xTLS
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xTLS
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‎Nov 01, 2016
07:25 PM
I have been using After Effects CS5.5 for personal projects for a few years and just started a trial of After Effects CC to evaluate it for professional use. I have imported a project I created in CS5.5 to compare to CC. My preview rendering performance seems a bit better, but final rendering performance with Media Encoder is abysmal and unacceptable for professional use. The main project I'm using to benchmark is a 4 minute video with many layers, including plenty of nested compositions and PSDs. After Effects CS5.5 can render and encode the timeline as an h.264 MP4 in 15 minutes. Doing the same from CC using Media Encoder CC with the same settings takes 55 minutes. In case the performance was related to the h.264 codec, I tried importing the previously rendered MP4 file by itself and rendering it back out as a WMV. This took 6 minutes in CS5.5, and 65 minutes with CC / AME (65 minutes to re-encode a single layer video with no effects?!) Finally, I tried rendering the most complex 30 seconds of the original project so I could compare performance with CUDA on and off. CS5.5 took 3:51 (that's minutes and seconds) to render this section as an h.264. CC/AME took 8:20 to render it with Mercury CUDA turned on, and 9:33 to render it with CUDA turned off (software only). It looks like best case, AME CC takes over twice as long to render as After Effects CS5.5, and in the worst case it takes 10x as long. If I monitor my system performance during the export process I can see that CS5.5 will use 100% of my CPU when rendering. However, when rendering with the Creative Cloud software, I'll see After Effects CC using 30-40% and AME using 5-10% with a total never exceeding 50% of my CPU power. Neither AE CC nor AME CC seems to have any settings to control available cores or maximum CPU usage. Is there any way to convince AME to use more CPU power for faster rendering, or has Adobe just crippled our rendering performance with their latest software? i7-4770k 16GB RAM Windows 10 Home MSI GTX 970
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‎Oct 21, 2015
02:34 PM
Is there a way to save audio from an AIR app into the media library on an iOS device, so the user can access it from the native music player? I'm not concerned with encoding at the moment, just how to get the file in the correct place.
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‎Apr 30, 2015
02:07 PM
Just wanted to double check on this one. Thanks if anyone has any tips!
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‎Apr 22, 2015
03:10 PM
Our app includes a music player which streams MP3s from a server. We would like to be able to stream the MP3, and save it to a cache on disk once it has fully downloaded. I am using the load() method of the Sound class to stream the MP3 so that playback can begin before the file is fully downloaded. I can listen for the Event.COMPLETE event to indicate that the MP3 has finished downloading, but the Sound class offers no way to access the original file and save it to disk (the extract() method returns uncompressed sound data which is much too large to write to the disk). Is there any method to download an MP3 file that will allow us to stream the MP3 file as it is downloading, and save it to disk when the download is complete, without downloading it twice?
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‎Dec 10, 2014
08:21 PM
Does the AIR debugger support touch interaction on Windows? In other words, on a touchscreen PC, could I test touchscreen-specific functionality (gestures etc) on the computer itself, or is touch support only available on mobile devices?
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‎Jul 16, 2014
04:28 PM
I am using the same codebase for the free and full versions of a game I am making and using a flag in the code to toggle between the free and full versions. Right now I'm setting the flag manually before publish but I know I'll eventually forget to change it and publish the free version in full version mode or vice-versa. Does AIR provide a method to check the application ID (e.g. com.exampledomain.myappid) at runtime so I can automate it? I've tried Googling this but I can't find a combination of search terms that gives me relevant results, and I have no idea where to look in the AIR library. Thanks!
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‎Jul 16, 2014
12:49 AM
1 Upvote
Just published a new AIR app and Google Play is telling me the app needs "Device ID & call information", including reading my phone number, whether I am making calls, and the phone numbers I am communicating with. Of course I requested no such permissions for my app. Does AIR force this permission?
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‎Jul 10, 2014
05:14 PM
I concede I was mistaken about the data structures, which you do indeed need if you need to load some of the more advanced metadata from events. Would it require hours of refactoring to switch between the two? No, even if you did need the advanced metadata. I don't have a problem with making a newer, potentially better extension - it sounds great - or the Kickstarter, but I have a problem with Michael misrepresenting the competition, not to mention pretending like their license is different than the license of any other native extension developer.
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‎Jul 10, 2014
12:12 PM
Hi Pat, Thanks for filling me in. The post is cleared now. That sounds like an awful system to work with. Everything about the new forums has been a nightmare; all of the garbage social networking features like "trending topics" (this isn't Twitter!), 'more like this', more detailed user profiles, etc just bury the important features like trying to find my own threads. The new inbox is a pain in the rear, for some reason taking you to your Facebook wall pointless Activity Feed before your own messages, which have a horrible presentation. I know these things aren't your fault, just another customer-unfriendly move by Adobe. It pains me to think of how much money must have gone into this all-frills forum that Adobe is then gouging out of us in overpriced software subscriptions.
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‎Jul 10, 2014
11:15 AM
Michael, those are internal data structures. You never need to use them. All of the functionality of their APIs is exposed through simple methods that take primitives as arguments. Using the Game Center ANE as an example, everything you need is encapsulated in this class: com.milkmangames.nativeextensions.ios.GameCenter
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‎Jul 09, 2014
11:23 PM
With Omrill's English skills I wouldn't be surprised if he simply didn't understand how to use the extension correctly.
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‎Jul 09, 2014
11:14 PM
Michael, I don't know if you've ever even looked at Milkman's Google Games/Game Center ANEs, but there is no need for "data structures" or "conversion utilities" in utilizing them. The only unique data structures used by either ANEs are the events, which are trivial to deal with. Displaying a leaderboard is a single function call. I really can't imagine anyone having to refactor to transition from one to the other. Again, it's fine to focus on the planned merits of your product, but making up complaints about your competitors is unprofessional. omrill, Vitapoly's ANE is iOS-only but it is still enough to prove that Michael's claim about being the first to have turn-based multiplayer to be blatantly false: "Additionally, we are planning to be the first extension to provide turn-based multiplayer functionality through the game services."
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‎Jul 09, 2014
10:51 PM
One of my replies in a thread is marked "currently being moderated" and doesn't show up unless I'm logged in. What exactly does "being moderated" entail? Has the post been blocked or is it awaiting review? Why would this occur?
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‎Jul 09, 2014
10:17 PM
Come on now, let's be honest about this. It takes about 5 lines of code to use the Milkman Google Games ANE and another 5 lines to use the Apple Game Center. Your claim about needing "two completely different code bases" is totally facetious. They provide simple methods to check which platform you are on so you can call the corresponding methods; I wrote a single class to handle both platforms using the separate Milkman ANEs in about ten minutes and I can use this single codebase on either platform with no changes to my code. Milkman's ANEs are also a single up-front cost with the extension assigned to the developer rather than the client. Heck, does anyone take profit share or charge per-client fees for native extensions, or is that just hot air? I suppose you should point out that your native extensions also don't steal credit card information, spy on you with your phone's camera, or obtain sentience and self-replicate like Skynet. You have some nice goals for your extension and your Kickstarter price-to-own is low but I'm not impressed with your approach of pretending like the competition is worse than they are. edit: I am pleased to announce after a minute of research I discovered that you aren't the first to support turn-based (or real-time) multiplayer through a native extension: Vitapoly already has one.
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‎Jul 07, 2014
09:33 PM
I feel the need to point out Milkman Games already has Game Center and Games Services ANEs that works just fine.
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‎Jul 02, 2014
04:46 AM
I'm working on a project in FlashDevelop and my app doesn't autoconnect to the debugger correctly, forcing me to wait out the full 120 second timeout and type in my IP address before I can connect the debugger. Is there any way to trim the timeout to a more manageable time, like 5 seconds? Thanks in advance.
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‎Jun 21, 2014
01:53 PM
The method I described of importing the audio already removes the silence at the beginning, thus there is no reason to play the file with an offset
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‎Jun 20, 2014
01:19 PM
Waded, it is not my fault you are too lazy to do basic research on your own. https://forums.adobe.com/message/4638107 And again, you could open up any MP3, zoom in, and see the gap at the beginning. The method I described of importing the audio already removes the silence at the beginning, thus there is no reason to play the file with an offset, and I cannot play the sound effects early when they are in response to user input. Again, you have made this into an ego game where you think I am obligated to follow your suggestions. I am going to ignore you from this point because you are wasting my time.
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‎Jun 19, 2014
09:16 PM
Wade, in response to your deleted comment, I don't know how old you are or your background but this is a mixed environment with both amateurs and professionals. Your seem to have assumed the attitude that someone asking a question is obligated to try out whatever half-baked solution comes to your mind first, without regard to your relative levels of experience. I am not sure why you wanted me to try out your suggestion when by your own admission you don't know much about what you are talking about. Frankly it is somewhat insulting, as you might be insulted if someone with no Flash experience tried to give you bad advice and ignored your explanation of why they were wrong. I am not claiming to be an expert, I've posted my fair share of dumb questions here, but I am also not a total novice. I don't really have time to humor your suggestions borne from a lack of knowledge on the subject. Remember, the forum is a two-way street; even though I asked the initial question, you had an opportunity to learn something new about development here, but you passed it up to play ego games. Thank you Colin, it's not good news but at least it's an answer.
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‎Jun 19, 2014
05:49 PM
Wade, the first thing I did was try embedding my own MP3 files directly, rather than putting them into an SWF as symbols, but there was a noticeable delay even on the computer. MP3s have a gap at the beginning and that's just how the format is. Instead of trying to argue I should "try it your way", you could make the basic effort to load an MP3 in an audio editor (you can try a free one such as Audacity) and see there is always a short gap at the beginning. I am dismissing your suggestions because you are simply wrong.
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‎Jun 19, 2014
04:18 PM
Hi Waded, Thanks for the reply. If you save a sound file as an MP3 and then open it in an audio editor you will indeed see there is a small gap at the beginning. Thus your method is guaranteed to have latency, noticeable even on the computer, as well as preventing gapless looping. The method I have described normally allows you to store your sound files as MP3s without gaps which allows for instant playback and seamless looping on the PC. However for some reason it's experiencing latency on the Android device. Perhaps someone with more experience in the sound department would care to comment?
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‎Jun 19, 2014
01:34 PM
Hi Waded, Are you familiar with the fact that saving a sound effect as an MP3 adds 50-100ms of silence to the beginning of the file? However the CS IDE has some method of bundling your sounds as MP3s without the gap at the beginning, necessary for gapless music loops etc. The trick I described is a standard method of saving a file as an MP3 in a Flash project where you don't use the CS IDE. 50-100ms less lag but still noticeable
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‎Jun 19, 2014
03:38 AM
I am testing an Android app I am making in AIR and I'm noticing that there is ~300-500ms of lag between when a sound effect is supposed to play and when it actually plays. There are no other performance problems. This is occurring in an action game running at 60fps so the audio delay is very noticeable and irritating. I searched around for solutions but didn't find much out. More details: I am playing the sound effects using the built-in sound classes, namely SoundChannel. The sound effects were created as WAV files with no gap at the beginning, imported into CS6, and exported as symbols (with MP3 encoding) in an SWF. This prevents them from having the dreaded MP3 gap at the beginning and there is no delay on the computer. The device in question is an HTC One. Is there any way around this or is it just a major problem in AIR?
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‎May 30, 2014
03:30 PM
How do you know they are from real people? I seriously doubt thousands of people independently decided to write 5-star reviews in a uniform style for an app that they don't understand the purpose of, and have been doing this continuously for at least a year.
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‎May 28, 2014
03:47 PM
While browsing Google Play I noticed that many of the reviews for Adobe AIR are obviously bogus reviews. These reviews make ridiculous or gibberish claims that have absolutely nothing to do with the software, and are always 5-star reviews. An example: Thank you ADOBE! I normally don't review apps but this is too good not to comment!! The hair on my palms has stopped growing and I am no longer blind thanks to the power of Adobe AIR. You've saved my marriage! Also, my car has stopped making this weird clicking noise, my annoying cousin stopped dropping by unexpectedly, the dog's worms have disappeared, and my cholesterol is the lowest it's ever been" These clearly bogus reviews have several threads in common: They are well spelled and punctuated (this is already a sign that they are not legitimate reviews) They always include "Adobe AIR" and usually "Adobe" in the review text They don't make sense or have nothing at all to do with the app They are 5-star reviews Fake reviews such as this are common on Google Play, but you usually find them on apps that are obviously junk from the screenshots (or have no screenshots) but have high ratings - most of the reviews will be junk, but every 10th review or so will be "installed a bunch of ads and ruined my phone don't download". The conclusion is obvious - there are shady businesses offering fake app review services. I've seen these businesses on Craigslist, offering to buy up old Gmail accounts by the barrel. What I find really appalling is the notion that a major company such as Adobe is stooping so low as to pay for fake 5-star reviews on the AIR app. This has been ongoing for at least a year. I invite anyone to take a look at the reviews on Google Play; see for yourself, the conclusion is obvious. I am a huge fan of AIR mobile - I use it for my freelancing, I make quality multiplatform apps and get paid good money. I am frankly shocked to see Adobe resorting to tactics usually used by Chinese malware peddlers.
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‎Apr 28, 2014
01:37 PM
I have a few different Android devices I test AIR mobile apps on. One of them is a few years old and running Android 4.0. I can install AIR 4.0 apps with a captive runtime on the device and they run fine; however if I try to install Adobe AIR from Google Play, it says my device isn't supported. Why would a captive AIR 4 runtime work but the Google Play version be unsupported? Is there a list of the system requirements for the latest version of AIR on Google Play anywhere? I'd like to avoid using the captive runtime during testing since it greatly slows compile time and wears the device's memory more rapidly.
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‎Apr 01, 2014
11:52 PM
So now it's April and I'm still having this issue with AIR 4.0. Any news?
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‎Feb 03, 2014
12:54 AM
Recently I am finding in Flash Pro CS6 that when I place a breakpoint in a .as file in the IDE, Flash Pro will often report "Breakpoint not set; No executable code" and the breakpoint will not work. I'm not setting the breakpoints on braces or anything, this problem occurs with any line of code. Occasionally a breakpoint will work a few times and then stop working without any input on my part. Obviously this makes debugging a nightmare. I am working with AIR 3.9 if that makes any difference. Any thoughts/tips?
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