BUG: very short tracks skipped

[MrSinatra]

win7 32bit
5.61, with very few DrO type 3rd party plugins

basically, if you have a very short audio clip, say 0-2 seconds, and its part of a set (say sharing the same album tag) then it often is skipped when playing that "album" back.

i thought that maybe i had the crossfading feature on, but i don't. if i directly click on the file, it plays fine, but as part of the playlist, it gets skipped.

Egg, can yo please confirm and get this fixed for next release? seems like a high priority bug to me, to have short clips totally ignored within a [scratch] playlist.

[DrO]

that would be something that's been going on between the input + output plug-in for years and i've had it happen all the way back to the 2.x days.

decreasing the output buffer to something below the size of the file will usually allow it to play. i think it's been looked into in the past but never a satisfactory fix was created for it that didn't then break other things.

-daz

[MrSinatra]

using a low buffer isn't desirable for obvious reasons.

surely there must be a real solution? perhaps its time they looked into it again. i haven't noticed this problem with other applications.

maybe some kind of logic needs to be employed, to carefully "look after" short duration clips in a playlist, and handle those somewhat differently?

[MrSinatra]

related:

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=334731

[MtPlease]

Originally Posted by DrO

that would be something that's been going on between the input + output plug-in for years and i've had it happen all the way back to the 2.x days.

decreasing the output buffer to something below the size of the file will usually allow it to play. i think it's been looked into in the past but never a satisfactory fix was created for it that didn't then break other things.

-daz

Hi Daz, I've just come back to using Winamp on my old pc. It's great to be back.

Problem is that I've noticed the same thing as the OP that a bunch of my short clips are being skipped. I don't want to lower the buffer so is there another way around this?

I'm using V5.65 by the way. Thanks.

[DJ Egg]

1. Only Winamp 5.666+patches is supported
2. Decrease "buffer-ahead on track change" value in out_ds config

[MrSinatra]

Egg, Benski, DrO, etc...

i can't speak to how things work under the hood, but i have to say decreasing buffers, even if it works, seems like a very undesirable solution to me.

i would like to suggest a new option be included, that allows machines with sufficient RAM, to fully load into memory, the next 3 tracks in the playlist. i think that would fix the issue and also provide sufficient coverage for most crossfading scenarios.

possible?

(in addition, such a feature that was "aware" of the upcoming tracks in the playlist, could then make possible two features i have asked for previously, "smart crossfading" and "smart replaygain." smart crossfading is the idea that normally u have crossfading of whatever user duration, UNLESS album tracks are being played in sequential order, and in that case crossfading is temporarily disabled. similarly, smart replaygain enables track gain on everything, unless sequential album tracks are detected, and then in those cases album gain is used instead, on only those tracks).

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=331612

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=329390

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=337490

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by MrSinatra

... smart crossfading is the idea that normally u have crossfading of whatever user duration, UNLESS album tracks are being played in sequential order, and in that case crossfading is temporarily disabled. ...

What if the album is just a sequential collection of tracks that you want to crossfade, instead of an album meant to be played as a 'set piece'?

[MrSinatra]

Originally Posted by Aminifu

What if the album is just a sequential collection of tracks that you want to crossfade, instead of an album meant to be played as a 'set piece'?

simple, don't use smart crossfading, just use regular crossfading as u do now.

[Aminifu]

Originally Posted by MrSinatra

simple, don't use smart crossfading, just use regular crossfading as u do now.

Oh (reading too fast), I thought you were talking about replacing the regular crossfading. Wouldn't it be just as simple to turn off crossfading when it's not wanted, as switching to another kind of crossfading?

Anyway, I'm sure some would find the feature useful.

[MrSinatra]

Originally Posted by Aminifu

Wouldn't it be just as simple to turn off crossfading when it's not wanted, as switching to another kind of crossfading?

no.

[Aminifu]

Does the short file issue occur for mp3s with full file buffering enabled?

[MrSinatra]

Originally Posted by Aminifu

Does the short file issue occur for mp3s with full file buffering enabled?

meaning what exactly? describe the setting, where/what/etc?

[Aminifu]

Winamp is able to read an entire mp3 file into RAM before starting to process it. The setting is on the "General" tab of the Winamp Preferences configuration options for the mp3 input plug-in "in_mp3.dll".

But on second thought, I don't think that will help with the buffering problem. The relevant part of the code must not be able to handle partially filled buffers correctly.

[HarryMiz]

A minimal working sample without dependencies other than LWJGL that reproduces the issue would be very helpful.

[MrSinatra]

are you a dev? work for winamp?