Doesn't the machine use .ogg?
Your *good sounding audio* (remember, this is a noisy arcade we're talking about) will easily fit in a 5MB .ogg if you're doing it right.

God do you think or pay attention at all? The ABSOLUTE time limit should then be at 10:30 for 3 songs x 3:30 each, and the threshold should be <3.5min for 1 song, <7min for 2 songs, 7-10.5min for 3 songs, or else somewhere within that. Acme never had a problem with how long an individual song was, why the hell would they care? They only had a problem with entire sets being too long and hence generating less revenue per hour. We were supposed to fix this entirely like 9 months ago by establishing the thresholds correctly and we have continually failed to do so. You effectively didn't change anything at all except reducing the song lengths by a little with sakuracon, not fixing the whole problem in the first place....
It takes practically the same time to load if you've just restarted the machine, certainly a negligible difference. And you would have to restart within 2 hours or so anyway if you want to use your USB in the first place. So botched settings again -.- It should be set to unlimited or whatever the maximum is. At least I know why half my songs won't load...
I agree, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Anyway I didn't mean to be mean about this but can we please get it right? Maybe have me as part of fixing it for once to make sure, considering I probably play on it right now more than everyone else here combined...

So basically everyone is demanding that the machine be configured in their favorite way.

What else is new

The issue isn't the cost of compiling 50 songs worth of metadata from a drive nor is it saving that data.  It's the fact that Stepmania caches a catalog of metadata for every song deemed playable until the catalog is purged and rebuilt.  Reboots aren't doing as great a job as they used to, because, for one reason or another (probably the cache not actually clearing on reboot and the slowdown being partially due to another bug which is remedied by reboots), going in to the op. menu and ,manually clearing the cache completely fixes the USB issues for a short time, whereas people still see issues immediately after a reboot.

The issue is demonstrably that too many files are being cached too quickly, and cutting your USB library from 50 to 20 will, logically, make it take a lot longer for the cache to get out of hand.  The core issue is that Stepmania was not designed for our use case and OpenITG does not address the resultant slowdown.

No... It was supposed to be fixed at sakuracon and absolutely nothing changed except the max songs for USBs are now down to 20 and the song length was reduced from 4min to 3.5. This isn't about configuring it 'my way' it's about getting the song length thresholds correct. Acme only ever cared about entire sets taking too long; if the 1 song length was unlimited it would result in potentially 15+min sets. When this whole debate started when the ITG3skin was installed and song length caps came into effect we were supposed to set the threshold such that songs over a certain length just took 2 or 3 rounds in order to fix this and make everyone happy. Sets were supposed to be kept under a reasonable time limit and all songs were supposed to be playable in one way or another. Somehow this keeps not getting fixed. So don't try to call me out for making my personal desires the issue, I'm trying to get this fixed for everyone and to do it right for once....

I GUARANTEE if I get 15min looking at the settings for the machine every set will be under 10.5min and every song on my or anyone else's USB will work, assuming it loads correctly. If that isn't what everyone has wanted for the last year in the first place, including making both Acme and the players happy, then please let me know...


   Tony, thanks for clearing up the cache thing. I hadn't realized this particular problem was so extensive. However I'm still not sure the symptom of slightly (and in my experience negligibly) longer load times for the USB cards is worth the inability to put more songs on the card. Maybe reduce the max number to 30 or 40, this would presumably still make it take significantly longer time for the lag to build up without the annoying task of changing out songs so often.
   That being said, I'm still not sure I've even noticed a difference after the machine's settings being left alone for months, and I'm curious as to where the idea that something was wrong here in the first place came from. Unless it's related to whether or not songs show up, which is doubtful considering supposedly this was cleared at sakuracon and now right after my songs still aren't loading right. I honestly hadn't noticed any difference whatsoever in load times whether the cache had been cleared recently or not.

In any case, I really hope I can just have a look and get this cleared up... As I said, unless the problem is VASTLY more complex than has been expressed on these forums or in-person discussions, I guarantee I can get this all working right and make everyone happy...

I don't think my USB stick has worked on the machine since it was ITG2...but that's probably an issue with the device itself and not the machine (it's a Lexar stick...can't remember what type).

When I first began experimenting with the traveldrives at Acme, I discovered my 1 gigabyte Memorex sticks would always work while a couple of my 4-gig Cruser types would never load (the machine would say something like, "This usb drive is too high of a level to read" or something). Since then, the format conditions may have changed, but I've continued to use my old Memorex ones and they've always worked.

Also make sure that the only file on the drive says "In The Groove 2" with perfect capitalization.

I'd like to reiterate that the setting song lengths to 3:30 thing isn't Keby's fault, or Tony's fault, or my fault. It was specified to me that no single song was to exceed 3:30 BY BILL, in those exact words. ACME specified this to Bill. Blaming each other for it is kind of pointless. ACME set a rule that Bill needs to follow if he likes being able to put machines there, Bill is enforcing it so that we get to keep our ITG machine, and that's all that we can do.

Ok well I'm hoping to speak to Bill about it before long. Again, Acme never cared about individual songs, having spoken to the owner and several managers. That doesn't make any sense at all whether your set is 3 3min songs or 1 9min song it's still the exact same play for the same dollar. In fact with fewer songs you spend less time picking the next so effectively long songs will take even less time to play your set. They only care that the dollar you put in doesnt get you way more than you should reasonably get.

You really think you're going to convince him otherwise when he already said this is how it's going?

It's not like Bill doesn't read the forums, or understand how things work. He's not Acme, this is Bill we're talking about. He knows what's going on, leave the man alone if this is what he has decided.

I'll make a big post tonight explaining the situation. Don't really wanna type up a page+ rant from my iPod to be honest.

To summarize:
Songs longer than 3:30 will only happen if Acme is satisfied. The time cap for single/long/marathons can be circumvented by the OGG length patch so unfortunately long USB songs cannot be allowed. The maximum cutoff only applies to USB songs. Longer songs will need to be added to the cabinet, which is really easy to do. This will not be changed unless I specifcally hear from Bill that it's okay to extend the USB song limit. Gerrak is right and wrong: indeed, Acme doesn't care about the length of one song. What they care about is people abusing the OGG patch to play 15 minute songs circumventing the time limits set for machine songs.

The USB issues are caused by openITG. Tony is right here. The theme may marginally make things fail faster, but ultimately it's a flaw in openITG. Even if I add the last GB of RAM which takes 5+ hours to do because the last RAM slot is nigh inaccessible, it's just gonna slow down the process slightly. I am working on ferrying a more recent version of oITG installed which is the only thing that can possibly fix the problem.

Man, this shit is totally making me wanna just revert to r16 with stock ITG songs and be done with it...

It's not about changing anything it's about fixing it so it works right! Acme has only ever said they don't want players playing unfairly long SETS. Bill has always said he doesn't care as long as Acme is satisfied. The proposed changes in settings satisfies both and makes everyone happy. Any other impression people have gotten is clearly a miscommunication. How this change doesn't make absolutely unequivocally perfect sense is beyond me.


     There is no way to circumvent the long songs anymore... I had thought we established that a long long time ago. Since the ITG3 skin I have been unable to play a lot of my songs even for multiple rounds because apparently the total cutoff is at 3:30 now (down from 4:00 a week ago). All of my songs are .ogg that show up as <2min on R21 machines, however they read as correct length now that the skin or patch or whatever is on there. All we have to do is set the single song limit to more like 10minutes and set each threshold where it's supposed to be and everything will work as intended.
     Am I wrong here? Is there some other factor that's coming into play? Because no one so far has made any sort of real logical case as to why this can't be done. As I said, so far as I'm able to gather, if we make this change we can play any song under 10min and no single SET will exceed this time limit. Which is what everyone has wanted this whole time I had thought. It satisfies Acme and the players. If I'm wrong please let me know and explain why we can't just get this right....

Oh hey! I was wrong! Wow! No idea. Looks like the original build of openITG I put on the machine didn't cut off the OGG length patch songs, but it does with the build I rapidly updated the machine to. Okay, I was wrong, let's do this right and set single song limit to ten minutes or even unlimited for all I care. The long/marathon cutoffs should still work. Gerrak is right, my bad, my bad. If the Acme management needs talking to I can do that.

Allan once again I was only doing what bill wanted. Personally I wish he was at Sakura-con because I wanted to talk to him about this.

Basically this is what it seems everyone wants.

Song Cut-off length: 10:00 (I wish we could put it at unlimited, but eh)

Long song: 3:00, don't even argue with this. It's a good cut off. Most song are less than 2:00 anyways

Marathon songs: Default is 5 minutes. That sounds logical to me, 6 minutres would be great, but 5 is good enough.

Jon, 5mb for an OGG file is good for songs under 2:30, hit above that and the audio will start to sound like it's from 1970. When it gets crowded, i can't hear anything really haha, but when it's not, it's nice to have higher quality files ^_^

No problem ok? Also Allan, please don't yell, because I flat out won't listen to anyone if they think yelling is going to get their point across.

Great guys it's settled, let's contact Bill now and see what he has to say.

Also James, I would just to say that I love you because your comment was my favorite in this whole argument. <3

Seriously I can't believe how much drama was started over this, honestly screw acme.....I might as well just start calling tom....

god damn man. thank god for narrows and lazer tag

I took the time to call up Bill again today and ask about things. I have full permission to change any of the openITG settings, and they will be set to the following next Friday:

Max Song Length: 10:00
Long Song Minimum: 3:00
Marathon Song Minimum: 5:30

If I have time (unlikely, but maybe), I'll install the RAM.

Sweet also, if you don't mind. I would like to start installing more popular songs onto the machine (Loituma, I can walk on water, Heaven, Lucky, Tricky Disco)
you know, some of the really good Groovestats stuff.

So I'll meet you there if you don't mind.
How does that sound to everybody? good?

We also have a thread for requesting to put custom songs on the machine, I suggest we start using it. Post links and such.

Yeah I have told people this from the beginning: the only reason more songs aren't on the machine is because no one posted in that thread. :/

I don't think it gets that far. The light on the stick lights up for about half a second and then turns off and nothing happens on the machine.

I'd prefer 3:30 for Long Version minimum but if we can't help it, then it's whatever. If you're not talking about that and talking about the songs you mentioned, then yeah those are good

Yeah 3:30 for long minimum would be more ideal, especially considering many good songs are right on that 3-3:30 threshold, and being that normal songs are around 1:30-2min, for 2 stages should be closer to the 3:30 area I would think. However if the decisions been made and this thing can finally get cleared up, I'm happy! Thanks Kevin!  

And could we maybe get the max songs on the card jacked back up just a bit too? Again, I don't think it's really slowing things down that much, and it'll be a moot point once you get the RAM in anyway. Thanks!

Hey math major, with that logic, the long minimum should be in the 2:00~2:15 range and the marathon minium maybe 4:00~4:30.  Just sayin'

Edit> The above was not me, just my computer. :>

Allan by putting songs on the machine we're trying reduce the amount of songs people bring on their usb's....so.....maybe.

That and I'll make sure to reload the songs again just to kick out the lag for another month.

I don't want to open another can of worms but the cabinet we have been playing on for the last few months may have had *smaller* timing windows. Apparently, the OpenITG devs fucked up and actually shrunk the timing windows in comparison to original ITG. It may only affect the default theme under OpenITG but it might affect all themes installed. I'm gonna work to get to the bottom of this tonight; what a nightmare. If it's any consolation all openITG cabs have this same problem. vyhd joined our forums so it would be good to see what he has to say about it.