zip downladed but not preloaded

[irenecg]

Hi Jeremy,

I’m having some trouble with .zip files. Let me explain: I have a .zip file that contains audio files (.mp3). After uploading it to my server, the experiment works fine, and according to the debug window, the experiment downloads the .zip file and preloads the requested audio files. However, a couple of hours later or so (or after some runs of the experiment), it stops working: it downloads the zip file fine but never gets to preload the requested audio files.
To make things funnier, I’m using other zip files in the experiment and it only happens to this specific one (no matter how I name it, or how big or small it gets) and only when the audio files get called by a list (if I call them directly in the script they work fine).

I’ve gone through my script and lists and the only difference I found between how I use these audios and the others lays in the fact that these ones get called multiple times in the same trial, while the others are repeated only between trials. But I’m not sure whether this can be the source of the problem.

Thanks,

Irene

[Jeremy]

Hi Irene,

I’m sorry you’re experiencing this problem. Yes, playing the same file multiple times within a single trial may be the source of the problem. Do you mind sharing the link to your experiment with me?

Jeremy

[irenecg]

Yes,here it is.It is actually quite long (and requires recordings and multiple zips), that’s why I didn’t share the code, but I can create a short version and share the code if you want.

Thanks a million!

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by irenecg.

[Jeremy]

So I took a look at your experiment, and if I understand correctly the audio files that are played more than once only belong to the unique test trial, am I right? So if things work without using a list, and sincecopies you have only one row in your table, why not get rid of the Template and directly code your newTrial there?

Another solution would be to create duplicates of the repeating files, eg. oven1.mp3 and oven2.mp3

I understand that neither is an ideal solution, and I’ll try to identify and fix the problem in the next release of PennController. That being said, I didn’t seem to have a problem when I took the experiment. I don’t quite understand why the problem is not systematic and should only happen sporadically…

Another thing I noted is that the script seemed to freeze (or take a very long time) when sending my recording, so I just quit the page. I guess it’s not very surprising, given that you record a video during the whole duration of the test trial, which is pretty long. The video file is then probably in the order of tens to hundreds of MBs, so it will take a very long time to upload, if it ever succeeds. If it’s a possibility for you, I would strongly suggest you split the recording in smaller chunks, which means splitting your single test trial into smaller chunk trials too. This way, you could use a non-blocking UploadRecordings after each smaller test trial: not only will it start sending the recordings while your participants are still completing the task, it will also send smaller files, which is less likely to hit size limits (some PHP configs come with a 100MB file upload limit by default).

Jeremy

[irenecg]

Hi,

Well, there’s a unique test trial now but the idea is to have 10 which should depend on the group, so coding by newTrial directly is not an option. I’ll try to create duplicates, let’s see how it works. Thanks!

Re. the freezing of the script, this is another thing I have to solve since the recordings are sent (and my idea is to use UploadRecordings between the trials), but the message of ‘sending the recording’ doesn’t disappear. Right now I’m not sure whether it is the last UploadRecordings that interferes with my SendResults() at the end, or it is a problem of my server not sending back a response.

Thanks for the platform and the quick responses in the forums!

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by irenecg.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by irenecg.

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