#1 Burning Software

Good evening

I'm playing with the QC build for June and I'm having an issue that I noticed in the previous version of StarBurnX.

OnProgress is not getting called nearly as often as it should when using the AudioBurner class.

It updates smoothly for the first, say, 12% or so then doesn't fire until 14% then 16% then 20%, 25% 33%, 50%, and finally at 100%.

This also means that the time remaining is not updated, thus there is no way to display an accurate time remaining estimate to the end user.

This happens in both my own application as well as the C# Audio Burner sample. I have not verified this on a second computer.

Is this a known issue or do you think I may somehow have StarBurnX (or my computer) mis-configured?

Many thanks
- Shaun

Hello,

Shaun,

1) We have delay in ONE second between updating the progress value! So if you try to burn small audio block the progress value will updated
not step by step.
We investigating now why progress has moved from 50% at 100%!

2) The second parameter of the OnProgress event indicates remained before end of operation (of burnin) time. In fact the OnProgress event will be raised also each time when value of remained time has been changed! Do you use the value of second parameter of the OnProgress event for indicating remained time? Whether this parameter is updated correctly?

Regards

Dmitry

Hi Dmitry

Yes, I am using the time remaining parameter (it is the number in whole seconds if memory serves) and it, too, seems to stall.

I have a 36-minute audio file that I am burning to a CD in test mode. After the 160MB cache gets filled up, the burn process starts and the progress counter gets updated. The actual burn takes about 3 minutes.

So, at 3 minutes I should have at least 180 (3 x 60) progress updates (and it seems to me that with the OCX I actually have more).

I can actually go for 30 seconds or more without a progress update. When the update does happen, the time remaining drops by however long the "break in status" lasted and the percent remaining increases to what it should be.

And it seems that the OnProgress event updates as it should for the first, say, 12% to 14% but stops firing all of the time after that.

Let me try a different computer and see what happens.

Back in a few minutes
- Shaun

Interesting.

The pattern of "percents" is identical to my home computer with a different length of audio file in a different format. It always goes 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 20, 25, 33, 50, 100.

My work computer is completely different and faster (Windows XP x64, 52x Burner, 2.5GB, Pentium D) so the times shown here are about 3 times faster than at home.

Note: I am always burning a single audio file that is > 30 minutes in length. I haven't tested this when burning multiple audio files.

Here's what I did to the AudioBurner sample (Visual Studio 2008):



I added a text box to the frmAudioBurner.cs form and I'm just writing a single line to the text box each time OnProgress fires. (And I'm syncing to the main thread in case that is an issue... wasn't sure).

Here is my result:

2008-06-19 06:20:47.7643 - 0 - 00:00:00
2008-06-19 06:20:59.4048 - 0 - 00:00:00
2008-06-19 06:21:14.3890 - 1 - 00:00:49
2008-06-19 06:21:15.4046 - 2 - 00:00:49
2008-06-19 06:21:16.4202 - 3 - 00:00:48
2008-06-19 06:21:17.4358 - 4 - 00:00:48
2008-06-19 06:21:18.4514 - 5 - 00:00:48
2008-06-19 06:21:19.4670 - 6 - 00:00:47
2008-06-19 06:21:20.4826 - 7 - 00:00:47
2008-06-19 06:21:22.5139 - 8 - 00:00:46
2008-06-19 06:21:23.5295 - 9 - 00:00:45
2008-06-19 06:21:24.5451 - 10 - 00:00:45
2008-06-19 06:21:25.5607 - 11 - 00:00:44
2008-06-19 06:21:26.5919 - 12 - 00:00:44
2008-06-19 06:21:27.6076 - 14 - 00:00:43
2008-06-19 06:21:29.6388 - 16 - 00:00:42
2008-06-19 06:21:31.6700 - 20 - 00:00:41
2008-06-19 06:21:35.7324 - 25 - 00:00:39
2008-06-19 06:21:40.8105 - 33 - 00:00:37
2008-06-19 06:21:47.9198 - 50 - 00:00:33
2008-06-19 06:22:02.1384 - 100 - 00:00:24
2008-06-19 06:22:42.7003 - 100 - 00:00:00
2008-06-19 06:22:42.9972 - 100 - 00:00:00


So as you can see, it starts off working as expected but then around the 12% mark it starts missing percentages. Around 20% it starts missing time. And it hits 100% with 24 seconds remaining, hitting it later once it is actually just about finished.

I won't presume to know anything about why this is happening, but it looks like a division and/or a rounding error in the status.

Consider (with the assumption that all decimal portions are removed rather than rounded):

100% = 1/1
50% = 1/2
33% = 1/3
25% = 1/4
20% = 1/5
16% = 1/6
14% = 1/7
12% = 1/8
11% = 1/9
10% = 1/10
9% = 1/11
8% = 1/12

And so on.

And at 7% and beyond, more than one increment of the divisor provides the same percent value (eg: 1/17, 1/18, 1/19 all provide 5%) but if the percent hadn't changed maybe OnProgress wouldn't fire.

I don't know if my math pattern matching will be any help or not but I hope it is.

- Shaun

StarBurnX is layered on the top of the StarBurn core. StarBurn core calls progress callback once a second. So you'll get "jumping" percents sometimes. I don't think it's a problem as ALL of the burning software works exactly in this way. Increasing polling period will make the library eat a lot of extra CPU cycles. So there's nothing to fix as nothing is broken.

== thread closed ==