File Error Handling Behavior

[dgetty]

Hi hi,

I’m running a picture description task with auditory primes. The stimuli are pre-loading just fine for most people, but I’ve had one participant experience an issue where an audio file would not load. I’ve ruled out a filename error, so the only thing I can think of is that maybe their connection made it such that pre-loading went very slowly.

Since most of the other files loaded and played just fine, I’m wondering if there’s a way to add error handling behavior, where PCIbex will just skip an audio trial if it doesn’t load (e.g. maybe after 5 secs or so). I would also like to be able to write this error to the results file, so I know exactly where it occurred. Is something like this possible? Or is there a better way to handle this issue?

Thanks!

-Doug

• This topic was modified 3 years ago by dgetty. Reason: typo

[Jeremy]

Hi Doug,

PennController should already report when a resource fails to preload in the results file: look for lines with “_PreloadFailed_” in them, they also report the name of the resource

You could run a Function element at the beginning of your trial and end it prematurely if the resource’s status is not “ready”:

newFunction( ()=>getAudio("file.wav")._element.resource.status )
    .test.is("ready")
    .failure( end() )

replace "myAudio" with the name of your Audio element

Let me know if you have questions

Jeremy

[dgetty]

Thanks Jeremy! That’s working perfectly now.

Two quick follow up questions:
1) is there a way to shorten the length of the time that the pre-loading screen takes? I call CheckPreload() before the experimental trials begin, and I’m totally fine with that being a 60 second pause. But is there way for later pre-loading messages to only last for maybe 3-5 seconds before giving up and quitting on the current trial?

2) Is there some place I can read about/figure out tricks like the function you wrote in your previous response? For example, it never would have occurred to me to check “._element.resource.status”, and I don’t see that in the documentation anywhere. Just trying to learn to be more self-sufficient with these things.

Thanks again!

-Doug

[Jeremy]

1) You can use .setOption("preloadDelay", 5000) on the closing parenthesis of newTrial

2) These two tricks (._element.resource.status and 1 above) are actually pretty advanced, albeit concise. This is because it didn’t occur to me to make those things customizable. If you’re interested, you can take a look at PennController’s source code and try to hack it out 😉

Jeremy

[dgetty]

Thanks, Jeremy! I may try to do that first next time 🙂

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