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More => Old Versions => Media Center 11 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: scarnie on August 30, 2003, 10:21:08 pm

Title: MC9 Skipping on certain songs (not bad audio file)
Post by: scarnie on August 30, 2003, 10:21:08 pm
I just purchased MC9, because of the powerful media library - especially 9.1 - great work!!

However, a few songs skip in the same place every time, and although it sounds supspiciously like the audio file is the problem, I can play them in Windows Media Player 9, and there is no skip.

Why is this?  I have experimented will all output options, including Direct Sound, ASIO, and Wave and adjusted (increased) the buffer size to no avail.

I have tried turning on / off the clipping in DSP, disabled all DSP plugins, and still it skips...

Do you have any suggestions?

Cheers,

Stuart
Title: Re: MC9 Skipping on certain songs (not bad audio f
Post by: JimH on August 31, 2003, 07:00:30 am
Try playing around with the Playback settings in MC.  DirectSound vs. Wav out, for example.  Playback buffer too.
Title: Re: MC9 Skipping on certain songs (not bad audio f
Post by: scarnie on August 31, 2003, 09:51:48 am
Hi,

Thanks for the reply, but as I mentioned above, I did play  around with Direct Sound, Wave and ASIO already.  Including the playback buffer size.

If I use the conversion option to write out the wave, then it has the skipping (if I load it into CoolEdit).

However, if I load the original MP3 into CoolEdit, it is fine.  No skipping..  How odd is this?

Would the MP3 help?

Cheers,

Stu
Title: Re: MC9 Skipping on certain songs (not bad audio f
Post by: hit_ny on September 01, 2003, 01:41:07 pm
Try using this http://www.geocities.com/mp3utility/ utility on the skipping mp3s.

if it reports sync errors, this could be the reason for the skip.

Wish MC had built in checking for audio files ( *FEATURE REQ* WINK*)
Title: Re: MC9 Skipping on certain songs (not bad audio f
Post by: Veazer on September 02, 2003, 12:34:31 am

I've got the same problem, but it happens quite rarely. I'll try the MP3 utility and see what it reports. The last one I found was compressed with Lame3.93 (non-beta) which troubled me a bit. I have considered LAME to be near perfect for MP3! I hope it is simply a MC playback issue.

I've also had some songs playback at the wrong speed (very sloooooow) but play fine in other apps. Anyone else experienced this?
Title: Re: MC9 Skipping on certain songs (not bad audio f
Post by: rocketsauce on September 02, 2003, 02:12:44 am
I think LAME 3.93 is known to be buggy if you are encoding with the --alt-presets. 3.93.1 is recommended instead.

Rob
Title: Re: MC9 Skipping on certain songs (not bad audio f
Post by: hit_ny on September 02, 2003, 07:26:50 am
Another possibility for skipping songs is hard drive defragmentation.

After u run audio analysis on your collectoin, lots of iD2 tags are written resulting in a (you guessed it) heavily defragmented drive.

i noticed skips ( aka buffering) happening frequently until i defragged the drive after which things were peachy.
Title: Re: MC9 Skipping on certain songs (not bad audio f
Post by: scarnie on September 02, 2003, 09:54:28 am
Thanks for all the replies - I tried the utility and it reported no problem with the file.  I copied the mp3 to a different machine and tested MC9 (and 9.1 beta) and it still skips..

If I decompress the MP3 to a WAV and then recompress, it is fine in MC..  How strange??  Got to be an issue in the playback code...  

What does MC use as it's MP3 decomressor - it's own or Windows media extensions / CODECs?

It appears relatively straightforward to write an input plugin, so I was thinking of trying my own ;-)

Cheers,

Stu
Title: Re: MC9 Skipping on certain songs (not bad audio f
Post by: Matt on September 02, 2003, 10:37:58 am
Could you send one of the files to matt @ jriver.com (no spaces)

Thanks for helping.
Title: Re: MC9 Skipping on certain songs (not bad audio f
Post by: scarnie on September 02, 2003, 06:26:30 pm
I've sent it, so let me know if you don't get it.

Cheers,

Stu
Title: Re: MC9 Skipping on certain songs (not bad audio f
Post by: Veazer on September 03, 2003, 02:41:58 am
Quote
I think LAME 3.93 is known to be buggy if you are encoding with the --alt-presets. 3.93.1 is recommended instead.

Rob



Ooops, you're dead right. I meant to say I am using 3.93.1. (with --alt-presets of course ;D )

Hopefully most people have removed 3.93 builds.
Title: MC9 Skipping on certain songs
Post by: scarnie on September 05, 2003, 01:32:23 am
Hi,

I just wanted to give you some feedback.  

I wrote my own MP3 input streaming plugin using the BASS.DLL library, and I no longer suffer the skips.  So it must be in the in_MP3.dll that's causing the problem.  I get some weird skips in other mp3s, that play fine with other players..

Cheers,

Stu