Digital Workshop

Not preloading will mean they don't respond as quickly, though you may not notice too much of a difference in this day and age. There's no reason at all why you shouldn't be able to have that many sounds preloaded, but you can see that it might tax a flakey sound card driver more than most things would.

I wonder if those newer machines are all dual/quad core?

Hi Dave

You asked: I wonder if those newer machines are all dual/quad core?

Will / should this make any difference?

No, my SP2 machine is an old single core Pentium M 1.86ghz. Also different make of graphics and sound.

Mack

Mack if you don't mind, can you turn back on Direct Sound in the publication properties and see if you can still get it to crash in the Opus editor?

Hi Dave,

Tried it with DX sound on and it does seem stable.

Mack

What difference will compiling with DX sound on make? Would all PC's be able to cope with DX sound? I originally turned off the DirectX sound because the Opus help file stated:

This option may cause problems on some older computers, so you can turn off the Direct Sound portion of DirectX by not selecting this option but still use the graphics features in DirectX.

Does appear to have stopped the crashing at my end.

However, I am concerned about the ramifications of changing from the default directX settings, especially as I have been disabling them in order to keep Vista Aero functioning properly.

I was also assuming that checking "Never use DirectX" would override "Enable DirectX Sound" -- it doesn't pay to assume anything, of course

Paul

DirectSound will be fine on any modern PC. That advice about older PCs is a little out of date to be honest.

It will mean it plays more than one sound at once, which might not be what you want on all those pages with loads of mouse overs playing sounds. (You can stop that using channels).

The DirectX for graphics, and DirectX for sound are entirely independent.

Dave,

On a slightly different point - the preloader directx controls seemed to be logged to the registry under a UID under troubleshooting. Is it possible to identify this key from Opus?

I thought perhaps that it might be the generateGUID function, but this seems random.

Mack

How does playing sounds on different channels stop more than one sound playing at a time?

And will all PC's be able to play sounds that go through different channels?

Thanks

Not different channels, the same one. If you set all sounds to channel one instead of auto, it will stop the previous sound before playing the next one.

Else you will land up with a slur as the mouse moves over the letters.

Mack

I don't think so. It's unique to each publication, and won't change, so once you've worked out what it is you could wire it in.

Cheers Dave,

When I saw the function, I wondered whether it would be possible to build in a registry switch to allow the user to turn on / off DX given the Aero flicker.

Mack

On a more serious note, I am no longer willing to turn directX off (or any other part of the operating system) in my pubs.
I have been evaluating other applications similar to Opus that will let users experience Aero if they have it enabled.
I would like to think that DW is keeping an eye on what their competitors are doing.

Paul

Hi,

Yes, I find having to turn off DirectX or have the user experience a screen flash as the pub adjusts Vista from Aero to Basic and back again, is something which needs a remedy as soon as possible. It's simply not professional looking.

With DirectX off, in larger, complex pubs, some of the pages come up slowly even when testing on my Core i7 quad 64 bit machine with fast graphics card and sufficient graphics-dedicated memory. For now, my work around has been to insert a progress bar inside of the pub at these slowed up transition points.

Windows 7, due for October release, is slated to have Aero.

Kind Regards,