This thread ran recently on another list and may be relevent to you.
Certainly the reply about how Director parses sound files was
illuminating:
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hello all,
was wondering if anyone has ever come across this:
NT, D8 will play linked .aif sound files in authoring mode, but the
projector won't play *some* .aif files ( will play others ).
here's what i've tried:
1. maybe there's something wrong with my code:
i made a projector with only the sound cast members imported. all the
sounds played in authoring mode. some sound files ( always the same ones )
failed in the projector.
2. maybe copying the file from a mac-based server to the pc caused the
problem:
copied the same files directly from a cd to the pc harddrive. same problem.
3. maybe those files are corrupt:
in sound-edit, pasted the waves into a new file. STILL THE SAME PROBLEM.
again, ALL the files will play in authoring mode, and some ( always the same
ones ) will fail to play in the projector. furthermore, those that fail
seem to take over the system resources when they fail ( the computer is
momentarily unresponsive ).
only converting those files from .aif to .mp3 format seemed to solve this,
but i'm still very interested in getting some feedback, because it seems
that this is a very strange problem.
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1st reply:
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> NT, D8 will play linked .aif sound files in authoring mode, but the
> projector won't play *some* .aif files ( will play others ).
> 1. maybe there's something wrong with my code:
No, there probably isn't anything wrong with your code. In D8, we changed
strategy when playing sound files. Instead of depending on fileType or
extension, we parse the file header to determine what kind of sound file it
is. The problem is that MP3 files don't really have a header. The MP3 data
can begin anywhere in the file, and players are expected to skip over any
leading data that they don't understand. Unfortunately, the order in which
various parsers are tried wasn't defined well enough. The problem is that if
you have a large enough file, the MP3 parser can be spoofed into thinking it
has a valid MP3 (done by examining successive bit patterns and where the
indicate the next known bit patterns should be), but with essentially no
data worth playing. Because there is a false-positive, no other parsers are
tried, so the *real* sound format isn't detected.
This bug was found shortly after D8 shipped, so it has been fixed in
Shockwave.
Here are a couple of things you can try:
1) Create a Shockwave projector. Shockwave shipped with this bug fixed. It
will not try to use the MP3 parser unless all other parsers have failed to
identify the file.
2) Include the "Sound Import Export" Xtra in your list of Movie Xtras. This
will mimic the environment that Authoring uses.
Note that we have embedded support for the following file formats built
directly into the Player, as of D8. You no longer explicitly need to include
Mix Services or other Xtras to play these formats:
'snd' (Macintosh System 7 Sound)
AIFF
AIFC (ima4)
Wave (uncompressed)
Wave (ima-adpcm)
MP3(*)
SWA(*)
(*) This applies to Imported sounds of these formats. When using Inserted
(streaming) sounds, other Xtras are required.
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2nd reply:
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> it turns out that importing all the sound files fixes the
> problem, but ...
> and this is the eternal question ... WHY?
If the sounds are not compressed, when they are imported (non-linked), we
strip away all unnecessary file data and just retain the sound bits (and cue
point information, if any). Internal uncompressed sounds do not need to be
parsed in order to be identified, so there is no MP3 spoofing (as explained
in my previous response).
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-Sean.
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