Standalone player

Quote:

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Originally posted by necromanthus
And b.t.w. ... there're no problems of anykind with MACROMEDIA's StandAlone FlashPlayers (v6 or v7)
;)

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I'm sure there's not. Nevertheless, when I play the swf directly, in my browser, not via the 'net but directly off the hard drive, and when I play the swf in the standalone player, off the hard drive, the timing is decidedly different. It's slight, but over 3 minutes, it's about 5 seconds off at the end when played via the standalone player. Not much and maybe this is not something that would normally be noticed, but in the case of what I'm doing, the timing is critical.

So there may be nothing "wrong" with their flash player, but there is something that is creating a difference when playing in the standalone vs. the browser plug-in versions. Maybe it's just not designed to be so precise without doing the checking you mentioned.

I'll look into mySound.position as it sounds like what I need. I'm not sure how that's implemented or really, anything at all about it, but I'll definitely do the research. Thanks!

Quote:

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Originally posted by mjanke

I'm sure there's not. Nevertheless, when I play the swf directly, in my browser, not via the 'net but directly off the hard drive, and when I play the swf in the standalone player, off the hard drive, the timing is decidedly different. It's slight, but over 3 minutes, it's about 5 seconds off at the end when played via the standalone player. Not much and maybe this is not something that would normally be noticed, but in the case of what I'm doing, the timing is critical.

So there may be nothing "wrong" with their flash player, but there is something that is creating a difference when playing in the standalone vs. the browser plug-in versions. Maybe it's just not designed to be so precise without doing the checking you mentioned.

I'll look into mySound.position as it sounds like what I need. I'm not sure how that's implemented or really, anything at all about it, but I'll definitely do the research. Thanks!

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Few less known things:
1) the SA FlashPlayer works 15-20% faster than the Flash PlugIn.
2) there're two kind of FPS values:
a) the theoretical one
b) the real one (a function of a lot of "variables",such as: processor speed,RAM,OS,resident programs,etc).

So... using common methods,your movie is out of synchro from beginning !

cheers
;)

Quote:

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Originally posted by necromanthus
1) the SA FlashPlayer works 15-20% faster than the Flash PlugIn.

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OK then, there's the answer. I can live with that. And I also agree that there are the other factors you mentioned... processor speed, RAM, etc.

I've looked at that mysound.position and I'm really not clear on how to implement that. Would I have to write an actionscript to do the whole movie?

Or, can I, at certain points, just have something like "don't move on to shape 10 until we're at the xxx millisecond mark in the song." ?? And do that at three or four points within the movie to make sure the images haven't gotten too far ahead of the music? The images don't have to appear precisely to a millisecond position within the music, but it'd be nice if things didn't get too far out of whack. :)

How would I do that?

Code:

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onEnterFrame = function(){
  if (mySound.position > 15000){
    play();
    onEnterFrame = null;
  }
}
stop();

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If you put something like this in the main timeline at certain points, I think it should work.

The example above pauses the movie and starts playing again when the sound position reaches 15 seconds.

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Originally posted by w.brants
If you put something like this in the main timeline at certain points, I think it should work.

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Cool! I'll give it a shot. Thanks a million!

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Originally posted by w.brants
The example above pauses the movie and starts playing again when the sound position reaches 15 seconds.

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Maybe (probably!) I don't know what I'm doing but that doesn't work like expected. The song continues to play as it should, but the movie stops, permanently, when it hits the frame with that code in it.

What am I misunderstanding or doing wrong?

Sorry for giving you the original IP, if it hasn't worked out,,,, But I've been using "Flashtools" for a number of years without a single problem (Sound sync or no) I think you should have a look at what you really want to do and work out the best way to do it, (on paper first),,, there is always a solution,, normally right under your nose.,,, Cheers

FlashTools is a fine program. It's definitely not the problem. I've found some links to various discussions on syncronizing sound with graphics and it appears it's a problem that many have run into. And there have been some very elaborate efforts to get it right, so I'm not feeling so dumb about having the difficulties I'm having. :)

The code I posted before should work fine if you create a sound object called 'mySound' using actionscript and load an external wav or mp3 file with it's 'loadSound' function.

I don't know if it is possible to access the position of an embedded sound but in that case you might try to sync the movie with the timer.
In the frame the sound starts playing put a line of actionscript code

Code:

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soundStarted = getTimer();

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and change the code I posted before into

Code:

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onEnterFrame = function(){
  if (getTimer() - soundStarted > 15000){
    play();
    onEnterFrame = null;
  }
}
stop();

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Quote:

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Originally posted by w.brants
The code I posted before should work fine if you create a sound object called 'mySound' using actionscript and load an external wav or mp3 file with it's 'loadSound' function.

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Ah, there's the problem... you assumed I knew what the hell I was doing. :p I was lucky to be able to figure out where to put that code, let alone know I needed to create a sound object, etc., etc.

Maybe I'll try the timer method. That looks like something I understand. Thanks for your help!

Quote:

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Originally posted by w.brants
soundStarted = getTimer

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I just wanted to say thank you so much for this! It's working out much better than I ever expected. I have much better control of the timing of things than I imagined possible. I can move stuff in the beginning just a few milliseconds or whatever I need without throwing the remainder of the whole timeline off.

And the best part is, it's working identically in an external player and I imagine that differences in other people's computers won't have much if any effect on the timing.

Thanks!

Glad to hear it works for you :)

I think you are right that it won't make a big difference on what computer the movie is played.

What might cause sync problems - I think - with this method is the combination of streaming sound and a slow connection. I don't know how flash treats streaming sound but I assume that there are gaps in the music if the data doesn't reach the computer in time. Using the position property of a sound object may avoid this kind of problems.
But to be honest I hardly ever work with sounds myself. Maybe Remus can tell.

Wilbert's idea (a real time counter) was the second solution.
A good one ...
Unfortunately,the first solution (with sound.position) it doesn't work on KoolMoves.
The reason is the missing symbol-library: the sound-object must be exported for ActionScript in order to work.
But the manic BOB is working hard ...
:p

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Originally posted by w.brants
I don't know how flash treats streaming sound but I assume that there are gaps in the music if the data doesn't reach the computer in time.

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When I had the "Streaming" box checked for the audio, the timing was worse in the external player. That was prior to implementing your fix. So I haven't had that set and didn't set it after putting in all the time checks.

It's working. I ain't touching it. :)