Gramophone issues
 

I'm having some problems with the Gramophone in game.

Sometimes I clicky-click to play it and nothing happens (at least nothing in terms of me hearing any of my tunes start).

Sometimes this happens and I wait a while and try again, and then it plays, but after maybe two tracks it will freeze the game up at the start of the next track and I get the "encountered an error and needs to close" popup and have to shut everything down. The "BZZZZ" of the frozen sound of the game/Gram track continues until I reboot.

Sometimes I click on it for the first time and it plays, and continues to play through 4-5 tracks, and then stops, and won't play any more.

Sometimes the problems occur when I'm leaving base, or on the bridge during wild weather or with another ship nearby, so I thought it was maybe an overload of the system with too much happening at once. But not always.

The only thing I can think of that I have different now from the last time I remember playing the Gram for more than 5-6 tracks without any issues, is that I enabled the GWX 16k atmosphere mod. That doesn't seem to be causing me any other problems at all, but would having that enabled and then playing the Gram be just enough to overload my system so that I'm having these problems with the Gram now?

Or is there something I should be looking at with the files in the Gram folder that might be causing all the hangups? So far it doesn't seem to be any one particular track that is playing or next up when these things happen. I have noticed though that the tracks are not playing in order even though the files names are just numbers to make them do that. Some tracks just seem to get skipped over completely, and at least one of them I know never played at all. That stuff was happening even when I wasn't having other problems.

I really hope it's not the 16K mod + the Gram that's the problem, because I love having the 16k atmo. But I need some love from my gramophone too. :O:

hmm, what a shame.
until now I've never experienced something like that. but I remember Jimbuna's words about converting all the files to the *.ogg format because *.mp3 will cause sort of problems. :cry:

Do you put all files inside the folder and not within folders inside ?
What are the name lengths of those files to play ? Do you keep them short and without spaces (_ instead of spaces).
Where do these come from : some clean MP3 encoding with slow ripping (slow ripping + LAME) ?

They're all .ogg files, all placed simply in the Gram folder (no subfolders).

The files are named 001.ogg, 002.ogg, 003.ogg, etc. Right now there are only about 20 files total in the folder, because I did a reinstall a while back and have just started putting stuff back in there. I actually had more files in there before then and it was working with no problem.

The largest file in there currently is the ogg file of TarJak's Radio Deutschland, which I know played fine at least once after I first added it. Now it's either one of the files that's getting skipped or else things freeze up before it comes around in the playlist, I'm not sure which.

Some of them are .ogg files from Jimbuna's music packs or other collections I've d/led from here. Some are files I already had or found here or elsewhere and converted from mp3 to ogg using dBPoweramp. They all play fine when I open them outside the game.

I may just clear out everything except a couple of the tracks that I know have played through on this patrol without any issues and see what happens.

Well, I used to use your sound Mods Frau, and I think it is Radio Deutschland messing with Jimbuna's music pack. I Had to disable one or the other and it worked.

That's odd, because I'm pretty sure I had RD and some of Jimbuna's files in there before and I wasn't having this problem.

Although I didn't enable any of them via mod enabler, just extracted the files to a temp location and selected what I wanted and put it in the Gram folder manually.

What's strange too is that at least one of the tracks that gets skipped over every single time is the second movement of a symphony, and the other three tracks from it play fine - they were all mp3s that I had and were converted to ogg at the same time using the same process. So that issue can't be caused by some oddity in the one file versus the other three. Unless that one file just happened to get corrupted in the conversion process and the others didn't. But that file is not one that causes a freeze or crash, it just never plays. And it doesn't freeze up at the point where it should be playing, just skips it and plays the next file.

Anyway - I'm going to experiment with taking everything out of there except the ones I know are playing okay.

Maybe you should try to uninstall the music, than make them enabled by JGSME.

I have too many files that are not part of a "music mod" and would have to be put in the folder manually anyway. Also, I typically don't want all the tracks from any one of the sound mods in there, so I would either be fiddling with a mod's data before I enabled it, or taking stuff out of the Gram folder afterwards, not to mention renaming the files I left there to make them play in the order I want in game (yes I am that particular about those things, lol).

I've never managed the tunes in the Gram folder any other way but manually, since that gives me control over the contents from the get-go, which is what I want. Never had any problems with doing it that way before.

Well your problem is confusing.
Unless you already had, you should still try to manually take out sound files until they work.

That's the plan - just didn't know if anyone else had experienced issues with use of the Gram overloading their system to the point where the game crashes. I don't think that's the problem since I shouldn't be *that* close to maxing out resources, but wasn't sure how much strain it puts on everything. If it's minimal, that shouldn't be the issue here.

I will probably just put "It's A Long Way To Tiperrary" in there and let it play over and over again. That track makes me very happy. :)

Oh hey I think I just realized what the problem is.

Before this patrol started, my LI failed to return from leave and I had to enlist a replacement.

Obviously the dirty schweinhund went through my record collection and stole the ones he liked, and most likely scratched up some of the others in the process.

:stare:

I am so going to call Judge Judy on his @$$.

Try the ogg.vorbis tracks on their own.

Do not enable via JSGME but simply place each track into the gramaphone folder.

If that doesn't work you have a conflicting file from a mod which is very unusual because sound files are usually okay.

If all else fails I am quite happy to create a soundpack to replace your gramaphone folder.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. :DL

I am definitely going to try just having one file in there at a time and see if I still have problems, or if there is one or more specific file(s) that cause them. I may even put the original file back in there that came with the vanilla install and see if that by itself will play okay.

In order to create a custom soundpack that I wanted to enable via JSGME, would it just be a matter of duplicating the necessary file structure [MOD NAME]/data/Sounds/Gramophone (or whatever) and putting the tracks in the last folder, and then put the whole thing in the MODS folder, and then have JSGME enable it like any other mod?

Yes :yep:

But TBH I prefer to slip the tracks in separately from within the original storage folder.

Yeah, that's what I've been doing. I have them in a folder for that purpose where the filenames are the titles, so I know what I have, but when I want them in the Gram folder I'll rename them as whatever track# comes next and copy them over.

I started doing that because when I had to reinstall everything, I forgot about backing up all the neat files I'd added to Gram and had to go find them again and reconvert a bunch of stuff I had elsewhere on my HD.

Rgr that http://www.psionguild.org/forums/ima...s/thumbsup.gif

But I am truly at a loss why you are experiencing problems because literally hundreds have downloaded my gramaphone tunes and I am yet to hear of any individuals experiencing any difficulty.

Hey, thats my gramophone set up!

Oh, I'm not assuming it's any file from your packs, I really don't know what it is. Only a few of the 20 tracks in the folder right now came from Subsim downloads, some I converted from mp3s I already had, and there may be an odd file that I picked up already in ogg format from some other source. Some of the ones that are getting skipped over are my own files, some aren't. I don't even know which track it's freezing on since it's not playing them in the designated order and freezes before I can tell which one it's trying to play when it crashes. Could be one particular file or several - I'll just have to see what happens when the game only has one file to choose from.

Lol, I sometimes pull up the mp3 of it and let it play over and over again even when I'm NOT playing SH3.

Well, after a bit of testing and experimentation, I am now more mystified than ever.

I removed everything from the Gram folder, and started putting files in one at a time.

First I put in the single file that was there after vanilla install. Went into the game, and everything works fine - except when I activate the gramophone, there are TWO files that play. One is the stock music that's in the Gramophone1.mp3 that came with the game. The other is a file that sounds like an old live recording of a speech being given in German followed by the the sound of marching feet, what may or not be gunfire or cannonfire, then more impassioned speechifying. A wartime or prewar historical recording to my ears. I can use the prev/next buttons to switch between this and the Gramophone1.mp3, which is the ONLY file that's in the Gram folder. Esc, exit, return to base, exit game.

I took out the stock mp3 and replaced it with Tarjak's RadioDL1.ogg file and went back into the game. Same deal. Now there's the mystery file, which plays first, plus the RadioDL1 track. Both play fine, I can skip backwards and forwards between the two.

Exited again and put in one of the .ogg files that always seemed to get skipped when I had a whole batch of files in there. Went back into game, now that file plays fine as well, I can use the prev/next buttons with no problem, but the mystery file plays first and is still there. Esc/exit/return to base/exit game again.

Then I took out the one .ogg file that I had just put in the Gram folder. It's now showing as empty. Go back into game, activate the gramophone, and the mystery file now plays as the one and only track even though it's NOT in the Gramophone folder. I have my folder options set to show me all files, including hidden and system files, so if it's in the Gram folder I should be able to see that it's there, right? And it's not. So where the hell is it, and why is it being included in the in-game gramophone playlist?

I never heard this file before at all, ever, when I've played the gramophone in the game. But if the game is trying to insert this mystery file into the playlist at a certain point and it's conflicting with the sequence I've set up by naming my files 001, 002, etc. - might that be what's causing the problem?