Why does windows media player stop at random?

Question

I have two PC's here at our shop that I play media on (local not streaming) 24/7 via windows media player. The one is a windows 8 in our break-room that I have a playlist of 394 short avi videos that it plays. The other is a windows 7 that has a big music playlist it goes through. Both are set to "random" and "repeat" but they both will randomly just stop every once in awhile when switching songs/videos. Sometimes they'll stop within an hour (more so the videos), and sometimes they'll play most of the day and be stopped when I come in the next morning. I figured this was something simple so it's driving me nuts that I haven't figured it out.

I have never been at the screen when it stops, but when it does stop it's just the way it would stop when it's done playing something if "shuffle" and "reapeat" were not on. So I then have to push play again and it will continue playing the playlist until it decides it's done again.

So my question is, any ideas of a setting I'm missing? Or if no ideas on that any ideas of a good media player for playing media 24/7? Thanks Jace

Solution 1

So I switched from WMP to VLC. VLC ,although presented the same issue, made it more apparent what the issue was. I had a couple media files in my playlist that were "corrupt". The only difficult thing is when you have a big playlist, like we do, is VLC has to "attempt" to play the file before you know if it is corrupt. VLC also offers to fix these files which was nice.

Solution 2

WMP will also show corrupt files as "red". You can manually remove them from the playlist. I must agree though that VLC is an easier player when it comes to troubleshooting.

Comments

[Matthew Williams]

Without any clue as to how you have set up your players or the streams associated with them; I am going to suggest it is a network streaming problem from wherever you are collecting your files from. Can you run the files locally rather than stream?

[Matthew Williams]

When they stop is it freezing or simply lagging before switching to the next item

[jAce]

I have never been at the screen when it stops, but when it does stop it's just the way it would stop when it's done playing something if "shuffle" and "reapeat" were not on. So I then have to push play again and it will continue playing the playlist until it decides it's done again. thanks

[jAce]

I don't have a lot of experience with VLC, but assuming this is a preferred option I am totally willing to try this out and see if it will play 24/7. Just making sure I wasn't missing something simple with WMP before I did. thanks

[Matthew Williams]

You aren't missing anything simple. WMP can be a little flaky at times. For sake of an easy life give VLC a try. It's easy enough to use. If you really don't like it select another one you like.

[jAce]

alright that's what I needed to know. thanks for your quick replies