8 Replies Latest reply: Dec 8, 2013 9:48 PM by RobWellington

Problems With Audio/Picture Playback in Director

DarrenDoesIt Sep 16, 2008 1:23 PM

I'm pretty new to Director and I want to refrain from getting into scripting for this simple task:

I am animating frame by frame with no vectors. I put a .wav file in one of the sound channels and stretch it across the entire animation (few thousand frames) for a scene. Then, no matter where I am in the animation, when I press play the sound starts from the beginning.

There is no way in hell I'll be able to sync lips with dialogue by playing the entire scene from the beginning every time just to see the sound synced with audio. I want to be able to play the same fraction of a second (several frames) while animating and KNOW WHERE IN THE SOUND I'M AT. I would have thought this expensive program would at least display the spectrogram or something, much less not play the audio from the beginning when I'm in the middle of the sound sprite. I've prerecorded the entire sound score in one Audacity file and exported it as a .wav to Director. I don't want to use any other sound channels or ques, etc.

PLEASE HELP, and thank you.

1. Re: Problems With Audio/Picture Playback in Director

wgb14 Sep 16, 2008 1:39 PM (in response to DarrenDoesIt)

I remember that i show somethign similar here, but I am not sure

http://www.deansdirectortutorials.com/

Hope that helps
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2. Re: Problems With Audio/Picture Playback in Director

DarrenDoesIt Sep 17, 2008 8:16 AM (in response to wgb14)

I appreciate your help, but most of these websites assume you're making some flash vid or video game animation. I'm creating noninteractive animation that I'll later edit into scenes. The way I'm coming to understand it, the source of the problem is the way the program treats sound as measured in time where as the graphics/animation are measured in frames. Still, I'm convinced its a crock of sh#% and that the lack of this simple feature is there to force you to buy marker software. The program should either display the spectrogram of the sound or at least play the sound from the point in time that the cursor is at!!
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3. Re: Problems With Audio/Picture Playback in Director

Newsgroup_User Sep 17, 2008 9:18 AM (in response to wgb14)

"DarrenDoesIt" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:gar7d8$1of$1@forums.macromedia.com...
>I appreciate your help, but most of these websites assume you're
>making some
> flash vid or video game animation. I'm creating noninteractive
> animation that
> I'll later edit into scenes. The way I'm coming to understand it,
> the source
> of the problem is the way the program treats sound as measured in
> time where as
> the graphics/animation are measured in frames. Still, I'm convinced
> its a
> crock of sh#% and that the lack of this simple feature is there to
> force you to
> buy marker software. The program should either display the
> spectrogram of the
> sound or at least play the sound from the point in time that the
> cursor is at!!

Director is a program that can be used to make interactive multimedia
and software.
What you want is make a linear video.

You are much better off with a video editing suite or specialised
synch software.
Start from here:
http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Graphics/Animation/
or here:
http://www.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Graphics/Animation/

Or just click here:
http://www.google.nl/search?num=50&hl=en&safe=off&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q= video+animation+editing+lip+sync+software&spell=1

(all one line, copy paste if necessary)

Good luck,
Richard.
)
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4. Re: Problems With Audio/Picture Playback in Director

RobWellington Dec 1, 2013 6:57 PM (in response to DarrenDoesIt)

Sounds play independently of frame rate. The frame rate varies depending on what it has to do at each frame.
I have had success with sound and animation synch by using a frame script that calculates the next frame to go to by time.
U can use milliseconds but the timer and ticks is accurate enough.

Here's some untested code off the top of my head:

at the first frame of the animation:
global gStartFrame, gFramesPerSecond

on exitFrame
    StartTimer()
    gStartFrame = _movie.frame
    gFramesPerSecond = 24 -- or whatever U want
end

and then at each frame:

global gStartFrame, gFramesPerSecond

on exitFrame
    _movie.go( startFrame+ integer(_movie.timer /gFramesPerSecond* 60))
end
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5. Re: Problems With Audio/Picture Playback in Director

SeanWilson Dec 1, 2013 9:59 PM (in response to RobWellington)

Rob, why are you responding to a thread more than 5 years old?
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6. Re: Problems With Audio/Picture Playback in Director

RobWellington Dec 2, 2013 1:21 AM (in response to SeanWilson)

Isn't it obvious? It's a good solution. The question is still up and unanswered except for - 'make it a video'. It's in Basics so the newbie user wouldn't think to use code for animation or how to do it - and this would work just the same for 12 and future versions. Someone else will have the same issue. And I like to answer at least one question for every question I ask.
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7. Re: Problems With Audio/Picture Playback in Director

piXelSkiLLs Dec 3, 2013 12:27 PM (in response to RobWellington)

@Rob

This was great. Neat solution.
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8. Re: Problems With Audio/Picture Playback in Director

RobWellington Dec 8, 2013 9:48 PM (in response to RobWellington)

at all the fames of the animation, that should be:
global gStartFrame, gFramesPerSecond

on exitFrame
_movie.go( gStartFrame+ integer(_movie.timer /gFramesPerSecond* 60))
end

PS: and thanks PS
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