Audio randomly doesn't play on loading videos

[cerebusk]

About 50% of the time, the audio from a loading video won't play when the table is loading on my system.  The video plays back fine.  If there is audio associated with the audio, backglass or playfield media, it plays back fine too.  It's only when transitioning to the loading videos that playback disappears.  Also, it doesn't seem to matter if the audio is actually in the loading video file or just an MP3 under "Audio Launch", randomly it won't play.

 

Anybody else have this problem or know what to do about it?

 

[fudgeycaca]

I think I just experienced this today.  I recently started adding Loading Screens for my tables.  For tables where I have no Loading video set, the system pulls the T-Arc video that I have set as the default.  Some percentage of the time, the audio on the default T-ARC loading video doesn't play for quite some time, if at all.  It seemed in my testing that the audio might have been very low because I started to hear it increase in loudness as the table loaded before it stopped completely.

 

The bigger problem I'm noticing is that the table Audio file configured for playback while scrolling the menu will continue to play even after a Loading screen video with audio has queued.  For some reason it specifically affects tables where I have a blank T-ARC video paired with a full screen video for the playfield.  For tables with only a T-Arc with audio, the configured table Audio doesn't play.

 

I only had a little time to try troubleshooting today, but I've been messing with the Custom Options related to global audio.  No luck solving it yet...

Edited July 12, 2023 by fudgeycaca
Thinking is hard.

[cerebusk]

Regarding your delayed audio: this is exactly what happens on my system.  What I finally figured out is that the audio is muted on the first loop.  That is, when the video restarts, the audio plays the second time through.  That being said, I currently have my system set to play the loading video only once, so I don't hear audio on the second loop because there is no second loop.

 

I don't have the problem with table audio continuing to play, but that's mainly because if I have audio in the attract screen, it's because it's built into the Playfield video.

[fudgeycaca]

On 7/12/2023 at 10:27 AM, cerebusk said:

Regarding your delayed audio: this is exactly what happens on my system.  What I finally figured out is that the audio is muted on the first loop.  That is, when the video restarts, the audio plays the second time through.  That being said, I currently have my system set to play the loading video only once, so I don't hear audio on the second loop because there is no second loop.

 

I don't have the problem with table audio continuing to play, but that's mainly because if I have audio in the attract screen, it's because it's built into the Playfield video.

I'm glad to say I think I have a solution for you   After fiddling with it last weekend, I got my issues fixed 100%. 

Now, the steps I've outlined below leverage the Launch Audio field as a way to consistently force Popper to start the audio for the Loading Video.   It seems the major issue is that the embedded audio in Loading Videos doesn't get triggered properly or consistently. It appears this embedded audio handling problem is isolated to Loading Videos because I've never had embedded audio playback issues with videos set for my fullDMD screen

 

In my testing, I determined that:

• Table Audio does NOT  get triggered to stop when you launch a game or when another video plays even if it has embedded audio.  As a result, the front-end continues playing the Table Audio and piles all other embedded audio sources on top of it, including the Loading Video. 
• If you have FadeoutLoading=1 in your global Scripts for popper that fades the Loading Video and audio in/out (as I do, and as I suspect you do), it seems to fail to do its purpose and fade the audio in, remaining inaudible for far too long. 

 

Since the video part of the Loading Video never fails to play from the beginning whether the FadeoutLoading code is present or not, it seems clear to me that the problem has to do with the way the audio embedded in the Loading Video is being faded/started.  If I had to use my audio engineering experience to take a guess, the symptom is just like am improperly configured gate, leading to no audio output.  Either the gate threshold is set too high and it never begins to fade in, or it's clamping down on the signal for far too long before releasing and allowing the audio through.  

 

ONTO THE GOOD NEWS!

 

SOLUTION: Use the Launch Audio field conceptually as a "Loading Audio" field.  When there is something present in the Launch Audio field, it triggers the front-end to stop the Table Audio and forces the audio stream to start every time!  Unfortunately, when using this method, you can no longer use the Launch Audio field as a dedicated Launch SFX field.  The way I see it, it's a much bigger issue to have Loading Screen audio that works inconsistently than it is to forego launch SFX.  

 

 

I know these instructions may sound stupid (and they do take time to go through for every table), but there's a method to the madness and it works:

1.) Open Media Manager

2.)  Copy your Loading video file to the Launch Audio field (Yes, the audio box accepts video files as well!)

3.)  Right click your Loading video file and choose Convert  

4.)  In the Convert menu, choose the bottom option to Mute Audio

5.)  Test playback of the video you copied over to your Launch Audio field.  If it's too quiet / loud, you can use the Convert menu, there are options to increase or lower volume by 50%.  They can be used multiple times for those that need it.

 

Using this method forces the audio to consistently and seamlessly cut over to the Loading Video along with its audio when a table is launched. 

 

I hope this fixes it for you!  Hopefully you try it out and don't just scoff at the amount of steps you need to go through to fix it all...  Honestly it took me over an hour to fix all of my tables and I've got under 200...

Edited July 18, 2023 by fudgeycaca

[cerebusk]

So your investigation followed almost exactly the same steps as the one I did when I found this problem initially.  It seems like you had better success with the solution though. Even once I remove the audio from the loading video and move it to the Launch Audio screen, I still get times when the audio doesn't play.  That being said, I also have some issues with the audio playing if the Playfield video has audio - most of my playfield videos are silent, but about 20% aren't.  Sometimes when I go to one of those tables, the playfield video is silent on the first play through - the same symptom as the issue with the loading videos.

 

I will say that splitting the audio and video seems to reduce the occurrence of the problem.  It's gone from about 40% of the time to 10% of the time.

 

A couple of other notes:

 

- I have a batch file that uses ffmpeg to split the audio and video into two files.  I can share it if you want.  It would reduce the amount of fiddling around you are having to do in Popper's interface.

- I'm pretty sure that FadeoutLoading only works on the Loading screen.  If you are using a full screen video assigned to "(SCREEN3)" (the Playfield screen) and a black video assigned to the Loading screen, that fadeout doesn't work because you are effectively fading out an already transparent video.  There is a way to make this work, and it's the solution I'm using--but it's non-standard and may not be for everyone.  In particular, it takes a bit of work if you have some T-ARC loading videos, but there are ways to fix that too.  I wrote up a long description of what I did here (in the comment section), and I could write up a tutorial if it's useful.

- It occurred to me while I was writing this comment that I have never tried splitting both the audio from the playfield videos and the audio from the loading videos and moving the audio to the Audio screen and Audio Launch screen respectively.  I wonder if that would further reduce my 10% problem.