Hi all... again
You can tell I'm nearing the finishing stages of my current project by the
fact that I have posted more "help me" messages than usual.
D8 W2000, Duron800, 256 ram, Soundplaster 128PCI
Anyway, the situation is this. I have a sound (wav, 22, 16, mono, preloaded)
playing in channel 1. The sound is a loopy background thingy...
At one specific point, depending on user interaction I'm updating the
background image with member("bgimage").filename = ... Now admittedly, the
image is quite large (Jpg, Optimized huffman 100, 800 X 600 X 24bits). and
everytime I load a new image, the sound in channel 1 (i have no other sounds
playing so it might be channelnum independent) cracks, agonizingly clearly.
Now if this was the typical problem (two read operations battling for
control of the disc) I would not wonder, but I designed the whole thing to
avoid that issue. The sound is preloaded, and the actual size of the Jpg
file on disc is merely 150-300 kb... The visible switching of the background
image takes about 80-90 milliseconds, which should in any case not be enough
for depleting the Mixer's buffer...
This is a place where the problem is very clear. I have another problem
which I think is related, which is that at many places in the software,
where HEAVY graphical or lingo operations are occurring, the sound cracks as
well.
Now this got me thinkin it's not a member.filename problem, but an overall
workload related thing. A JPG takes a lot of juice to decompress, AFAIK.
Now the only thing I can come up with is that somewhere along the line Macr
has F***'d up the internal pecking order of Director's tasks. IMHO, sound
should come first, everything else later (as it is in video formats). The
user can tolerate slow updating of the screen, but he can not tolerate sound
cracking or breaking up.
Interestingly enough, I did some tests with the sounddevice.
Now what comes to sounddevices (that incessant pain in MY butt), I'm
installing Quicktime by default, so I set out using Qt3Mix, I naturally also
could use Macromix, but I would not like to have to depend on Directsound,
as about 15% of the endusers can't use it. My test results amazed me. The
Crack is WORST when using Qt3Mix, slightly lesser with Directsound, but
basically inexsistant with Macromix... Thenagain, I get a constant 0.25-1
second LAG on eventsounds when using Macromix and that is plainly
unacceptable.
But if My logic does not fail me:
Macromix is closely integrated into Director
DirectSound is closely integrated into Windows
Qt3Mix is neither
Which in my mind might explain the hit Qt3 takes in these High-stress
cases...
So in the end, after joggling for a PUNY amount of 3 days with this SOB, I'm
back where I started. A few hundred guesses and speculations richer, but
nevertheless, stuck with the same MF...
So now, fellow developers, I turn to you, hoping to receive any and all
advice you can spare. Also If I just ain't seeing the forest due to all the
trees, kick my butt and put me back on track.
Deadline friday ==> about 60 hours to harakiri...
Pekka
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