Not really an animation

I don't know if there's a Sound topic so i post it to the closest thing. My problem is simple to explain, but it hasn't been easy to get rid off it, and it's pissing me off.

It's basically this. I have a rock band in-game. We play already pre-arranged songs and all... Here's the problem. We did "I Ran" (So Far Away) by Flock of Seagulls, but most of the public could hear just the beginning of the song, and then it stops. Personally i think it just needs to debuff, but i'm not certain. I tried to give the song to someone and had her listen to it individually, but she said the song first went on good, then stopped, the continued, and then stopped dead on it's track, literally.

I can hear the full song, that much is certain. What's going on? I don't want to miss my public.

For anyone to help you, you'll have to tell us how you're playing the song. Since you're having trouble, my guess is you're using an object that plays sound clips, which isn't the best way for a number of reasons. Or perhaps you're using voice, but my guess is no based on your post.

One problem with objects playing sound clips is that folks have to be real close to hear it. Another is that it's mono. But the biggest one is that it's subject to lag, so the playback can be choppy. Good scripts can preload the sounds to avoid that, but there's no bulletproof solution I know of.

A better way is to use the land's media stream. For a way to set up your own canned stream, see

http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/06/17/play-your-own-radio-station-with-mediamaster/

The problem with that is you can't change the timing or sequence on-the-fly. For full contol, you need to do what DJs do, and get a shoutcast stream. I can't help you with that.

BTW, you'll get a lot better luck by putting the subject of your question IN THE SUBJECT line. Saying what it's not is no help. Folks that do a lot of forum help scan LOTS of posts, and often skip the ones with no information in the subject -- we don't have time to look at lots of posts that don't bear on anything we're interested in or knowledgeable about.

Resident Answers would be the best forum. Use some thought picking a title. A few seconds on your part saves time for hundreds or thousands of others, and gets you the attention of the people you want.

Apologies. As you can see i'm new to the forums, so i'm still learning my way around this place. I haven't slept in two days trying to do this, so... I was using a gesture so i could play all the song together without interruptions. I can't use a land media stream since i don't own any land, or that's what i have been told, anyway. And as for DJ's shoutcast stream, i have no knowledge about that, either, sadly. That's why i came here.

I've tried playing a song thru a gesture and it's very unreliable. You can probably hear it well because it's cached in your system but everyone else has to download those clips and you run into problems with everyone's bandwidth and the database servers of SL. Sound clips are only good for short sounds.

Have you looked into renting some land? You can rent for just a week or so and it can be quite cheap. Some rentals allow you to change the media settings so you could stream the music over.

aha, gestures -- hadn't thought of that option.

A shoutcast stream requires land media as well, btw.

See if you can find a venue that would like free live entertainment, and use their land media. Or just book a few gigs!

Meanwhile, I'll take a look at my streaming script and see if I can make it work better. Just be aware that even in the best case for using scripts, you'll have a considerable delay between songs as the sound clips are preloaded to everyone's clients. Currently, my script buffers the first two and then starts playing them in sequence, after a fixed delay, and I find it generally doesn't work very well.

I assume you have a way to chop songs into 10-second clips. Even with the best script under ideal circumstances (no lag, everyone with good bandwidth, etc), you'll get little dropouts between clips.

So what exactly do you want to do with your in-world rock band? Is it just for the private roleplaying enjoyment of a few of your friends? Or do you want to do do public performances? That will probably determine what methods you wish to use.

What you describe reminds me something of Linus & the Fakers. Linus Radford is the avatar of a guy who has recorded CDs of his own original music. In Second Life, he does concerts with his Second Life band. The concerts are not live music; instead, it is a music stream of Linus's real-life CD. To the music stream, he and his avatar band are on stage, pixel-syncing to the music.

It sounds sort of like what you want to do is similar to Linus & the Fakers, except using popular music rather than original recordings.

The best way to accomplish this is probably to figure out how to use WinAmp (assuming you're running on Windows), the Shoutcast plug-in, and an account with a Shoutcast host (an internet service that broadcasts the stream.

It's easy to set up. I've done it. If I can do it, anyone can.

Whether or not you actually need your own Shoutcast host account, and your own land to play the media, depends on what you want to do with your band.

If you want to schedule playing at others' venues, then you may need neither the Shoutcast host account nor the land. The venue will obviously provide the land, and can set the appropriate media settings when you play.

Some venues have an account on a Shoutcast host for their own streams. In that case, you do not need your own. You just plug their stream information into your WinAmp w/ Shoutcast plug-in. You play WinAmp, and it passes the music to their Shoutast stream.

Some venues don't have their own Shoutcast streams, in which case you'll need to have your own account on a Shoutcast host. You operate WinAmp and the Shoutcast stream, and the venue plugs your stream into the land media.

If you want to have your own venue, then you need to have your own land. That can be cheap or expensive, depending upon your ambitions.

And as helpful as everyone here will try to be for you, you'll get a much more knowledgeable group of respondents in another forum. Event Discussions is probably a better category, or maybe even Resident Answers. You're more likely to catch the attention of people who have before done what you're trying to do.