Hot key is triggering twice

[Mark Peters]

I am using around 12 Hot key (Trigger) sounds for a show, but have recently noticed that quite often a single keypress is triggering the sound twice. It doesn't happen all of the time, but at least 25% of the time. I have reduced the computer's auto repeat rate, tried making the cue's exclusive, but none of these seem to affect anything. The double triggering is happening very rapidly, e.g. maybe 200 milliseconds apart, but very obvious. The audio files for these sounds are all quite short, e.g. under 1 second in length.

Anyone have any ideas on how to eliminate this problem?

Mark

[Mark Peters]

Forgot to mention I'm using SCS Standard, 10.6.2 on a Compaq nx7400 laptop under Windows XP.

[Boswell]

If you look under General Options, Permanent Options
There is a double click timeout, it should be at 0.4sec (default) Make sure you have not reduced it to 0
HTH

[Mark Peters]

Thanks for the suggestion Boswell. I had already looked at this setting, and it doesn't make any difference.

I think I have noticed a pattern though. The double trigger only happens if I rapidly trigger the key twice (in which case I get a total of three triggers). It looks like it is an issue with the time between triggers being close to the total sample length -- probably a some sort of race condition. As a word around, I can probably lengthen the samples with some silence.

[Mike Daniell]

Mark, could you email me your cue file (the .scs file)?

[Mark Peters]

Hi Mike,

I have sent you the SCS file. I tried adding silence to the end of my short sounds, and that helped eliminate most issues, but the double trigger does still happen. The scenario is that you have to press the hot key just as the (same key) previously triggered sound is completing.

-mark

[Mike Daniell]

Two things:

• SCS doesn't check the 'double-click' time for hot keys, so a double-hit will give you two starts of the hotkey cue. This only applies to physically double-hitting the key, not to just holding down the key. Holding down the key is regarded as an auto-repeat, and 'trigger' hotkey cues ignore auto-repeats.
• I have found that with a short hotkey cue (eg 0.58 second) that if I am using the SCS internal mixer then a brief repeat of the start of the cue is played when the cue ends. I will obviously look into this and try to sort it out, but there are two work-arounds you could choose from.
  • Firstly, go to General Options / Permanent Options / Audio Driver and select 'Do NOT use the SCS Internal Mixer'. You will need to restart SCS after applying that change. You should find that not using the SCS internal mixer will prevent that brief repeat of the start of the cue.
  • You mentioned that you have added some silence to the end of your short sounds, so a second option is to fade out the sound during that silence. For example, if you added 1 second of silence to a file, set your hotkey cue 'Fade Out Time' to 1 second or less. I haven't tested this, but the idea is that when the hotkey cue is repositioned at the start (which SCS always does at the end of a hotkey cue) then any short replay of the start of the cue will not be heard. Note that when you next play the hotkey the required level is set at that time. Note also that fading out the cue is not necessary if you have chosen the option described above to NOT use the SCS Internal Mixer.