Sound delay in webcomponent.js AusEaaSI web page environments

EaaSI Support Center
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Deployment: Please indicate if you are either using EaaSI’s managed service (hosted.eaasi.cloud) or self-hosting; if the latter, please provide some basic detail of your computing setup if possible (cloud service, local VM, bare metal, etc.)

AusEaaSI

EaaSI Version (if self-hosting): This corresponds to the release branch/installer version used to deploy your server. This information should be available in the Manage Node menu, if accessible

Browser: The name and version of the browser you are using to access the EaaSI UI, if applicable

Chrome

Description: Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible, including name + ID of any relevant environments, software or content. You can also attach screenshots or relevant error report files.

How do EaaSI users embed EaaSI content on web pages?

Has anyone noticed a sound delay on the web page deployment?

What we are noticing, using the gitlab component “https://emulation-as-a-service.gitlab.io/eaas-client/webcomponent.js” to display a configured environment in a web page, is that there is a delay of about 30 seconds between starting the environment and the sound beginning to play.

When testing the same environment in the EaaSI UI, there is no sound delay. The delay only comes when presenting the configured environment on a web page using the above component.

Are you able to reproduce the issue or did it happen once? What steps can you take to repeat the issue? What did you expect to occur and what was the actual outcome?

This sound issue seems to happen most of the time, but not all the time.

Urgency: If possible, please give an indication of how urgently the issue needs to be addressed - is there a timeline or deadline (e.g. upcoming demo, researcher request, etc.) that EaaSI support staff should be aware of?

This ongoing complaint from our users is becoming a genuine problem that we need to solve.

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Hi @Cynde_Moya - I know at least for the couple of environments that Yale has tried embedding on to an external/public page, the intended content are web-based databases and to my knowledge aren’t sound-dependent, so we hadn’t noticed. I’ll try to run some tests and see if I can reproduce - you said this happens intermittently, can you say if this started happening at any particular point recently, or has the issue always been there since you started trying out the external embedding? Just trying to narrow down if we could point to a particular change or commit to the eaas-client code that started the issue or if it’s been a latent, uncaught problem.

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Hi Ethan
Here are my lab notes about the sound issues. This has been happening since we started using the external embedding, it is not new. We are chasing down the problem now that more people are using the webcomponent.js script and finding the issue in several settings.

Sound issues in AusEaaSI

The problem:

Sound plays with appropriate timing in AusEaaSI Environments when played through the AusEaaSI UI. When the configured environment is played on a webpage, the sound takes up to 30 seconds to start being played.

Technical description:

The AusEaaSI UI console is used to configure environments by adding a disk image to a configured base

operating system environment. This was tested in December 2023 using Build 6C2B58F336, UI-Build D4E88C1BE2.

These saved environments can then be published so they are available for use on the web, using two linked web pages. These pages were provided by Simon Loffler and described on the forum at https://forum.eaasi.cloud/t/acmi-html-emulator-example/523.

One page, index.html, contains a link to webcomponent.js, a module available from https://emulation-as-a-service.gitlab.io/eaas-client/webcomponent.js. Index.html has the links to the Environment-ID strings and pointing back to the base.html page. This is a centered HTML page that loads an ACMI EaaSi game emulator from its environment-id.

The below instructions are edited from GitHub - ACMILabs/eaasi-game-emulator: A centred HTML page that loads an ACMI EaaSI game emulator. , removing references to ACMI’s internal XOS and Vernon cataloging. This page includes information to auto-populate the CD-ROM to the environment, which is not relevant in this testing example. What the pages do are:

  • Find the environment-id of the game or media art
  • Load the emulator centered in the browser in the linked page base.html
  • If you visit that page without any ID set, you will see the Commodore 64 emulator
  • To change the loading logo, set eaasEnvironment.innerHTML to your own HTML in index.html (this doesn’t exist on the index page I have downloaded, but the one at eaasi-game-emulator/index.html at main · ACMILabs/eaasi-game-emulator · GitHub does have it)
  • To see an example HTML page of links to different environments load base.html
    • this page can have any name, and is editable to have any set of named Environment-IDs linked from it which will open in index.html

Testing:

Test 1: Comparing performance of ACMI Archiving Australian Media Arts works to performance in AusEaaSI UI. These tests were done while sitting on ACMI’s footprint, logged into the acmi-wifi public wifi.

I used this web page to get to the emulation windows: Archiving Australian Media Arts | ACMI: Your museum of screen culture

Try = either reload the web page (Simon’s or ACMI) using “return”, or “restart emulation” button when in emulator.

13 December 2023

1:40PM – 2:40PM

Cute Machine

acmi-wifi

First try: sound starts appropriately

Second try: emulation does not load

Third try: 15 second delay

Fourth try: 35 second delay

Fifth try: 110 second delay

Cute Machine

acmi-wifi

in AusEaaSI UI

https://playitagain.aarnet.edu.au/resources/environment?resourceId=02df5341-f4ef-4938-9ad6-9c64d08f2f7f

first try: sound starts appropriately

second try: sound starts appropriately

third try: sound starts appropriately

fourth try: sound starts appropriately

fifth try: sound starts appropriately

Haiku Dada

Crashed 3 times before starting

10 second delay

crashed 3 more times

went to AusEaaSI to check environment there

3 times started but failed after displaying the desktop as above. Perhaps it doesn’t like the way AutoStart is enabled?

Orchestra of Rust

first time: emulation never started

second try: sound delay of about 5 seconds

third try: sound starts appropriately

Fourth try: 85 second sound delay

Fifth try: 120 second sound delay

Orchestra of Rust

In AusEaaSI UI

https://playitagain.aarnet.edu.au/access-interface/c81e11d7-5557-44be-97eb-303abe2fe0bb

First try: sound starts BEFORE brown intro image

Second try: sound starts BEFORE brown intro image

Third try: sound starts appropriately

Fourth try: pointerlock fails, game does not start

Fifth try: sound starts appropriately

Strange Cities

acmi-wifi

First try: emulator fails to load

Second try: sound starts appropriately

Third try: sound doesn’t load after 3 minutes. Also, cursor not active in window.

Fourth try: cursor OK and sound loads after 10 seconds

Fifth try: cursor OK sound loads after 20 seconds

Sixth try: cursor OK and sound loads after 30 seconds

Strange Cities

https://playitagain.aarnet.edu.au/resources/environment?resourceId=12df7863-2010-40ee-8717-549c3496db9e

acmi-wifi

AusEaaSI UI

First try: sound starts appropriately

Second try: sound starts appropriately

Third try: sound starts appropriately

Fourth try: sound starts appropriately

Fifth try: sound starts appropriately

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We also have a user, Simon Biggs and Alex Degaris-Boot, who have set up a private web page to test linked environments.

Result 1:
Just having a look at Great Wall of China now (from Simons website) & the audio is synced properly (first time I’ve seen it in complete sync).

Simon:
Great Wall of China (emulated CDROM, online in EaaSI) has repeatedly had laggy sound, sometimes by as much as 30 seconds. You are right - it is highly variable. But I don’t think I’ve ever had the audio properly synched. Note that GWoC employs external sound files that are loaded into the executable as they are required. The sound is not part of the same data-set as the imagery, which is all internal to the executable (as is the typography). It is possible the lag is caused by this requirement to load the sound file (all in AIFF format). Note that in Director it is possible to preload data (not sure if you can do that with external sounds) but you do need to watch out for exceeding memory allocations.

It would be interesting to experiment with audio lag with files that we know have integrated audio (eg: a video file) and compare that with files that don’t (most CDROMs used external files, for various reasons, but not all - depends on the content). We might be able to identify where the lag is occurring and why? If video files also have laggy sound then it’s possibly something to do with the signal being sent out over the network (which I imagine is a coherent data stream). If the video file’s sound is synched then it is likely the lag in pieces like GWoC is to do with loading and unloading data from executables in the emulation environment.

Alex:
I refreshed the page twice & restarted the emulation and now there is a significant audio lag (~20/30 seconds), so it seems to be displaying the same behaviour as the ACMI media artworks.

They also tested again with a pure video .mov file, to see if that might isolate the problem. Result:

Alex:
When I played the audio in an emulated environment in the admin section of EaaSI there were no sync issues, but now that I’ve published the environment and am viewing it from the embedded player in the webpage, the audio is again ~30 seconds out of sync.

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