mfpmp.exe is annoying the hell out of me | The Coffeehouse

Is there no better way to deal with DRM? mfpmp.exe is sucking up 15% of my CPU time with un-DRM'd music on Windows Media Player.

My fan keeps spinning up just for this crap, and my music often hiccups when I start doing stuff.

ZippyV

Same behavior here while I was watching a Channel 9 video.

LarryOsterman

ZippyV wrote:

Same behavior here while I was watching a Channel 9 video.

MFPMP runs in the protected environment, but it's not DRM that's making it take so much CPU, it's taking that time to render your content.

I don't know why it takes more time than it did on XP though.

Sven Groot

Audio is unfortunately still the weak point in Vista. It drops out sometimes (particularly during heavy IO), SPDIF still doesn't work right, etc.

Sven Groot

foxbar wrote:

The audio on mine drops constantly, and the video drops frames in aero.

Not seen any frame drops. Audio glitches only sometimes for me (usually during heavy IO) but I've read it's worse on dual core systems (this is assuming you have a Creative card, since that is attributable to their drivers).

Tom Servo

Sven Groot wrote:

Not seen any frame drops. Audio glitches only sometimes for me (usually during heavy IO) but I've read it's worse on dual core systems (this is assuming you have a Creative card, since that is attributable to their drivers).

Well, here's the kicker:

Streaming audio directly into the same endpoint as the user audio mixer does works just peachy. Everything related to user audio glitches, since it goes through it. Having foobar2k play my stuff directly into KS can take any load whatsoever and still not glitch.

I should really try the Realtek chip for a change and see if it's indeed just a Creative issue, but I kinda doubt it.

W3bbo

I just found this thread from December.

Now who says DRM-in-Windows is always a good thing again? Wink

The "pirates" distribute media without DRM which incurrs no performance overhead. So once again, this only hurts legitimate consumers.

AndyC

W3bbo wrote:

Now who says DRM-in-Windows is always a good thing again?

Which bit of Larry's "it's not DRM that's making it take so much CPU, it's taking that time to render your content'' comment did you have trouble with?

reinux

Ahh, that makes sense.

Well everywhere I read people are blaming it on DRM (like always), but the fact of the matter is that it's hellishly slow.

I wouldn't say audio is Vista's weakpoint; I'd say it's a strong point, with WASAPI and such. But I'm guessing the same API is also what's making it so slow.

Even so, it should be a lot faster. I can't really picture why the change in architecture would make it take nearly 10 times more CPU time.

W3bbo

AndyC wrote:

W3bbo wrote:
Now who says DRM-in-Windows is always a good thing again?

Which bit of Larry's "it's not DRM that's making it take so much CPU, it's taking that time to render your content'' comment did you have trouble with?

Whops, my bad.

reinux

You wanna hear something really weird?

This program works by installing a secondary audio driver to which Windows writes, and then forwards that to the sound card: http://www.srs-store.com/store-plugins/mall/sas-plugin.asp

Using the routed driver with SRS disabled reduces mfpmp.exe's CPU usage to around 6%.

Why?!

Whatever's going on, one thing's certain is that it's unnecessary/unintentional overhead.

i.e., maybe it's a bug?

Jorgie

Must be audio driver specific... I never see mfpmp.exe take more that 3%. I usually bounces between 0 and 2 and only hits 3 once in a while. This is on a Dell Latitude D620 with the onboard SigmaTel HD audio. 1.6Ghz Core Duo.

Jorgie

reinux

Hmm, that's sorta good to know.

I'm running a P4 2.4 HT and a Realtek AC'97 audio chipset. I wonder if there's any updates...

reinux

Well now with the new drivers I'm getting 3-4% on that mfpmp.exe thing.

The audio properties box looks a lot better now, and the noise I've been getting since I was running XP is gone -- maybe they tweaked the mixing?

Thanks Jorgie!

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop

foxbar wrote:

Vista is painful to use here because of the audio, the video and the lack of backward compatibility. I actually had to go back on a very old machine and use Windows 2000 to get what I had to get done. I know this thread is about the DRM, but frankly isn't that why we have consoles like the PS3?

this thread is not about the DRM. the MFPMP process uses a lot of CPU because of crappy audio drivers not because of DRM. if you update your video and audio drivers instead of using the RTM ones the CPU usage should drop noticeably.

foxbar wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BackupHDDVD - We don't exactly need the technology in vista anymore. You can get that hd backup util on various torrent sites. It will most likely find it's way into an rpm the way libdvdcss did. Sourceforge took it down because it had the key in it, but so does libdvdcss. Sooner or later the rpm will come out and we will be able to rip and watch HD content on Linux as we do with normal dvds. I think I will wait until the hddvdbackup comes out in RPM form, then just use that instead. On a side note,the backupHDDVD screenshot from wikipedia is on XP, but the program is java and works on Linux too. I suppose it will be recoded in C when the rpm is released. Besides, the important part is the key.

too bad that using libdecss, BackupHDDVD or the utilities to rip blu-ray is illegal since they break the DCMA

mautobot

body must not be empty... [Duncanma]