Re: QuickTime MIDI
Re: QuickTime MIDI
- Subject: Re: QuickTime MIDI
- From: David Cake <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 03:06:36 +0000
At 4:20 PM -0800 8/11/04, William Stewart wrote:
The CoreAudio API's provide several alternatives for applications to provide
this behaviour for users and for quite some time now (years, not months)
we've been very clear about the need for developers to move over to CA APIs
from both SoundMgr and QT Music APIs.
Just to reopen this slightly issue after a couple of weeks -
sorry, I've been travelling and not paying enough attention to the CA
list.
CoreAudio does NOT provide a useful alternative as far as I
know. What is wanted it to have a way to play MIDI from a QuickTime
file in synch with the other contents of the file, using something
other than the default DLS Synth. If there is an alternative, please
explain.
The exhortation to developers is backwards. Providing access
to external synths from QuickTime isn't an issue of people wanting to
use old APIs where they should be using the new, its an issue of
people wanting to use the new OS functionality for all MIDI purposes
and not being able too because the appropriate compatibility work
hasn't been done. Not that Apple necessarily has to do that work,
limited resources and so on - but Apple certainly shouldn't tell
people not to do it. The requested functionality exactly IS a case of
people wanting to move from QT Music APIs, and a part of the system
necessary to do so not being there.
Or to put it another way, this answer seems to be saying that
the issue is how should we play MIDI, and the answer is we should use
CoreMIDI. Which is true. But that's not the issue. The issue is how
should we play several different media synchronised from a single
source, one of which happens to be MIDI - and despite the wonders of
the CA APIs for pure audio/MIDI, the answer to that question is still
emphatically QuickTime, just part of the support to do so flexibly is
missing.
The issues isn't that people want to use QuickTime music APIs
where they should be using CoreMIDI at all, the issue is that there
is a source of MIDI signals within the OS that can't be routed to
CoreMIDI as it should be.
Doug Wyatt wrote
You mean the Music tab of the QuickTime pref panel? It's used for
selecting the default DLS/Sound Font sample bank.
Thats all you can do with it right now, but that doesn't mean
that is all you are supposed to be able to do with it. Routing to
external MIDI was definitely possible from there in OS 9, and as has
been pointed out its supposed to be possible according to the OS X
documentation.
If I had more experience with component development and/or
some code showing how to do it in OS 9 I'd just try and right the
code myself. But instead I'm going to complain - because while I
don't expect Apple to prioritise every bit of missing functionality I
happen to want, I greatly object to Apple spuriously telling
developers it shouldn't be done at all when it clearly should.
Cheers
David
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