Sound playing position and duration

Steven_McDade · May 18, 2024, 10:15am

Hi, for the soundtrack of my game I use 3 loopable tracks, and when the current playing track is 3 seconds from the end I fade out/in to the next track.
Is there a way to know the current playing position for a sound playing, and a way to check the length of the sound?
Alternatively, would tracking the playing position using Update be a reasonable workaround?

Wistpotion · May 17, 2024, 11:48am

This is currently not possible, see issues:

github.com/defold/defold

Sound: get/set playback timeline position

opened 09:07AM - 26 Jul 23 UTC

8bitskull

feature request engine sound

I would like to be able to get and set the timeline positions of sounds in Defol…d. Use case: We have three intensity variations of a music track. At certain points in the track, we check if we want to switch to another intensity level. The variations are **not** mapped 1:1 in terms of duration and position, so for example if we're at 00:12 of one track we might want to switch to 00:23 for the other. For get, I would expect something like: ``` go.get("#sound", "timeline_position") ``` You could do a workaround for the get side by tracking time elapsed since you started the track. I've tried this before, but do not find it to be a reliable solution. I can not think of a workaround for the set side. For set, I would expect something like: ``` go.set("#sound", "timeline_position", 23.7) ``` However, for my use case it would also be acceptable if the timeline position is set on play (similar to the [offset parameter in sprite.play_flipbook](https://defold.com/ref/stable/sprite/#sprite.play_flipbook:url-id-[complete_function]-[play_properties])). I've looked around for similar functions elsewhere: FMOD ([get](https://documentation.help/FMOD-Studio-API/FMOD_Channel_GetPosition.html) / [set](https://documentation.help/FMOD-Studio-API/FMOD_Channel_SetPosition.html)), Unity ([both](https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/AudioSource-time.html)), Godot (seemingly only [get](https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.3/classes/class_audiostreamplayer.html#class-audiostreamplayer-method-get-playback-position))

Highly recommend going and upvoting those issues.

A hacky solution is to keep track of the time through update, just like you said. Disabling threaded audio might improve reliability of that hack but would potentially hurt performance.

Steven_McDade · May 17, 2024, 11:52am

Highly recommend going and upvoting those issues.

Will do. Thanks. Implemented the hack and seems to work!