MP3s

[Richard Gaskin]

Graham Samuel wrote:

 > Well, Richard, as usual you say something informative and useful!
 >
 > I didn’t know that LC could play a sound file in MP3 format.

LC's Player control uses the host OS's playback engine, so as long as 
the OS-supplied media player can handle a format, LC should be able to 
as well.


 > Instinctively I thought that an audioclip was the way to go, because I
 > saw it as a small chunk of data best embedded in my app. In my mind,
 > the format of an external file trades flexibility (the user or the app
 > can switch content easily) against a massive overhead of storage and
 > software mechanics and potential delays due to loading etc, whereas
 > the audioclip is small, clean, and can be started and stopped with no
 > overheads.

True, reading the media file takes a bit more time than a clip already 
in RAM with the rest of the stack file.  But in many cases it's not 
noticeable.  And where it is noticeable it probably has less to do with 
the file I/O than the codec itself:  HC's SND resources had few 
compression options, and MC's audioclips were limited to .au format, 
which IIRC isn't compressed at all.

It might be nice to see LC expand the internal clips options to support 
the same range of formats/codecs the Player does. But even then it would 
be limited to smaller files where it's practical to load them all into 
RAM with the rest of the stack file, modestly useful for some projects 
but prohibitive with longer files.

As for user modification, the files can be in the Mac bundle, and on 
Windows usually an installer is required anyway so you can put them in 
any useful place the user is unlikely to stumble across them 
accidentally (this isn't a problem at all on Linix - the absence of a 
functional Player in that LC version simplifies many things <g>).

I miss the simplicity of delivering true stand-alone apps, but with so 
many of the most lauded features of LC 8-and-later having been 
implemented as externals, adding some media files to the mix doesn't 
affect deployment options much.

If there's a security or other concern requiring the files be protected 
from user manipulation, there are options for that.  Like any DRM, 
there's usually a tradeoff between strength and ease of implementation, 
but if it's needed we can explore it.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com