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 Post subject: Clock Announcement Delay
PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2017 4:30 pm 
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I don't know why, but for the last few months my clock announcement has a serious delay.

Instead of it saying "The time is 12 o'clock PM", it says:

The time is (2 sec pause) 12 (one sec pause) o'clock (2 sec pause) PM. Sometimes the pause is worse than that.

I have (NextSTART version 16.6), (WorkShelf 16.06.1161), (Winstep.exe 16.06.0096) so it has nothing to do with the new updates and I didn't have this problem for months after it was updated to that version.

The only thing I can think of that could possibly be a Winstep problem would be is storing all of the clock settings that I set to save every month. I can't remember if it's just clock settings or is it for everything, where they're stored, and if deleting them would fix the problem. I also forgot where I enabled the settings. I know it had the option to do it weekly or monthly.

If this isn't the problem, what could be causing it?


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 Post subject: Re: Clock Announcement Delay
PostPosted: Sat Mar 18, 2017 3:19 pm 
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I have a feeling it's the new mp3 player, which Jorge ostracised to a different executable / process. I think he *might* have gone a bit overboard this time, or it's some setting in your computer.
See, the time being spoken is essentially a series of mp3 files. So, I think what happens here is that a new process is being launched to play the "the time is now" mp3 file, then that process terminates, then a new one is being launched to play "twelve", then that terminates, then a new one for "o' clock" etc.
Now, ideally, the same process should be called just once to play all the files in sequence, however that seems like is not happening here. So, what you experience as lags is the one process exiting and a new one (of the same executable) launching and loading the next mp3 file and then playing it.
Perhaps you could have the task manager running when the time is to be announced. That way, you'll see if it's just one process lagging between files, or if Winstep is launching separate processes for each chunk of the time, one after the other.

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 Post subject: Re: Clock Announcement Delay
PostPosted: Sat Mar 18, 2017 3:32 pm 
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No.

First he is running v16.6, which is before the separate process to play MP3 files.

Second, the process is not launched and killed for every individual sound byte. Instead, it is launched before a sound actually plays, and then it lingers around for 60 seconds after the last sound command. During that time, inter-process communication is done via pretty-much-instantaneous window messages.

Actually upgrading to v17.1 *could* solve his problem. Or not. :)

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 Post subject: Re: Clock Announcement Delay
PostPosted: Sat Mar 18, 2017 3:35 pm 
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I stand corrected, then!
If it's not the banished sound player, then... uhmmm... perhaps... oh boy, no idea! His PC too slow fetching the sound files? Were they .wav in that version?

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 Post subject: Re: Clock Announcement Delay
PostPosted: Sun Mar 19, 2017 4:31 pm 
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My computer used to do that. Usually it meant I needed to reboot because too many processes from random programs were still taking up resources even though those programs were no longer running. I don't have that problem nearly as often lately, partially because I got a new computer with a bunch more RAM.

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 Post subject: Re: Clock Announcement Delay
PostPosted: Wed Mar 22, 2017 7:26 am 
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Rebooting doesn't work. Jorge, are the saved files separate? I have the Internal Command setup to save every month.

In other words, are the files saved separately every month so I can delete all but one month? I want to delete all but the first month I started to save to see if that will work to prevent the delay.

See this thread I started a while back so you know what I'm talking about.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9907

P.S. Jorge, I sent you a PM several days ago. Please read it.


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 Post subject: Re: Clock Announcement Delay
PostPosted: Wed Mar 22, 2017 7:38 pm 
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Windy wrote:
P.S. Jorge, I sent you a PM several days ago. Please read it.


Read it now, sorry.

Regarding Firefox showing the login to the forums as insecure as of version 52.0: yes, I was aware Mozilla were going to start doing this.

All it means is that the information (such as user name and password for the forum) traveling from the user's computer to the target server is not encrypted.

The Internet is such that network packets traveling from site A to site B are routed through several machines in-between. In theory, if one of the machines in the middle is compromised, this information can be 'listened to'. This is called a 'man-in-the-middle' attack.

If the packets are encrypted, even if a machine in the middle of the communication chain is compromised, it won't be able to make head or tails of the encrypted information inside the packet.

In practice, the Internet has always worked this way and the world hasn't ended, because this man-in-the-middle attack is only a problem if one of the hubs is compromised.

Most forums and web sites on the Internet do not use secure/encrypted https connections, instead still relying on the old unencrypted http protocol - so you will be seeing that warning A LOT from now on. :)

Windy wrote:
In other words, are the files saved separately every month so I can delete all but one month? I want to delete all but the first month I started to save to see if that will work to prevent the delay.


Backups will have nothing to do with the problem you are experiencing, Windy. You will have to look elsewhere (sound drivers, what changed on your system just before this started happening, etc...)

Anyway, each of those backup files have the FULL settings for Winstep Xtreme on the day the backup was made.

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 Post subject: Re: Clock Announcement Delay
PostPosted: Wed Mar 22, 2017 10:51 pm 
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Thanks for the replies. Will uninstalling the sound drivers and then reinstalling them fix the problem?


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 Post subject: Re: Clock Announcement Delay
PostPosted: Wed Mar 22, 2017 10:58 pm 
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I don't know, Windy. I didn't say it was the sound drivers, I said it *could be*.

But it could also be a million other different things.

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 Post subject: Re: Clock Announcement Delay
PostPosted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 12:23 pm 
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Hmmmmmm, really odd. After uninstalling and reinstalling the sound drivers (which didn't change the problem) I stumbled onto something.

I frequently play the Windows Spider Solitaire that comes installed on the PC. I happened to test the clock announcement via *Say The Time* in the clock context menu while playing the game.

The following is reproducible. When I play the clock announcement *Say The Time* (or it plays on the hour as designed) while Spider Solitaire is open, there is virtually no delay. However, after I close it, the delay comes back!


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 Post subject: Re: Clock Announcement Delay
PostPosted: Fri Mar 24, 2017 6:58 am 
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Windy wrote:
The following is reproducible. When I play the clock announcement *Say The Time* (or it plays on the hour as designed) while Spider Solitaire is open, there is virtually no delay. However, after I close it, the delay comes back!


It's possible Spider Solitaire is keeping the sound device permanently open/loaded in memory while the application is running.

winstep wrote:
Most forums and web sites on the Internet do not use secure/encrypted https connections, instead still relying on the old unencrypted http protocol - so you will be seeing that warning A LOT from now on. :)


This said I'm looking into moving the forums from HTTP to HTTPS. This requires purchasing and installing a SSL certificate on the Winstep server, etc...

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 Post subject: Re: Clock Announcement Delay
PostPosted: Fri Mar 24, 2017 8:30 pm 
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winstep wrote:
This said I'm looking into moving the forums from HTTP to HTTPS. This requires purchasing and installing a SSL certificate on the Winstep server, etc...


Ok, if you guys want you can already access the forum via a HTTPS secure connection. Give it a try and please let me know if it works for you, logging in via HTTPS should no longer display the warning in the login form:

https://forums.winstep.net

There are a couple of drawbacks though:

Images that link to other sites are usually linked via HTTP and not HTTPS. Because of this, on posts that have links to external images you get a yellow warning icon in the address bar (under FF) claiming that 'parts of this page are not secure (such as images)'

I was actually pleasantly surprised that you could see the images, I was expecting a broken link instead.

However, embeded Youtube videos are NOT visible when using an HTTPS connection. Check the bottom of following post:

Insecure connection:

http://forums.winstep.net/phpBB2/viewto ... 131#p28131

Secure connection:

viewtopic.php?p=28131#p28131

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 Post subject: Re: Clock Announcement Delay
PostPosted: Sat Mar 25, 2017 12:32 am 
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Thanks for the https info and conversion. I'll be using it from now on.

winstep wrote:
It's possible Spider Solitaire is keeping the sound device permanently open/loaded in memory while the application is running.


So does anyone know what I can do to prevent that from happening? I already tried uninstalling Spider Solitaire. I want to uninstall then reinstall it but there isn't a way to uninstall it in the normal way.

It only allows me to uncheck a folder in the Programs section. I don't know if it's the same thing as uninstalling it. It appears that it is merely disabling it. I rechecked the folder to make Spider Solitaire work again and the problem still persists.


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 Post subject: Re: Clock Announcement Delay
PostPosted: Mon Apr 03, 2017 8:05 pm 
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Windy wrote:
Thanks for the https info and conversion. I'll be using it from now on.

winstep wrote:
It's possible Spider Solitaire is keeping the sound device permanently open/loaded in memory while the application is running.


So does anyone know what I can do to prevent that from happening? I already tried uninstalling Spider Solitaire. I want to uninstall then reinstall it but there isn't a way to uninstall it in the normal way.

It only allows me to uncheck a folder in the Programs section. I don't know if it's the same thing as uninstalling it. It appears that it is merely disabling it. I rechecked the folder to make Spider Solitaire work again and the problem still persists.


this problem while its not the same sounds somewhat simmilar to my issues described here
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10267
(for me everything would work while a winstep alarm was playing)
you could try uninstalling all codecs and codec pacs and installing k-lite (i believe k-lite includes a tool that can disable codecs)
or try installing nexus 17.1


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 Post subject: Re: Clock Announcement Delay
PostPosted: Tue Apr 04, 2017 9:17 am 
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Wow, what a thread! I read through the whole thing. I installed K-Lite Codec Pack and let it fix some errors it found.

Unfortunately, it didn't fix the delay issue. A least installing it wasn't a total loss since it did fix some errors.

Thanks seeker. I guess another tack will have to be used to find and fix the problem.

P.S. I just happened to look back see where you mentioned disabling codecs. I'll try that and see what happens.


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