Hello this is my first post here so apologies if I get anything wrong

I'm doing a project for University that involves using the Kinect camera to trigger audio and video whenever someone steps in specific zones within a room. I have made all my patches and believe I have it all working except for one problem. When I run the audio and video patches simultaneously I get distorted almost echoey audio. There is no audio in the video so I don't think that is the problem but I am lost as to what it could be. Could anyone help please?

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/Videomix4nofadersb.pd

Sorry could only attach one patch, this is the audio player

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/Muted_PlayerFadeinout2.pd

it sounds like you may be maxing out your cpu.

You could try to increase the buffer size (latency) of the audio in pd->preferences->Audio Settings.

Or else, you could try to remove unwanted cpu traps from your patch. You didn't post the patch you are using to receive the kinect data, but i have a strong suspicion that it may be sending data through number boxes or sliders in the GUI.
Pd's GUI is incredibly incredibly inefficient, and any constantly changing GUI values will cause constant screen redrawing.
That would quickly max out the cpu of even a powerful computer, and you'd get the sort of stuttery/choppy audio that you're reporting.

Thank you for the reply

I thought the same about the CPU and pd's CPU meter patch does report 110%.
But the system monitor within OSX reports just 20%. As for the kinect patch I'm using a slightly modified version of TUIO dispatcher and I do have quite a few number boxes in there at the moment, just for debugging and set up purposes, these will be removed for performance. The trouble is that this anomaly happens when running just the 2 patches I posted, without the kinect patch. I am running a fairly powerful setup, core i7 3770k, 16 GB Ram, gtx 650 ti boost and Allen and Heath Ice 16 sound card. I tried increasing audio buffer to 50ms but this just crashed pd. but as I say this happens with just these patches running. Can you see anything within these patches that may be causing this. If it helps at all the samples that are being used in the muted player are wav format 16 bit 44100 and quite short, the videos are mov format and all three patches and media together are just over 12 MB.

Thank you again

I guess you've probably checked this, but have you checked your not getting double or multiple on/off triggering from the kinect?

The problem is present when manually controlling the audio and video patches at the same time without the kinect patch. So I don't think it is a problem with that patch. I can run the kinect patch and audio patch together with no issues also the kinect and video patch. The problem only occurs when the audio and video patches are run in unison.

Thanks

Try using two instances of pd, or use the [pd~] object to make sure that audio and video are running on different cores.

mvh

@mod said:

Pd's GUI is incredibly incredibly inefficient, and any constantly changing GUI values will cause constant screen redrawing.

hasn't this been improved in 0.43.4?