Stacks that use QuickTime crashing
Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 5:45 am
Instant crashes opening stacks that use Quicktime as an engine for playing MIDI files.
Move to AVFoundation problems?
QuickTime X removed support for playing MIDI files (WHY APPLE WHY???), it had become a dog (slow) anyway.
Of course, AVFoundation and CoreAudio/CoreMIDI still do have the capacity for MIDI playback via Downloaded Sound Files (DLS) and SoundFont2 SF2 support, just no simple way to hook into that ability like you could with Quicktime<X by passing it a .smf / .mid file as a movie to play.
These stacks use a front script that loads on openCard so they crash the LC7 engine immediately, but they work reasonably well on 6.6.2rcX and in Mac OS X and (really well)on Android standalone builds. Need time to investigate (busy 3 day weekend here in the states).
As a side note, I have been experimenting with the open source FluidSynth (CLI not the .dynlib) as an alternative playback engine via shell(), open process for update, and launch process. FluidSynth is used for MIDI file playback in VideoLAN Client. It's been around along time and has been ported to most major platforms over the years (and all that LC supports). Perhaps FluidSynth or LinuxSampler (or better yet Core MIDI in/out with some note data queuing, though that would note be very crossplatform friendly) could be rolled into LC as part of the multimedia refurbishing that is in the works. This would return the ability of the Play command to use AbBC# pitch notation (like HyperCard could) so I can Play a simple tune with this old "Boing" sound
!
I know that LC7 is focused on Unicode and other very important things. I just think that interactive multimedia support is important for a variety of reasons. Gotta have the bells and whistles for the kids if you want to be the "learning" programming environment.
Move to AVFoundation problems?
QuickTime X removed support for playing MIDI files (WHY APPLE WHY???), it had become a dog (slow) anyway.
Of course, AVFoundation and CoreAudio/CoreMIDI still do have the capacity for MIDI playback via Downloaded Sound Files (DLS) and SoundFont2 SF2 support, just no simple way to hook into that ability like you could with Quicktime<X by passing it a .smf / .mid file as a movie to play.
These stacks use a front script that loads on openCard so they crash the LC7 engine immediately, but they work reasonably well on 6.6.2rcX and in Mac OS X and (really well)on Android standalone builds. Need time to investigate (busy 3 day weekend here in the states).
As a side note, I have been experimenting with the open source FluidSynth (CLI not the .dynlib) as an alternative playback engine via shell(), open process for update, and launch process. FluidSynth is used for MIDI file playback in VideoLAN Client. It's been around along time and has been ported to most major platforms over the years (and all that LC supports). Perhaps FluidSynth or LinuxSampler (or better yet Core MIDI in/out with some note data queuing, though that would note be very crossplatform friendly) could be rolled into LC as part of the multimedia refurbishing that is in the works. This would return the ability of the Play command to use AbBC# pitch notation (like HyperCard could) so I can Play a simple tune with this old "Boing" sound
!I know that LC7 is focused on Unicode and other very important things. I just think that interactive multimedia support is important for a variety of reasons. Gotta have the bells and whistles for the kids if you want to be the "learning" programming environment.