EP3 sound

[Hank Jedema]

I am experiencing an issue trying to "loop" a soundfile using EP3. The task was working fine under EP2 (professional v242 I believe). In EP3 (upated version from website), it seems as if the looping simply does not register, and consequently the white noise wave file plays only once and stops after 3sec (instead of continuing for the duration of the task). Does anyone else have issues with the sound looping option in EP3 or preferably, has anybody found a solution to make sound files loop continuously ?

Thanks very much,

Hank

[David McFarlane]

Hank,

Thanks for reporting this. I decided to look into this myself, using
the latest release of EP3 (3.0.3.63). I started with a known good EP3
experiment, the SoundRT example in the EP3 Samples folder. Then I just
changed Loop to "Yes" for the SoundOut on the Stimulus Slide. I ran the
program, got past the Instructions, then after some delay the program
produced a runtime error, "The operation to load the sound timed out" --
different from the problem that you describe, but still a problem. By
contrast, when I did this with the EP2 SoundRT example, everything
worked as expected.

You should report this to PST Support, and I will do the same.

-- David McFarlane

[David McFarlane]

Slight correction -- the latest release of EP3 is 3.0.3.60.

I submitted this to PST Support and gave a link to this thread. Hank,
you should also report this bug. Thanks.

-- David McFarlane

[David McFarlane]

I just got the following reply from David Nicholson at PST Support (just
the text here, without the picture & attachments from his response to
me). I have not tried this yet myself, if you try it before me then
please let me know.

/-----------------------------------
At this time, FFMpeg does not support looping, you will need increase
the audio file length (that way you do not need to loop) or use
DirectShow with the DirectSound API. You can use third-party
applications such as Audacity (www.audacityteam.org/) to copy/loop the
sound file.

To change the Codec Config to use DirectShow, open up Codec Config in
E-Studio by going to Tools. Then select the .wav under Extensions >
Choose File Source (Async.) > click Choose Codec > Press X then Save.

After that, you would change the Sound API to DirectSound in the
Experiment Object Property Pages > Devices tab > Sound properties.

Alternatively, we could use script based task events to loop a buffered
sound. The catch is that the loop is not perfect, because we are using
auto-self-firing script task events with a duration equal to the sound
to hit .Play, just as the sound is ending. For truly seamless looping,
you still need DirectShow + DirectSound at this time.

We are in the process of updating our Knowledge Base and will list this
issue in our Known Issues.
\-----------------------------------

-- David McFarlane

[Hank Jedema]

Hi David,

Very sorry for my lack of reply and thanks very much for yours. I will report the bug and see what the DirectShow option can do. The audio file that I normally include in the task is a simple white noise file, so it makes little sense to create and load an audio file that lasts the duration of the experiment. 

Either way, I will report the bug to EP. 

Hank P. Jedema

[David McFarlane]

I finally got around to confirming that David Nicholson's instructions
work with EP3.0.3.60 (Update 1).

First, I tried his Script Task Events example and that worked (it also
illustrated some interesting Script Task Events techniques for future use).

Then I tried using DirectSound instead of CoreAudio, and that worked
just as you would expect. I note that David's Codec Config instructions
seemed a bit elliptical, so I will expand them here:

- Open Codec Config.

- Open the "Extensions" branch in the left-hand pane.

- Select ".wav" (or other appropriate file type) in the Extensions branch.

- In the right-hand pane, find "File Source (ASynch)" and select that.

- Click the "Choose Codec" button along the top. (In my case, this did
not do anything obvious.)

- Exit Codec Config, and save the changes when it asks. (Apparently
Codec Config does not have any way to just save your changes so far
without exiting the program.)

I note that as soon as I changed the API to DirectSound in my test
program, instead of crashing the program ran, but it played the sound
file only once without looping. Then after I followed the instructions
to use CodecConfig to map .wav to DirectSound, the sound looped as desired.

Now I just wonder if I have to do anything in CodecConfig to map .wav
back to CoreAudio as needed. But I did go back and run the CoreAudo
example and that worked that same as before, so perhaps all is well now.

-- David McFarlane


On 2018-01-12 3:05 PM, Hank Jedema wrote:
> Hi David,
> Very sorry my lack of reply and thanks very much for yours. I will report
> the bug and see what the DirectShow option can do. The audio that I
> normally include is a simple white noise file, so it makes little sense to

> create and load an audio file that lasts the duration of the experiment.
> Either way, I will report the bug to EP.
>
> Hank P. Jedema
>
>
>
> On Thursday, January 4, 2018 at 5:40:15 PM UTC-5, McFarlane, David wrote:
>>