media

Introduction to MIDI: Part 2

Article contributed by admin on Fri, 2003-02-21 05:00
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This second part of my introduction to MIDI programming on (Open)BeOS is about timing. If you read Part 1 and tried out the demo app, you may have noticed that playback of the notes really lagged behind if you quickly pressed several keys in a row. That is bad, because we want MIDI processing to be as real-time as possible. This article explains where the lag comes from, and shows you how to prevent it. Be warned: some of this discussion goes into gory low-level details and the guts of the Midi Kit, but that is the price you pay for low latency MIDI performance. Actually, it ain't all that bad.

Introduction to MIDI: Part 1

Article contributed by admin on Wed, 2003-01-08 05:00
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Or rather, how to use MIDI on the BeOS and, of course, Haiku. MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface and is a well-established protocol for controlling musical devices such as keyboards, synthesizers, drum computers, and a whole bunch of other stuff. The protocol is fairly simple and consists of commands such as "play this note" and "now use this instrument". You don't need to be a MIDI expert to write BeOS MIDI apps, but some knowledge of the protocol helps. I won't go into the MIDI protocol in this article, so you may want to check out the MIDI Technical Fanatic's Brainwashing Center, and of course www.midi.org.

At this time of writing, the Haiku Midi Kit is not finished yet, but you can already start experimenting under BeOS R5. After all, both kits will be binary compatible, so when Haiku is finished, it can run your MIDI apps without any problems.

I Will Survive

Article contributed by stippi on Wed, 2002-10-30 11:00
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It's not something that might happen in a rare circumstance, something that can be neglected in the design of your media application, but something that will happen as soon as the user hits that big inviting button on front of the Media preference panel - the media_server quitting while you rely on it and the connections you have established with your own and other media nodes. So, for your programs to survive this situation, is quite desirable. And, of course, Soundplay taught us first - it can be done!

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