[Resolved] [Resolved] [Resolved] [Resolved] [Resolved] [Resolved] [Resolved] Major audio bug with Wi

We have a series of educational CD-ROMs on the market, which have been working OK on PCs and Macs for several years but are now manifesting major audio problems when played on Windows XP/2000.

Each CD comprises about 100 SWFs, Mac and PC projectors, and an autorun file. The SWFs range in size from 5-500 Kb, but most are around 200 Kb. They were built with Flash 3,4 and 5, but we have also produced an MX version, for testing purposes, and it is no better than the others. The program runs from the CD - no files are installed on the hard drive.

The original CDs were authored on Macs, but we have also tried re-exporting all files from a version of MX installed on an XP machine.

When the CD is played on an XP or Win2K machine, it goes through 3-6 SWFs without any problem, then the sound starts stuttering rapidly for a second or two before dying completely. Everything else (animation, interaction, etc.) continues to work OK, but there is no sound. The only way to restore the audio is to restart the application.

We have experimented with the following alternatives:

1. View SWFs on CD through Internet Explorer rather than projector. No improvement.
2. Copy entire CD contents onto hard drive and run from there. This increases the number of SWFs that can be played, but the problem still occurs.
3. Copy SWFs onto hard drive and view through IE. Same result as 2.
4. View SWFs through IE across the internet. Strangely enough, this seems to work OK, though it is obviously much slower. The only difference between the SWFs on the website and those on the CD is that the website ones have loading animations at the start.
5. Copy the web SWFs (with loading animations) onto hard drive and view through IE. This is relatively stable, but is a very clunky workaround.

We have tried both MP3 compression and Flash's own compression, but it makes no difference. We have also tried installing every Windows Update available and tweaking every XP system configuration imaginable, to no avail.

Interestingly, the audio always seems to fail at the beginning of a SWF - never halfway through it. When it does so, CPU usage rises to over 20 percent and stays there, even if the SWF is idle.

This is a mjor problem for us. We have spent weeks trying to resolve it and are getting absolutely nowhere. Microsoft (naturally) are not interested, and we are still waiting to hear back from Macromedia technical support.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks

Andrew Campbell

This EXACT issue was brought up a few weeks ago here on the boards...try searching the forums for audio issues and Win2k and XP. There were people with the exact problem and step on how to recreate it. This is definately an issue that needs to be addressed by Macromedia and I would be very upset if they overlooked this after someone pointed it out. Please keep us informed...good luck.

What version of the Flash player exe are you using to make the projectors?
Does the same problem occur if you use an earlier Flash player exe to create the projector?
Do the projectors that have a problem in win2k and xp work in 98 or other windows os's?
There are several bugs in the current flash player exe and we have been waiting for a new Flash player exe, but as of yet it has not been released.
jb
http://www.wildform.com/flix

It's not a projector issue - we've tried every conceivable combination. In any case, if you view the SWFs through IE, you get the same problem. The projectors and everything else work fine on Windows 95, 98, ME and NT.

OPTIMISTIC FOOTNOTE:

We've just had an e-mail from another developer experiencing the same problem, who says that Macromedia are working on it and will be posting a patch on their download page within the next few weeks.

Fingers crossed!

Andrew

I am one of the people who saw this problem about 2 months ago and was polling the Flash boards for someone to either help me solve the problem or just shoot me and put me out of my misery. I literally spent 3 weeks trying to solve the problem. But, low and behold I got in touch with the tech support people at MM and they were able to duplicate the problem. I have been in touch with a tech support person at MM (who, by the way has been quite good about keeping me informed on what the status is) and about a week ago he told me that the problem had been solved and they would release a new version within 3 weeks.

Today, I see that MM has released a new version of the web player, but they have not released a new version of the standalone player yet. I saw a post on the MM forum that indicated that it will be coming very soon. I think the issue is that for the standalone player to be fixed, you have to actually upgrade Flash itself and I think they are trying to figure out how to do that. Lets all say our prayers that the fix comes soon and it really works.

AzF

We have tested our CD-ROMs with the new standalone player and the IE Active X control and there is absolutely no improvement! The sound still stutters and dies. If Macromedia don't get their act together soon, we will have to seriously consider abandoning Flash as a multimedia platform.

Has anyone else found any improvement?

Andrew

Let's talk version numbers when we say we've done testing. Macromedia has posted a new version of the standalone player on July 19th which is supposed to fix this problem.

I have not done a .getVersion on this new build to see the version number but it is supposed to be 6.40, and the dates of the files in the download are July 3rd and 11th.

Also, does anyone know if you have to republish all the FLAs or just recompile for a new EXE?

Anyone tested with this version yet?

Thanks!

OK -- I've done some testing with the projector file, which is recompiled to 6.40 and the problem still exists!! I have not republished any of the FLAs; only the EXE recreated. One difference appears to be that the stuttering sound is gone, but the fix looks like the sound was shut off entirely -- and can't be turned on again.

The video slows down like before and but now there is no audio. Not a good fix.

Anyone else with any observations from the latest release?

Has anyone tested with the browser plug-in?


Thanks.

I have sent links to this thread to the Tech Support people at MM. For whatever reason, FK is not considered an "official channel," so they are asking for you to submit your posts to the MM forum.

Macromedia have finally admitted (to me) that this is a "known issue" and that they are working on it. However, they were unable or unwilling to give me any indication at all of when it is likely to be fixed - if ever.

In the meantime, we are faced with the prospect of dealing with increasing numbers of irate Windows XP users who are unable to use CD-ROMs that have been working perfectly well on earlier Windows operating systems for years.

:-(

Andrew

This bug appears to have been fixed in r50 which can be downloaded from Macromedia's website!

Please confirm whether you can reproduce the problem or not.

Thanks!

Hi.
We just built a CD with r50 and the stuttering problem still exists.
What next?
jb
http://www.wildform.com

I have been phoning MM tech support almost every day about this. They still haven't fixed the problem, and they still don't know when it will be fixed.

Andrew

I have downloaded the new version and am doing my testing now. I will have more info tomorrow when I test it on other machines. One note: I had asked the guy at MM last week specifically about this (6.xx.50) update to see if by chance this had the fix we had been looking for. He told me just today that as far as he knew, the fix was NOT in this version. What the heck is going on here?

More later,
AzF

i wonder if it is also a "known problem" of flash player on win xp/2k. i am using flash player Version: 6,0,47,0. i have created a swf. it runs well on win 98 and win me machines. even if i play this swf and another application, say, windows media player, both applications can run smoothly on win 98 and me machines. however, it is another story for win xp/2k! it seems that only one of the applications can run smoothly. when i target on the swf(mouse click on the flash player window), the swf play smoothly. but the mpeg at the back of the screen stutter. and when i click active the windows media player, the swf at background stutter. and it seems that flash player has consumed all the memory resources of win xp/2k!! i really really want to know if it is also a "known problem" of flash player. or, there is something that i can do, so that both applications can run smoothly?? well, i am making synchronization between swf and mpeg files....hope that some expert can give me suggestions! thx!

We know the problem exists on both win2K and XP. Macromedia knows this as well. As far as running both a Flash movie and a windows media file at the same time-I think it is a lot to ask for any machine to run both applications at the same time. I agree it is strange that it works for some operating systems and not others, but I think I would classify that as a 'limitation' rather than a bug.
-AzF

I am having this same problem and am wondering if anyone has figured out a solution yet. It has been quite some time since the last post so I am optimistic.

Thanks