Loom CD talkie problem

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Who'sThere
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Loom CD talkie problem

Post by Who'sThere »

Hi,
I'm having a problem the Loom DOS talkie version. I ripped the track from the disc as a WAV file, and then I encoded it with Audacity to a VBR, 256kbps, 44100Hz, Stereo, Mp3 file.

When I try running it on the Dreamcast, I'll select the Difficulty, there'll be a 2-3 minute wait to see the title screen.

Then... if I want to check an item etc. I have to wait minutes to hear the item-sound. Basically it takes forever to load the sound data.

I tested it on the PC with the latest ScummVM, and I don't have these loading times.

Can anybody check to see if they have same problem?

Sorry, I didn't ask this in the DC sub-forum because I thought it get over-looked. Not too much action there...

Anyways, any help would be appreciated.
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MusicallyInspired
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Post by MusicallyInspired »

Should be posted in the Dreamcast section. I'm guessing it's because of the Dreamcast port takes a while to load MP3s form a disc.
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eriktorbjorn
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Post by eriktorbjorn »

There have been reports that Ogg Vorbis or FLAC are quicker to handle on some platforms. I'm not sure whether or not that applies to the Dreamcast port, though.
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Who'sThere
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Post by Who'sThere »

MusicallyInspired wrote:Should be posted in the Dreamcast section. I'm guessing it's because of the Dreamcast port takes a while to load MP3s form a disc.
Could a inspired mod/admin move it for me..? Please.
eriktorbjorn wrote:There have been reports that Ogg Vorbis or FLAC are quicker to handle on some platforms. I'm not sure whether or not that applies to the Dreamcast port, though.
OGG & FLAC support was never added to the DC port.
If I might ask a couple questions though...

Wouldn't uncompressed WAV, or FLAC be faster, as they wouldn't require decompression processing time? - (Space & RAM limits aside.)

And, what would the optimal settings be, for mp3 compression of cdda audio?

Should I use CBR or VBR?

Should it be below a certain bitrate like 160, 128, 64? At 22,050Hz, 32,000Hz, or 41,000Hz?
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MusicallyInspired
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Post by MusicallyInspired »

I really don't think the birate matters that much or whether it's CBR or VBR. Uncompressed WAV would probably be a lot faster, though.
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Longcat
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Post by Longcat »

hmm. wav streams have a lot more data to load than an mp3.
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MusicallyInspired
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Post by MusicallyInspired »

Longer load time than reading a compressed MP3?

I don't know I'm just guessing.
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joostp
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Post by joostp »

VBR makes seeking very hard/complicated. Try CBR at 96 or 128kbps.
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Who'sThere
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Post by Who'sThere »

joostp wrote:VBR makes seeking very hard/complicated. Try CBR at 96 or 128kbps.
Thanks for the heads up. :)
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Harrypoppins
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Post by Harrypoppins »

Hello.

I've also this version of Loom, and i have found a french patch for the subtiles, in .txt but it's don't work, if someone know how use it. I'm a mac user ;).

Thanks
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Stryfe
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Post by Stryfe »

There's a thread here on the forums with links to french, german, and spanish(?) patche sites, but all but the german site link are down.

Maybe someone else here would know more...
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Who'sThere
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Post by Who'sThere »

I'm just checking back with the results here.

Well I re-encoded the the track at both 128 & 64 kbps. While the lag/load time was reduced, it still was playing at an unpractical speed.

I continued re-encoding until I reached the breaking point of the speech being recognizable, which was about 32 kbps at either 16 or 22.05 kHz...

I think I ended up using the bitrate recommended for some cellphone scummvm port, and it still had significant lag.

I take it then that the Dreamcast just can't handle the audio track? Is there any possibility that the performance could improve on the track seeking, or is it beyond the hardware limitations of the game unit?
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eriktorbjorn
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Post by eriktorbjorn »

Who'sThere wrote: I take it then that the Dreamcast just can't handle the audio track? Is there any possibility that the performance could improve on the track seeking, or is it beyond the hardware limitations of the game unit?
Seeking used to be very simple when ScummVM only supported constant bit rate. Now, if I understand correctly, it has to start at the beginning of the file and look at each frame until it finds the correct one. I guess that adds up on slower hardware.

I don't know if there's some simple way to determine if the file uses constant or variable bit rate. If there isn't perhaps it would be possible to add a setting to ScummVM to tell it to assume it's constant bit rate, and use the older faster seeking in that case?
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Who'sThere
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Post by Who'sThere »

eriktorbjorn wrote:I don't know if there's some simple way to determine if the file uses constant or variable bit rate. If there isn't perhaps it would be possible to add a setting to ScummVM to tell it to assume it's constant bit rate, and use the older faster seeking in that case?
You wouldn't happen to know which version of ScummVM was the last to use the older method?
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DCDayDreamer
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Post by DCDayDreamer »

There's not much you can do about the audio lag with Loom, a version of ScummVM with better seeking times might improve it slightly but the lag would still be there on the Dreamcast. This is mainly due to the audio file being one large track as opposed to a set of small tracks within a resource file.
Who'sThere wrote:Well I re-encoded the the track at both 128 & 64 kbps. While the lag/load time was reduced, it still was playing at an unpractical speed.
The improvement you encountered was most likely due to the reduction in file size and not the bitrate, if you read what eriktorbjorn posted above: "it has to start at the beginning of the file and look at each frame until it finds the correct one", the reduction in file size meant the Dreamcast could read the data quicker from the CD, and hence find the required frame a little quicker.

The best performance you are likely to get with Loom on the Dreamcast is to create a CD with only that game, reduce the audio track bitrate to an acceptable level, and dummy the CD to the maximum capacity of your CDR. If it's any consolation, even the SD card adapter won't improve the game to any great extent (at present).
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