@jgbreezer,

Could you try to reboot, and, before running your mafw.sh start .. command type "ps ax | grep render"

You should see "/usr/bin/mafw-dbus-wrapper mafw-gst-renderer"

If NOT, it means that either the script was never run or that it stopped (shortly) after starting.

If YES, go to the media player and play something. Then go back to the terminal and check if the process is still there. I suppose that if the media player doesn't work (as you report in the first post) then the process will have died.

You might also want to have a look at /var/lib/dsme/stats/lifeguard_restarts
It lists how many times each dsme-controlled program has been restarted. In my case it says "1" time for mafw-gst-renderer. Check if you have a big number there.