Problems playing back long clip

[jkhartshorne]

The usual format doesn't work here. I don't know if this is an issue with long clips or not, but I just made a long one. When I do playback from the scrapbook, it'll just cut out at some point and stop playing. When I try to make a snippet, it will at some point stop producing sound. The time bar continues to move, though, as if it was playing.

Device: Samsung Galaxy S20+ 5G, Chrome

Notes: I just recently recorded a very long recording (946.7 seconds), so should be easy to find and see for yourself.

@lorenachipstudio @SecondStreetDevelopment

[lorenachipstudio]

@jkhartshorne Thank you- we'll take a look

[alexchippendale]

@jkhartshorne Does the clip still cut off in playback from the scrapbook now, or does it now play beyond the point it had stopped playing before?

[jkhartshorne]

Hard to say, because it's not consistent. Also, I can only see time markers in "make a snippet". In "make a snippet" I just forwarded to about 160. A couple times in the past -- but not always! -- it refused to play when starting at that point. Same thing just now.

[jkhartshorne]

Just now, I tried playing from the beginning in "make a snippet". It quit at about 120. I've definitely gotten it to play past there at least once in the past.

If you need me to try playing from the beginning in the scrapbook (not in "make a snippet"), let me know. But again, it'll be hard for me to tell whether it's playing longer than before.

[alexchippendale]

Okay thanks for the info. Should be good for now for us to try and figure out what caused it for this recording based on that, I'll let you know if we need any more info.

[jkhartshorne]

Please get this fixed as soon as possible. We were in the midst of a lot of advertising, and now I've had to put it on hold -- again -- because I don't want to shop around a broken app.

[alexchippendale]

@jkhartshorne We are looking into the recording in question, and looking through error logs while we try to recreate this issue. We have a couple follow up questions:

1) Is this occurring for all your in app recordings, or was this the only one you tested? 2) We have been able to record on our testing devices in app without seeing this issue. Is this something that your team is also seeing on their recordings or is this the only instance of the problem? 3) Does this same issue occur when recording on your laptop, or on any separate device? We want to see if this is specific to the device you used.

Thanks.

[alexchippendale]

See #56

@jkhartshorne We've taken a look at the actual saved recording and observed that the recording itself is silent in some regions and plays correctly in others. After looking at the database records, the actual saved audio file, and many tests within the app, this doesn't appear to be a direct problem with playback, processing, or otherwise a software bug in the KidTalk code.

While it is hard to know with absolute certainty, it does look a lot like your phone went to sleep at times while recording which is why there are periods of silence. The recording becomes silent after 2 minutes, sound then comes in again at 3:05 which could be from tapping the screen or if the phone got any accelerometer input from movement or vibrations, and then goes silent again at 5:05, exactly 2 minutes after.

Web browsers, unlike mobile or desktop apps, may not signal their OS to keep the mic active after the screen dims or locks (or prevent them from locking in the first place). This depends on the device used and it's settings. That is why you would have no problem recording and playing back on mobile apps on the same device. The playback issue isn't device specific, because rather than being a playback issue it is the actual audio file which doesn't include audio in the regions where the phone went asleep and the mic was not active.

The easy solution to prevent this for your device is to adjust the screen lock or timeout settings (every device is a little different and sometimes have multiple settings related to this). KidTalk is not currently encountering errors processing or playing audio. We are now looking into techniques to force the browser to keep the device awake regardless of device or settings for cases like this where device settings are overriding the browser.

[jkhartshorne]

Closing in favor of https://github.com/jkhartshorne/KidTalkIssues/issues/56