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Audio Clip Plugin

3/5/2008 10:38:43 AM

thegink

6 posts

Audio Clip Plugin

I think the Audio Clip Plugin is a fantastic idea, and I can see myself using it for things like sound effects, as well as in presentations.

However, when I tried it out, it crashed SM.

I imported 4 songs, then went to play 1. It didnt play at all, and wouldn't even select the clip, from memory. It threw an "Error in the Application".

When I tried another clip (same SM session), it played, but when the file had finished, it crashed SM. I could delete clips, but not play them, and it threw a "Object Reference not set to an instance of an object" each time I tried to play something. I eventually had to force-quit SM.

Here's a link to the Event Log. The first 15 or so events are when I was trying to play other files after the 2nd clip had finished. The last one is from the first clip. SMEventLog2.xml

I'm running SM 3.0 on WinXP

3/6/2008 8:06:49 AM

owaits

116 posts

Re: Audio Clip Plugin

OK, I think I have now got to the bottom of what is happening here.

When you tried to play the first clip the software flagged an unable to render error. This error was handled correctly and flagged to the user. The specifics of this indicate that you do not have the correct DirectShow decoder installed to play the file. It is also possible that the file is DRM protected in which case it will not play. You either need to ensure that you only use compatible audio files or find the DirectShow decoder for the audio format you want to play.

The software then threw another error when you tried to stop the clip due to the fact that the clip did not load correctly earlier. This error was not handled correctly and did some damage to the playback engine.

You where then able to run another audio clip which played fine but due to the damage done to the playback engine it would not have been able to stop. This would effectively lock playback of clips while still allowing other operations to continue.

I have added fixes to the audio clip to prevent it throwing an error when you stop the clip and prevented errors in clips damaging the playback engine. This will appear in future versions.

Since it was one audio clip that caused all the problems you should be able to start Screen Monkey and only load in the clips that worked. You should then find these play correctly. Try to avoid using audio formats which will not play. If you do play an incompatible audio format then you will need to re-start the software.

Sorry about this! Out of interest what format are the files which will not play?

3/8/2008 1:24:41 PM

thegink

6 posts

Re: Audio Clip Plugin

The file was an mp3, with no DRM protection. Another mp3 from the same source also crashes SM the same way. The original mp3 is this one (274K), if you're interested.

Is there more than one codec that can be used in an mp3 container? Or are there differences between the programs used to encode the audio (ie, LAME vs. ...well, everything else)?

I thought I had K-Lite installed, but it turns out I didn't. Unfortunately, installing it didn't fix the problem, even though it did install a new DirectShow mp3 decoder.

thegink

PS. Don't apologise - as long as you keep developing quality products, I'll keep breaking them for you :)

3/9/2008 5:54:56 PM

owaits

116 posts

Re: Audio Clip Plugin

Thank you for sending me the file!

I tried it on my machines and it also would not play. It appears that the DirectShow filters in the k-lite codec pack do not support this type of MP3 file. I spent a while searching but was not able to find a compatible DirectShow decoder.

My recomendation for the moment is to convert the files into a different format of MP3 if you wish to play them in Screen Monkey. I will however continue to try and find a decoder that works.

3/14/2008 9:46:06 AM

thegink

6 posts

Re: Audio Clip Plugin

iTunes plays this file, so presumably the default mp3 decoder they use would work. That might be proprietary, though.

thegink

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