Hands on GM tutorials and usage validation

Rabulias said:

Displaying Images: Are the images very large (in terms of filesize)? If the images are many megabytes in size, it might explain why they load slowly. You could try saving them at a lower resolution.

Music on Page Load: When you are opening pages, are you opening them in the same order? I wonder if it is something specifically with those maps and/or soundfiles. Otherwise, it may be a caching issue and the problem occurs after any six pages are opened.

Are the images very large?
I did wonder about this as I tend to use the page backgrounds as scene backdrops rather than maps.  So they are images rather than drawings. However, I couldn't see any obvious way of checking the Page Sizes within Roll20. 

Are you opening them in the same order?

Yes! I've been opening the pages in the order that they would follow in the storyboard for the plot.   What I thought I might do for testing purposes is alter the sequence to bring pages 6,7,8 & 9 forward in the sequence and see if the problem still persists on those pages or if it then arises on the retarded pages that have been back scheduled as a result of the change.   That would indicate whether the issue was page-specific or schedule related.

TODAYS TESTING

Audio Replication Tests

This morning I tried the audio testing again. But this time I made sure that there were no other applications running on my PC.   The same problem arose as with the previous tests except that this time the audio files stopped playing at page 8 rather than page 6 as has been the case in previous tests.  This seems to suggest some link to a memory buffer on my PC which has some sort of limit on the number of sound files it can load and play.  But I have no idea what that might be and anyway one would have thought that once the player ribbon had been moved any sound file previously loaded would be released.

Changing the Page Order

As proposed yesterday I tried changing the order of the pages by moving pages 6,7,8 & 9 forward in the page schedule to positions 2,3,4 & 5 and thus retarding pages 2,3,4 & 5 to the end of the schedule.

The result was unexpected as the sound files on every page now played perfectly from the Home Page to Page 9.

My initial thought was that this must just be because my game had been Launched for a while during the earlier testing and so all the sound files had been given time to upload and were thus available to play.

To try and prove this I restarted my PC, relaunched Google Chrome, Logged into Roll20 from scratch and repeated the test again with what I assumed to be a fresh start.  But the same thing happened.  The sound files on every page loaded and played perfectly.

Changing them Back

So, logically I'm going to change them back to the correct order now and see if the issue returns.  But first I'm going to do a complete cold boot just to make sure I'm clearing everything from my PC memory.

Completed a cold boot of my PC, repeated the test and the sound file on every page still played perfectly.

Changed the page order back to the correct sequence and repeated the test again and the issue failed to return.   So, have I cured the problem without knowing what it was in the first place?  

Stupid Question: Are the earlier files still running as you go page to page? It has been a while since I set up a "layered" soundtrack, and I was wondering if there was some sort of limit you may be exceeding.

al e. said:

Stupid Question: Are the earlier files still running as you go page to page? It has been a while since I set up a "layered" soundtrack, and I was wondering if there was some sort of limit you may be exceeding.

They certainly aren't playing.  Moving the Player Ribbon from one page to another seems to cut off the audio from the previous page and replace it with the track selected for the new one.  The only exception to this is if the page selected doesn't have an audio track associated with it, in which case, the track that's playing keeps playing even though the page has changed.   Whether that means that they are being unloaded from memory or not I can't say, but you certainly can't hear the previous track when a new one starts playing.

I double-checked why the doesn't stop playing when you move the Player Ribbon onto a page with no sound file specified for it.  It turns out there are two setting options for a page with no sound file.

1. None:  Which apparently doesn't load a new sound file, but allows one that is playing to continue playing.
2. None, But stop all tracks: Which stops everything that's playing when you load the page 

Most of my pages that don't have sound files associated with them (e.g. battle maps) are just set to 'None', so the sound file from the previous scene continues to play when they load.  I've changed some of these to 'None, but stop playing all tracks' now where appropriate.

TODAYS TESTING

Audio Files Again

Well, the good news is that when I tested the 'Play on Load' files this morning everything was still working.  So, whatever happened yesterday seems to have cured the six-page limit on playing sound files.

The bad news is that I have no idea what caused it or what I did to cure it.   I really hate it when IT problems cure themselves because you have no idea whether its likely to happen again or what to do if it does.  I wonder if it had anything to do with me changing the sequence of the pages, perhaps that reset something.

Speaking of which.  I noticed an odd feature this morning when I launched my Game in that the sound file on the home page instantly burst into life and started playing.  Something I've never noticed it do before, but even more odd was the fact that it started playing from the point where it had left off when I exited the game yesterday and shut down my PC.  The question is 'How did it remember?'

It seems to suggest there must be some sort of buffer or table that retains information on sound files being played and where they left off.  Which in turn raises the possibility that it might become full if it isn't flushed regularly during use.  Just a thought. 

I was wondering that exact thing. I used to do complex layered soundscapes for battle scenes. Now I have two players with hearing problems and eschew a lot of sounds in game. Sometimes you could get too many going at once and have to restart the browser to clear it. At that time I used the on board audio chat as well, and I don't know if the problem was in the audio player, or in the chat module.

It might not be a bad idea to submit a bug report/inquiry to get an answer on the existence of and clearing of a buffer. I am not even remotely qualified in IT, just an excessive user, who has broken almost every feature on Roll 20 at some point.

I can't think of any other way Roll20 would know where the song had left off the last time I was logged into the game.  But if that's the case then it might explain why in the early testing nothing would play on pages 6,7,8 & 9.  If the buffer was full and couldn't accept another page entry then the sound files would have to be put on hold until some space was free.  But playing the same track on a page which already had an open entry would still work.  Which is what was happening.  The only remaining mystery is what I did to cause the buffer to free itself so it accepted more pages.