToFile>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <KeyBindingProfile>default</KeyBindingProfile>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <ShowMouseCursor>2</ShowMouseCursor>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <MouseRightButton>0</MouseRightButton>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <ScreenSaverFile></ScreenSaverFile>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <ScreenSaverDelay>600</ScreenSaverDelay>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <SlideshowDelay>5</SlideshowDelay>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <SlideshowPanZoom>yes</SlideshowPanZoom>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <SlideshowFading>yes</SlideshowFading>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <SlideshowBorders>yes</SlideshowBorders>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <SoundEffects>yes</SoundEffects>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <VideoExtensions>.AVI,.MPEG,.MPG,.WMV</VideoExtensions>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <AudioExtensions>.CDA,.MID,.MIDI,.MP3,.WAV,.WMA</AudioExtensions>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <PlaylistExtensions>".ASX",".M3U",".PLS"</PlaylistExtensions>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <ProxyHost></ProxyHost>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <ProxyPort>80</ProxyPort>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <ProxyUserName></ProxyUserName>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <ProxyPassword></ProxyPassword>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <CheckUpdates>yes</CheckUpdates>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <GroupDirectories>no</GroupDirectories>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   <ThemeSettings>
09:37:13:105 INFO:   </ThemeSettings>
09:37:13:105 INFO: </ClientPreferences>
09:37:15:349 WARN: Failed to load image: C:\Program\@home media\themes\ice\Resources\

Originally Posted by Mañana

Well, I just ran into something... I tried installing mediate on my carputer, but when I run it it says:

"Critical DirectX error encountered.
Failed to find suitable alpha blended texture format."

We've only seen that happen in two circumstances - either DX9 and or Gfx drivers aren't installed, or if the Gfx card doesn't have support for 32bit textures.

One of our test machines has pretty old Intel embedded gfx (circa 6yrs old) and that doesn't have support for 32 bit textures, only 16 bit. There is an option in the mediate advanced settings to use 16 bit textures - try turning that on and also enabling fullscreen exclusive mode.

We added 16 bit mode for compatibilty with older h/w - the gfx won't look quite so nice (you may see some colour banding) since there are far fewer colours available, but you should see something.

If that doesn't help, and you do have DirectX 9 installed isn't installed then there's an included utility dxdiag.exe (Start menu / Run / dxdiag). Run that and go through the Direct 3D tests on the Display tab to verify you have a suitable gfx driver installed (one which supports DirectX 9 acceleration).

Originally Posted by athomemedia

We've only seen that happen in two circumstances - either DX9 and or Gfx drivers aren't installed, or if the Gfx card doesn't have support for 32bit textures.

One of our test machines has pretty old Intel embedded gfx (circa 6yrs old) and that doesn't have support for 32 bit textures, only 16 bit. There is an option in the mediate advanced settings to use 16 bit textures - try turning that on and also enabling fullscreen exclusive mode.

We added 16 bit mode for compatibilty with older h/w - the gfx won't look quite so nice (you may see some colour banding) since there are far fewer colours available, but you should see something.

If that doesn't help, and you do have DirectX 9 installed isn't installed then there's an included utility dxdiag.exe (Start menu / Run / dxdiag). Run that and go through the Direct 3D tests on the Display tab to verify you have a suitable gfx driver installed (one which supports DirectX 9 acceleration).

My bad. Forgot to install Vias 4in1 drivers when i formated. (they contain agp drivers, and therefore I had not proper DX3D support)

Well I just came across a blocker. I 'was' going to use mediate in my car till my own front-end is up and running, but if it can't play my videos.... well....

Anywayz, when i go to play a video it comes up with a big red error saying that it can't play the video cause it's in an unsupported video/audio codec. Thing is the video plays fine in Windows Mediaplayer. The video is a DivX video so i would think that it should be able to play it.

Originally Posted by jazz13

Well I just came across a blocker. I 'was' going to use mediate in my car till my own front-end is up and running, but if it can't play my videos.... well....

Anywayz, when i go to play a video it comes up with a big red error saying that it can't play the video cause it's in an unsupported video/audio codec. Thing is the video plays fine in Windows Mediaplayer. The video is a DivX video so i would think that it should be able to play it.

Hi,

At present video playback is a little hardware dependent due to the way we're using the Video Mixing Renderer (VMR9) to blend video with the rest of the user interface. We're planning on implementing our own custom video renderer that should sort these issues, but in the meantime you could try setting the video renderer (see playback options in the advanced configuration settings) to VMR7 instead.

VMR7 works on a far wider range of h/w but is more limited - you won't get the video mixed with the user interface, or see the small preview window, or get toolbar buttons overlaid in the fullscreen view.

Also, for those of you that have asked, Navigation support is getting there but we're having a few fun technical issues to get round with embedding external applications.

So far we have PC Navigator running within mediate, scaled to fit nicely with a dark fade effect so it matches the feel of the rest of the ui. The sticking point is PC Navigator crashing each time we send it a mouse event in the routing screen :-(

We'll get there though. Thanks for waiting everyone...