Preloading of audio

[Smourt]

Hey All

I have had a request to add some narration to some areas of the tour (directional). I have considered using javascript to preload the mp3 files. Before embark, anyone have advice?

I am considering externalising the file and then in the initial html page using a script of sorts to preload.

AND, does anyone ustilise such a script that they mind sharing

Thanks

Stephan

[Hopki]

Hi
If you set the sound to be loaded in the skin then all sounds will be loaded while loading the first SWF and will probably take to long, however set them in the Sound Editor and only the sound for that particular SFW gets preloaded. Make sure you embed the sound file in each p2vr file.
The background music is streamed:
http://www.hopkimedia.co.uk/portfolio/lyneal/

Regards
Hopki

[Smourt]

Hey Martin.

Other products such as easypano, load files in order of use, so it can preload the areas you hope people will follow so there is no loading time in between. This is what I am wanting to achieve with pano2vr.

What I am wanting to achieve is the following:
Load first area and skin etc, while viewing this first area, the second area and third area are being downloaded to cache in the background. So whe the user clicks on the next area the download of the entire tour might already be on the 4th or 5th area, sound included etc.

For all the nice aspects to pano2vr, I would have thought the most important aspect would be the user experience. So this is what I am trying to do using scripts to preload the sound and the images.

The method you discribed, will still be a long time to download, it will just do it in several steps, either way will annoy the user? Is this correct?

Thanks

Stephan

[Hopki]

Hi Stephan
At the moment Pano2VR uses separate project files (p2vr files) to build a tour. So this means you either put all the sounds in the skin which is used throughout the tour, or have them in the individual p2vr files and load the sound when that panorama is called.

So for the minute, that’s the way it is.

I have not tried this, but if you externalize all the images in all the panoramas, then copy and paste the required code from all the other html pages in to the first html with all the images in one folder, this may do the trick.

As a thought.
Regards
Martin

[Smourt]

Hey Martin

This is weird.

When you create anything in the tour it creates an id...

when i externalise the file the tour plays no problem, but when I look at the code, I cant find the mp3, or the id for the mp3. When I rename the MP3 file then the sound does not play, rename it to original it does, but no where can I find a reference to the sound file, which means it must reside withing the swf, which is only 47kb... ODD...

REgards,

Stephan

[Hopki]

Hi Stephen
i have not done this so can not say, i am a bit busy at the moment, but will look into this more later, perhaps next week or two.
Regards
Martin