Greetings all,

Has anyone else encountered difficulties using MIDI files as background music? In my project, the songs play smoothly, but at the expense of the animation. For example, if the player is walking around whilst music is playing, the scrolling is very choppy and all animations (NPCs, stamps, etc.) skip frames.

I can't for the life of me figure out what is causing this to happen. I'm working on a fairly powerful computer (G4/400 with 256MB RAM), and my map designs are quite simple, not nearly as elaborate or graphically intensive as PoG. The MIDI files are Quicktime music tracks, converted from "plain vanilla" MIDI files using Quicktime Player. The MIDI files are fairly simple polyphony-wise, using 8 channels of instruments or less.

I don't encounter this problem using mp3s for the background music. However, for a game with 20+ pieces of music, even heavily-compressed mp3s will take up tons of disk space, and because this is a simple freeware game which I intend to make available as a "download only" rather than distribution on CD-ROM, I don't want the file size to be prohibitive for folks on a 56k dialup. Hence, I really want to work with MIDI if it's at all possible.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me with this dilemma.

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"A wise man speaks because he has something to say, a fool speaks because he has to say something." -- Plato

Quote

Originally posted by Noel Webster:
**Greetings all,

Has anyone else encountered difficulties using MIDI files as background music? In my project, the songs play smoothly, but at the expense of the animation. For example, if the player is walking around whilst music is playing, the scrolling is very choppy and all animations (NPCs, stamps, etc.) skip frames.

I can't for the life of me figure out what is causing this to happen. I'm working on a fairly powerful computer (G4/400 with 256MB RAM), and my map designs are quite simple, not nearly as elaborate or graphically intensive as PoG. The MIDI files are Quicktime music tracks, converted from "plain vanilla" MIDI files using Quicktime Player. The MIDI files are fairly simple polyphony-wise, using 8 channels of instruments or less.

I don't encounter this problem using mp3s for the background music. However, for a game with 20+ pieces of music, even heavily-compressed mp3s will take up tons of disk space, and because this is a simple freeware game which I intend to make available as a "download only" rather than distribution on CD-ROM, I don't want the file size to be prohibitive for folks on a 56k dialup. Hence, I really want to work with MIDI if it's at all possible.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me with this dilemma.

**

I've had a bit of a system drain since installing QT 4.0; the new Roland libraries are big and heavy. I have a strong feeling it is a memory issue. I hadn't noticed Coldstone being peculiarly slow or jerky with MIDI, itself -- but I will definately keep an eye on that and tell you if the same problem crops up.

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everywhere else, it's --
"Nomuse"

What version of Quicktime, and more imporantly of the Quicktime Musical architechture are you using? Do you have the energy saver control panel turned on? (It's been buggy ever since Apple introduced it, and has conflicts with MIDI, OMS, some internet apps...)

Apple's "help" info archives are full of people (myself included) complaining about screwy playback of MIDI stuff, especially after Quicktime5 (which is otherwise awsome, by the way.)
Do you see odd MIDI behavior in other apps? In SoundApp? In the QT player?

I hope we get to the bottom of this, since MIDI is an important part of My own "game plan." I haven't started to include MIDI in my Coldstone stuff yet, but when I do, I don't want to have the same troubles you report.

Best,
chuck
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Oh yeah, I forgot...

Any connection you have to a network should be done away with.
&
Virtual Memory should be off. Nobody with a G4 and that much RAM needs it.

These two are probably not the culprit in your current troubles, but in other situations where folks experience jumpy or glitchy output from their system the above are sometimes involved.

Many thanks for the suggestions. I'll test the MIDI files in some other applications and see if any strange behavior develops. I was assuming (probably incorrectly) that the problem was within Coldstone, but it seems plausible that Quicktime is the culprit in this case.

I should also mention that my OMS setup is frighteningly complex, linking together a gaggle of external MIDI gizmos and software synths, but I didn't think this would have any bearing on Quicktime's MIDI performance, since the Quicktime control panel is set to use the default Quicktime musical instruments for MIDI playback. My assumption, therefore, is that Quicktime is sending the MIDI data straight to the Quicktime musical instruments, and not trying to send everything a bazillion directions via OMS. Right?

For whatever it's worth, I'm using Quicktime version 5.0.1.

------------------
"A wise man speaks because he has something to say, a fool speaks because he has to say something." -- Plato

Quote

Originally posted by Noel Webster:
**Many thanks for the suggestions. I'll test the MIDI files in some other applications and see if any strange behavior develops. I was assuming (probably incorrectly) that the problem was within Coldstone, but it seems plausible that Quicktime is the culprit in this case.

I should also mention that my OMS setup is frighteningly complex, linking together a gaggle of external MIDI gizmos and software synths, but I didn't think this would have any bearing on Quicktime's MIDI performance, since the Quicktime control panel is set to use the default Quicktime musical instruments for MIDI playback. My assumption, therefore, is that Quicktime is sending the MIDI data straight to the Quicktime musical instruments, and not trying to send everything a bazillion directions via OMS. Right?

For whatever it's worth, I'm using Quicktime version 5.0.1.

**

My OMS aps keep warning me to turn off QuickTime because it could hurt them. There's some funny stuff in the QT preferences you might take a quick look at -- maybe it is trying to send to your synths, not the internal chip?

Am I seeing things, or is every other developer here also a musician?

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everywhere else, it's --
"Nomuse"

Quote

**it seems plausible that Quicktime is the culprit in this case.

...the Quicktime control panel is set to use the default Quicktime musical instruments for MIDI playback. My assumption, therefore, is that Quicktime is sending the MIDI data straight to the Quicktime musical instruments, and not trying to send everything a bazillion directions via OMS. Right?

For whatever it's worth, I'm using Quicktime version 5.0.1.

**

The mysteries of what gets sent where and for what reason under the hood of OMS (and MIDI in general) always eludes me.....

From what they say over on the apple tech grumble boards, Quicktime 5's musical instruments are to blame somehow. Some folks have solved the problem by getting an installer for one of the 4.x versions and doing a custom install of JUST the quicktime musical architechture.
(url="http://"http://discussions.info.apple.com/")http://discussions.info.apple.com/(/url) (If you haven't gone through the rig-a-marole of getting an "apple ID" so you can read all that stuff, do it. It's painless and worth it in the end.)

On my system (OS 9.2.1, QT 5.0.2) I get jittery playback if I've been using my machine for long periods with out a restart. A restart purges RAM of memory leaks, a full shutdown and restart does the job better. I'm not smart enough to deduce why this helps, but it does. The origin of the bad playback might be something different, and completly convergent evolution in your case.

-chuckamuck

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Y'know, I'm remember a few RAM leaks through QT as well. I use Mac OS Purge every now and then to check on such things. Given all the hard disk recording I do, I'm used to rebooting before any major operation.

And of course I trash the QT player the moment an ap. installs it. MoviePlayer is much nicer.

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everywhere else, it's --
"Nomuse"