Players, playing data from RAM

[Scott Rossi]

On 6/12/03 2:51 PM, "Dave Cragg" <dcragg at lacscentre.co.uk> wrote:

>> Is this for Mac or Windows or both?
> 
> Windows right now.
> 
>> Are you relying on QuickTime?  If so, what version?  What version of MC?
> 
> I have to assume no QuickTime. (MP3 will play on Windows without QT
> if WMP 6.4 or later is installed.)
> 
>> 
>>>  I developed a language learning application that plays a conversation
>>>  as a series of audio clips. Originally the clips were in au format
>>>  and were played with the "play audioclip" command. When one clip
>>>  ended, the next was played. All the clips for a single conversation
>>>  were imported to a single stack. Open the stack (downloaded from an
>>>  ftp or http server) and the clips are all in RAM. This worked fine,
>>>  and the playback was seamless.
>> 
>> Next question would be, do you have to use MP3?  If you can't use au, is WAV
>> possible?
> 
> It has to be MP3 for the following reasons:
> 
> File size (weighting = 2)
> Sound Quality vs compressed au (weighting = 1)
> Buzzword compliance (weighting = 3)
> Client says so (weighting = out of range)
> 
> Come on, Scott. Where are these questions leading? Do you know something? :)

Probably into a brick wall.

If you're not using QT, I can only guess that whatever player is being used
may be taking time to decompress or otherwise decode the MP3 file.  I have
no idea if this the case or not, just a guess.

I was asking about QT because it *appears* that the MC guys have optimized
QT support in the latest MC version, which minimizes the initialization
problem that plagued previous versions of MC (no real data to back this up,
just some subjective observations).

Not sure if this will help but you might try using MP3s with low compression
(as opposed to high) and see if larger filesizes make any difference in
performance.  You might want to try using a "pictureless" video format
(probably MPEG) as well, unless your client's MP3 request overrides this
option as well.

Sorry am not much more help.

Regards,

Scott Rossi
Creative Director
Tactile Media, Multimedia & Design
-----
E: scott at tactilemedia.com
W: http://www.tactilemedia.com