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thank the heavens and all things great and small!
prayers do get answered! volume logic just died with the installation of the latest winamp (on one computer only… strange…) and presto-bango, Breakaway!
I’m almost super-totally satisfied; the only problem so far (quite possibly a glitch with my machine (oldish Presario v3000), or with my lack of familiarity with audio software) is that the voices/sound lagged just a bit behind the moving mouths of a movie I tried watching with Breakaway (used both VLC + MPC players). I then turned Breakaway off, and the sound synched fine.
Other than that, it’s gold-plated candy, and I’m recommending it to strangers.
sincere thanks!!!
Hello mayasecret!
I am at least as happy as you to have Breakaway see the light of day 🙂.
Thank you for your comments.
Regarding the lip-sync issue, it’s a known issue depending on your computer configuration.
Remember the audio setup wizard where it asked you to select buffer size?
Tiny, Small and Medium all retain lip-sync well enough not to be noticed. Large is borderline – watchable but noticeable. Huge is out of the question for watching movies.
Unfortunately, on a Windows Vista computer with a sound card without a WDM driver (using Safe Mode in Breakaway), huge is the only buffer size that works.
There will be a solution to this for Vista down the line – hopefully within just a couple of months, but don’t quote me on it. In XP, on the other hand, most systems should handle medium buffering or lower.
I deduce you’re running Vista?
Sincerely,
Leif Claesson
ClaessonEdwards LLCMayasecret, I just noticed you said "oldish presario" which likely means you’re not running Vista.
Since you’re already familiar with VLC – I believe there is actually a setting inside VLC to adjust lip-sync, to compensate for delay. I’m far far away form home at the moment, so I can’t point you to it, but I’ll look into it when I get home in a few days, and if it’s simple we should make it a FAQ entry.
///Leif
Yeah, I had the buffer set on huge… (I never said I was smart =)
I heard a few cracks while I had it on tiny and small, but I equally suspected the .mp3 that I was listening to. I then tried the huge setting, and noticed that it didn’t hog much mem/resources at all, so just left it there. I also forgot to listen to the same song again… (refer to the smart disclaimer above), but I’d bet the farm that it was the song and not the program.
Just curious, what does the buffer size do, and why is the smallest buffer size recommended? Is there sound quality involved, or is it a computer resource kind of thing? Or…?
anyhoo, problem solved,
thanks bunches Leif!
ps – yeah, I’m running XP, and everything on it sounds SO MUCH BETTER NOW!!!
Hello again, mayasecret!
On computers, audio is handled in blocks, as opposed to a continuous stream of samples.
A small block (buffer) size means the buffer will contain a very short piece of audio. Thus, the CPU has to be ready to process the next piece of audio very quickly. If the CPU happens to be busy doing something else, or if (for example) the video card or hard disk controller has temporarily locked up the bus, this next block may not be ready in time. If it’s even a tiny tiny bit late, there will be an audible glitch.
This is normally not an issue people notice, because media players read ahead a few seconds so they know what they’ll be playing next, and they can use huge buffers.
Breakaway, on the other hand, is a realtime process. It can’t know what’s coming next – it can only wait for the sounds and process them as quickly as it possibly can (small buffers). If it takes too long (large buffers) there will be a delay when playing video, as you noticed. (For music, you wouldn’t notice added delay unless you look at visualizations in your player).
So, in short, the buffer size is a compromise. On a clean XP computer without a lot of programs loaded, you can get away with Tiny buffers. On the other hand, on certain Vista machines, nothing less than Huge will work.
Here I go, writing an essay again.. Did this answer your question? 🙂
///Leif
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