Audio Playback on Video Cue

[davidbrown14]

Writing cues for my first show with video.

Audio cues are playing back fine through the M-Box. The video cues have no audio output from the M-Box. By accident I found the audio for the video cues is playing back through the computers sound card.

Running 10.6.2 using internal mixer

[Mike Daniell]

Due to a limitation in the video playback library used by SCS, audio will only playback through the Windows default sound device. I'm currently evaluating three other video playback libraries, and only one of them will allow me to select a different audio device. Unfortunately that particular library is not yet stable enough to use.

[Theatre III Sound]

I'm not sure if this would work, but couldn't you extract the audio from the video into a separate file and then create a cue in SCS that plays the video and audio files simultaneously? That way SCS could send the audio to any device.

A quick search turned up this link to a free audio extractor: http://www.aoamedia.com/audioextractor.htm

Assuming SCS could keep the two files in sync, is this approach feasible?

[davidbrown14]

Mike,

Even if the M-Box is the default sound device, it won't play the video through it? This is how I have it set up.

David

[Mike Daniell]

Which version of Windows are you using? XP, Vista, Win7?

[davidbrown14]

XP

[Mike Daniell]

A couple of things to look at:

1. Click on Start / Control Panel / Sounds and Audio Devices. What device is mentioned under the 'Volume' tab?
2. Start Windows Media Player. Right-click on the menu bar and select Tools / Options. In the Devices tab, click on Speakers and then click the Properties button. What is selected under 'Audio device to use'?

[davidbrown14]

Under Volume is "No Audio Device"

Under Audio - Sound Playback is "Digidesign Mbox"

In Media Player - Devices - Speakers it is "Default DirectSound Device"

[Mike Daniell]

The "no audio device" is suspicious. I Googled this and the general recommendations are to check a BIOS setting and to make sure you have the latest driver for your sound card. Here's just one of the links I found: http://www.topbits.com/no-audio-device.html.

Since SCS is currently using an API into WMP (Windows Media Player) to run videos, if you play a video directly with WMP where does the audio play? Something you could try is to change WMP's "Audio device to use" to specifically select the M-Box.

[davidbrown14]

With the above settings WMP plays to the M-Box, but SCS does not. No difference changing "Audio device to use"

For this show I will use the computer's audio out for the video, and the M-Box for the rest of the cues. There is just the one video along with 60 audio/image cues.

But, my next show in June will have lots of video, so I would like to figure this out. I do have a Presonus Firebox that I could try. Do you think it would make a difference?

David

[Mike Daniell]

I don't know if the Presonus Firebox would make any difference. What concerns me is the "No Audio Device" being displayed as the Windows default sound device. Since most of the video playback libraries I've found only play to the Windows default sound device, I don't know what they will do if this is "No Audio Device". When your current show is over, you might like to try SCS 10.7.0, currently only available as a Release Candidate which you can download form the Member Download page.