DefragTools #149 - Media eXperience Analyzer part 1

In this episode of Defrag Tools, Chad Beeder is joined by Jorge Novillo and Jose Baldner to introduce us to Media eXperience Analyzer (MXA).

Media eXperience Analyzer (formerly WindowsXRay) is a tool used to visualize ETW traces, with a particular emphasis on media scenarios such as audio/video capture and playback.

Timeline:
[00:00] Introductions
[01:20] What is MXA? What's it good for?
[05:34] Installing and setting up MXA (Download link). You also should install Windows Performance Toolkit which is included in the Assessment and Deployment Kit.
[07:28] Demo #1: Collecting a trace to analyze in MXA - full of audio and video playback glitches
[11:02] Before loading a trace, make sure the symbol path is correct (use the included setsymbolpath.cmd if necessary)
[11:37] Loading the trace into MXA and getting a feel for the UI and various datasets available to view
[14:46] Let's start with the Audio Glitches and Video Glitches datasets to identify where the problem is
[16:15] The CPU Scheduler dataset is very useful; shows which threads were running, and when
[20:11] Help->Shortcuts tells you all the keyboard/navigation shortcuts
[20:40] Context Switch Call Stack dataviewer shows you when a thread started running, what it was waiting on
[21:58] Callstacks dataset compiles all the events that had call stacks captured with them
[23:44] Stack Tree data viewer shows the summary breakdown of all call stacks over a selected time
[24:45] Using the Video Glitches and DMA Operations datasets to see what the GPU was doing during the glitches
[26:37] Demo #2: An audio glitch that occurred when the screen got powered on
[27:14] Start with the Audio Glitches and CPU Scheduler datasets
[30:52] Use the Callstacks dataset to identify the culprit: display driver was spending too long executing a DPC
[34:33] Email us at defragtools@microsoft.com