Absolute need for a "Fudge Factor"....

[Lin Evans]

Sometimes when I mix media (MP3 & Midi) the synchronization feature cuts the last song off about a second or so before it's finished making an abrupt and poor presentation.

This may be difficult to "cure" from a programming perspective because the program is at the mercy of calculating the transition times and adding them to the play time given by the music itself. Sometimes this may be slightly in error. There may be no good way to precisely know the perfect length of the entire show, but if there was a provision to allow the user to extend the duration of the final image slightly beyond or cut it slightly short of the calculated time for synchronization with music, then the adjustment could be made so that things worked out smoothly.

This suggestion would be in keeping with the "flexibility" of P2E and solve the issue of premature end of image or an image extending well beyond the music.

Lin

As a "postscript" I did a workaround by using a sound editor to record four seconds of silence and a cut and paste to the end of the last song. This entails recording as a wav, converting the mp3 to wav, converting the midi to wav, adding the four seconds of silence, then saving the entire thing as an MP3. Sure it can be done this way, but everyone who uses P2E doesn't have familiarity with sound editors, or maybe doesn't even have one. It would be nice to make this possible without leaving P2E since it happens with enough frequency to be annoying....

[think(box)]

I've been wondering whether Igor might respond to this topic, but then I realized that I have something helpful to add:

Lin, I agree that a "silence extension" feature would be handy. The problem that you described could be anything from MIDI synthesis timing complexity, to bad timing info in music files, to a minor PTE timing miscalculation. It seems by far most likely that MIDI synthesis timing complexity is the cause.

I have found that although MIDI is fantastic for its extremely small file size, it is totally unpredictable as to how it will play on someone else's computer. The synthesizers and patch maps vary widely, causing variations in playback. Notably, MIDI music that sounds just great on your machine may sound just awful on someone else's machine. If that is a customer, you don't need that surprise. I've been there, done that, on this problem - it really does happen.

So this leads me to a suggestion: Convert your MIDI files to MP3 for identical music when played on any machine. You can convert by playing it and simultaneously "recording" it if your soundcard supports this. And even better, there is software out there that will convert MIDI to WAV or MP3 totally in software:

Click for link to try-before-you-buy "WAVmaker" by Polyhedric, Inc.

The trial version of WAVmaker has a very limited set of MIDI patches so that you can evaluate the overall quality of conversion, but for P2E show music creation you would need the paid version to have fully instrumented sound.

[Lin Evans]

Hi Bill,

Thanks! That's essentially what I ended up with, but by a circuitous route :-) I still believe that adding the ability to program in a silence factor or shorten the calculated play time by a few seconds would be a major plus in P2E. Numerous times I've wished for this and a "fade" feature at the end of the slideshow so I didn't have to "fuss" with it in one of my sound editors. I really appreciate all the great work Igor has put in on this program. Even with all the tremendous resources some of the competition have to throw at their product development, they still haven't produced a product with the versatility of P2E.

Best regards,

Lin

[alrobin]

Lin,

Have you tried the latest 4.10 beta? Igor has done some work on correcting this fault, and the latest beta may solve it for you.