I was away for a couple weeks, am now back on this!
I am trying to adapt your patch to mine. However there is this issue I'm finding...
I need to open all files, audio and video, in order to cache them so that when working they are ready to be triggered and not load as they are called.
To do that, on my patch I call them all sequentially when I load the patch. For each file I have a [pd ...] box loading each file with each one's path on a message box. However I can't seem to be able to do that with your method.
Any suggestions on I could do that?

PS - I used a message box starting with symbol following the path of the file to load the file I wanted and it worked... for now...
Now all I need to do is repeat this for all the files and see how that works

@alexandros on pd-extended help menu (mac) made "find extensions" looked for comport... was there! as a standalone extension.
I think it used to be flatspace, hence on the old pduino the argument calls for [flatspace/comport $1 56700] something like that... the new pduino removes the "flatspace" from the box.

@whale-av can you say +/- the max possible length? the videos I'm working with are short samples, the longest one being 54' (+/- 1350frames)

Also I've been trying on another computer (macbookpro) with 0.43.4 and the issue remains! the video plays at double the speed! However, I tried the av-sync.pd patch you sent and it works just fine! I don't get it. The files used are the same, the gemwin is the rendering engine on both and working the same way... clearly there's something in the way that I can't figure out!

@whale-av I guess all I can try is to use 0.43.4 or similar.
The GEM window is stalling the whole system and I can't figure that one out! Do you think it can be the computer? I'm trying the patch on a "new" 2nd hand macmini and I know GEM sucks up a lot of juice. This mac mini is not optimised with SSD nor RAM maxed...
Also I figured the frame rate is being doubled (god know why!) which means I can't even half it as the videos are on 25fps, meaning half would not be an integer! So it's either slightly faster or slightly slower!!! Very annoying

@whale-av doorbellUpdate02.pd

this one has the framerate changed to 13fps... which is also posing other problems such as randomly not playing the video rather only showing the first frame as a still

@jbvidigal
solved

Hi all
As the subject mentions, I cant seem to be able to create the comport to talk to the arduino.
Can't install the flatspace external where it seems to me that the comport object is!
Any suggestions?

@whale-av the videos were compressed by me.
I'm OSX platform in different computers. Last time I used this patch was in 2013. The videos are all the same... everything is pretty much all the same. Only two things change: pd-extended version and OSX version as well as the computers!
This patch was up an running properly with the videos and their corresponding audio. Now it's not and I can't figure this one out.
If the gemwin is open the audio plays just right. If I open the gemwin, not only the audio jumps, although keeping the pitch/rate and the video plays jumping but with a much faster rate!

Hi guys
One issue I'm getting in an old pd patch is that the video playback is going super fast.
Not only this is annoying to see but mostly it is out of sync with the corresponding audio.
All the videos in the library are matching frame size and rate.
I tried changing the gemwin framerate but it didn't work.
Bare in mind that this patch was up and running very well some 3 or 4 years ago.
Would the updated versions have anything to do with this?
Any ideas? suggestions?

Hi guys

I've been away from the pd world for a while.
At the moment I need to reactivate an old patch of mine however there are a couple of issues, however, I'm here trying to deal with one first.
On the mentioned patch I have an [alternate] object that is dashed! I can't figure out why. I installed markex external and tried (unsuccessfully) to install the flatspace external. As I was led to believe the [alternate] object lies within those externals.
There is some frustration in not being able to sort this out...
Any help out there is more than welcome.