Creating a Portable Show on CD

Your work in Sound Mill is saved as a Sound List file. It can be saved in your 'My Documents' folder or anywhere on your hard drive or on a writeable data CD or DVD. The audio files (Wavs, MP3s, etc) are NOT stored inside the Sound List file. So if you want to create a portable show on a CD, you will need to copy the audio files and the Sound List file to a CD.

Tip - Audio file locations - For easiest portability, put all the audio files into one folder as you build the Sound List. Then when you are ready to port it, you only have to copy one folder to CD rather than hunting for files -- and you won't miss any. This also makes using the Tools -- Repair moved file paths a one click operation.

There is one special consideration regarding the location of the audio files. Each Sound Item has an associated audio file and the file path (physical location) of the audio file is saved with the Sound Item (ex. C:\ShowAudio\doorslam.Wav ). So when you copy a Sound List file to a CD, the Sound Items are still pointing to audio files in the original hard drive folder location. If you want to use the Sound List on another computer, you have two options:

Portability Options

1.  You can copy the audio files onto the new computer hard drives into a folder that matches the folder location stored in the Sound Items. In the example above, that would be C:\ShowAudio\. The advantage of this approach is that you don't have to alter the Sound List and the audio files will load faster from the computer hard drive than they would from a CD drive. If you only have write access to another drive (ex D: drive), create the new folder there and use Tools -- Repair moved file paths to reset the paths for the audio files.
2.  Another option is to modify the Sound List to find the files on the CD. First, copy the audio files to a folder on your CD. Then use Tools -- Repair moved file paths to reset all Sound Items to point to the CD folder location of the audio files. See the Tools Menu help topic for more information. Now save the Sound List and copy it to the CD.

Option #2 has the advantage of being a completely portable solution since you can now stick the CD into the drive and run the show. But CDs typically have a mechanical spin-up delay when loading files. You will want to test your machine to see how much delay your CD drive has -- some are faster than others. Also, be aware that Sound Mill does not pre-load audio files. They are loaded to computer RAM memory at the time you click Play, then unloaded from memory when play stops. So everytime a Sound Item is played it is loaded from its physical location (from the hard drive or CD).

However, Option #1 is the recommended approach since it mimimizes the sound play-start time. If you are not able to put the audio on the computer hard drive, try putting the audio files on USB flash memory key.

Storage Device Speeds

Tip - Use a hard drive to store your audio files if possible. It's the fastest option available.

Where you store your audio files can affect how fast they load and start playing. Slower devices can introduce a noticable delay. Below are typical read speeds for various devices (see Figure 1.). Check the hard drive manufacturer's Website for transfer speed specifications on your specific hardware before making a purchase decision. Theorical vs real effective speeds can differ greatly.

Internal Hard drives usually support ATA/66 (66 MB/sec*), Ultra ATA/100 (100 MB/sec), or SATA (150 MB/sec) interfaces. Internal hard drives as a general rule are a faster choice than external due to bus transfer limits, but some external drives can be more than adequate depending on the connection type and hard drive characteristics.

External Hard drives can be USB or Firewire connected. USB 2.0 has a theorical data rate at 480Mbps (bits per second) with USB harddrive effective rates in the range 20-40 MB/sec . Firewire 800 has a theorical data rate at 800Mbps (bits per second) or double that of USB 2. See this article for benchmark comparisons of Firewire 800 (1394b) vs USB 2. eSATA (external-serial ATA) has a 3Gigabit/second burst rate, far outreaching USB or Firewire.

USB flash memory stick effective rate at about 20-30 MB/sec. Memory stick speed vary widely. Cheap sticks tend to be slower.

CD drives are in the range of 20 to 150 times slower than hard drives, depending on drive CD vintage. Typical CD Read speeds are: 12x speed (2 MB/s), 32x speed (5 MB/s), 52x speed (8 MB/s). If sound timing is critical, do not use a CD drive.

* MB/sec = Megabytes per second, (higher MB/sec implies a faster device)

Rates shown are average by device type and are meant to show a typical relative comparison. Actual speeds are device specific and can vary widely based on hardware characteristics.