Thread: VSA weirdness

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Ok, I got up the gusto to try and crank out one more vsa program before I put the pumpkins out here soon.... However, I'm running across something strange. I bought (well used pepsi points) to pick up purple people eater and my friend the witchdoctor from Amazon and both MP3's act weird when I load them into the VSA program. There is a 5 second delay before the music starts but the wave analysis picks up the songs as being there from the start so everything is all out of whack (plus the songs chop off 5 seconds early).

Has anyone else had problems like this???? I'm just wondering if it has something to do with the amazon mp3's or something because every other song I've used not from them has been OK.

Are you using VSA 4?

Im getting the impression that there are some issues, we are getting a lot of sound related issues with VSA 4 and whilst its not be confirmed yet, they do point toward some issues with VSA

I'm on version 3.101

Well found a work around in case anyone else hits this snafu.

I converted the MP3 to a WAV and it picked up perfectly by VSA then. Strange.... Now if I can just hammer out the song here quickly.

I had the same problem last year with some mp3s. Converting them to wav files solved the problem.

It had something to do with the extra info stored in the mp3s. Maybe even some copywrite stuff causing the problem.

In any case, you should be doing all your audio work in VSA with wav files, and I'll tell you why.

If you take an mp3, edit it in ANY way, even just open it up and save it again, there is a small gap of silence that is added to the front and back of the file. That is non-audio information that is embedded in all mp3 files.

So what happens is, the sound and jaw motions start to go out of sync.

Let's say you are doing a song. You start with the original song file. Then you make additional files of just your voice singing the lead, and whatever other parts you have. You would do this to take advantange of the Waveform Analysis function in VSA.

If you save those files as mp3s, they are now already out of sync with the original due to this small space. I find it is a small fraction of a second, but enough to be noticeable.

Then you go into each voice file that you created and make several edits in order to sync it up more accurately with the original and save it each time. You will now be WAY off, and each file will be off by a different amount depending on how many times you edited the file.

If you start with converting the original file to a wav, and do all your work from that in wav format, the files will stay perfectly in sync, and you will not have any problems. VSA will also like the wav files better and won't give you any trouble playing them.

That's what I have found.

What you guys are saying is a bit disconcerting as I am getting ready to use the RAPU stand alone player from the VSA people and here is what they say about the audio:
"For the best performance, author routines with an MP3 file which has a 44.1kHz sample rate and a 128kbps data rate. If the MP3 file associated with the routine does not adhere to these standards, the RAPU Manager will automatically convert the MP3 file. The MP3 conversion process may slightly alter the timing characteristics of the audio and result in a timing
mismatch with the animation data. An MP3 file with a 44.1kHz sample rate and a 128kbps data rate will not require conversion and will best match the original VSA routine. This conversion process may require an MP3 encoder which is not included with the RAPU Manager (see RAPU - FAQ for more details)."
- They are telling me that I SHOULD use the MP3 version instead of the .wav files! Whats up with that?

Well I use MP3's on 4 of my programs but they are songs I've ripped from my own cd's. The last 2 I got from Amazon and they were off by 5 seconds... that makes sence that it's copywright crap up front or something throwing it off.

They are talking about using the RAPU. Which has limited space in it. Wav files may be too big.