Collecting log files

Overview

If you experience playback issues or are trying to locate a special problem log files are of great use. The more detailed logs the better, and it is a good idea to cross-reference logs to see what happened in another part of the system at the same time that DISE failed.

When you contact support, we are very thankful if you provide us with player logs. Below are presented different log sources and how to use them.

Log settings

Applications in the DISE suite have the possibility to output logs and to create log files. Find the log settings in the Log tab. In DISE Composer, go to File > Options > Preferences > Log tab. In DISE Bridge, select File > Log. In DISE Replay, select Settings > Preferences > Log tab. In DISE Probe, select Settings > Preferences > Log tab.

Log verbosity

In the log settings (see above) under the relevant section there is a drop-down list, Max log level of log levels to output, ranging from outputting only a few, Emergency messages down to virtually everything (Debug level).

Log to file

To create log files to collect and examine or send to DISE support,

Check the Log to file checkbox in the log settings.
In the Max log level, select Debug.
If the problem occurs after a variable amount of time, also check Rotate log file every day so you will have a new file for each day.
Click Browse and type in the name of a new log file to create.

DebugView

DebugView can log internal debug messages that can be sent from the applications running on the machine. DISE will write out debug messages to this channel if something goes wrong (for example if the screen mode was not appropriate for the player or a file could not be found), DISE Replay will also write to this channel when updating files and so on, this makes it easy for us to see when a certain file was updated and if all the settings are correctly configured. It is possible to setup DebugView to save log files to disk and/or to log remotely from another player machine.

Read more: DebugView

DebugView is freeware and made by Sysinternals.

Settings

Options > Clock Time

Get times in actual clock time, not in milliseconds since computer startup.

It is possible to have DebugView automatically log the events to a file. If you start the application with /l <filename.log> it will automatically create a log file, if you also add the parameter /n it will create a new log file everyday marked with the date of the day.

Note: For all command-line options run DebugView with the parameter /?.

Autostart log

For unattended logging, we want to be able to start when Windows starts and to create log files.

Create a text file in the same folder as the file dbgview.exe and enter

Example:

start "" /min dbgview.exe /t /l "C:\DISEContent\Logs\debugview.log" /o /n /h 10000

Change the path to where you want log files to end up.
Rename the file rundebugview.cmd and create a shortcut to it.
Next, place this shortcut in the Startup folder in the Start Menu.

To attach a captured log through to an Trouble Ticket, go to File > Save As and save the log-file on your disk and then attach the log file to an old or new Trouble Ticket.

Notes

There have been some reports on problems on certain systems with a later version of DebugView (v4.78). If you are having issues with the version from Microsoft you can use this link to download an earlier DebugView version: DebugView v4.76

Windows Event Log

The most interesting categories are commonly Application and System event logs.