MediaElement is silently failing

Question

Does anyone know of a way of getting diagnostic information from a MediaElement?

On Windows 8 Pro RTM, I can't get MediaElement to play any video files whatsoever. There are no exceptions. It just does nothing beyond set the status to Opening, and then... nothing! No errors, no playback, nada.

I've tried the Video app - doesn't work.

I've tried the SDK sample - doesn't work.

I've tried my own code - doesn't work.

Note that Windows Media Player - and Silverlight - will happily play back the videos.

So how do I diagnose the problem when there's no exception to work with? Anyone got any ideas?

Answer 1

OK, problem solved.

Clearly, the Bootcamp video driver for the MacBook Pro Retina display is not something that the WinRT media components like. Clearly, it is dying in some fashion when it tries to decode media, which is not being reported back to the app.

Now this is pretty poor... apps need to know when internal WinRT components fail.

The solution in this case was to update the drivers to the latest set from nVidia. But someone, somewhere needs to ensure that when things fail inside the WinRT, it gets reported to the app.