question about PositionNotificationPeriod

Just setup and manage a flag in your event loop. Combined with a roTimespan you could easily do what you're describing.

if msg.isPlaybackPosition()
  if not isSleeping
    ' do stuff
    if ' ordered to sleep for 20s
      isSleeping = true
      sleepPeriod = 20
      timer.Mark()
    end if
  else if timer.TotalSeconds() > sleepPeriod
    isSleeping = false
  end if
end if

it's more like I'm doing a loop that will sleep(39) 255 times

it's a lot to explain as to why I have to do it, but sometimes during a 10 second notification period, it may be told to sleep 6 seconds, then perform a loop that takes a total of 15 seconds, and it won't be until then that it does another notification.

So, basically, one notification period may have loops triggered within it that far exceed the notification period, in which case, putting a flag at the beginning of the notification won't work.

I wish I could post all my code but the function it's contained in is 400 lines, with the msg.isplaybackposition loop about 300 lines. it's a lot to go thru to take out what I don't want to show.

If you want to do something 6s in the future, don't sleep for 6s within the event loop. Instead, save the target time and information about the task to memory and do it in some future iteration of the event loop. Build a queue of these tasks and each time through the loop, check each one to see if you've reached it's execution time. Similar to how tracking beacons get fired in the VAST sample.

The next time notification period loop in many instances might be to late. it wont be until the current notification period will it know that it's got 6 seconds, or 2 seconds left...

I have a Wowza Linux server receiving and broadcasting a stream from a windows server using VLC. VLC is playing two hour video files that is made up of different clips. There's a SQL server elsewhere that has recorded what clips start when in that two hour file down to the second.

The Roku box is hitting the Windows to see where it is in it's play duration, hits the SQL server to see what that content is in that particular time, and what the video overlay should be and how long it should be displayed, among other features.

I'll go ahead and post the majority of the code for a short time so you can see what I"m trying to do. I'm not sure that there's any other way to do what I want other than to sleep.

while true
        msg = wait(0, port)
        if msg <> invalid

		'*******************************
		'Playback progress (in seconds):
		else if msg.isPlaybackPosition() then
			if not isSleeping
			nowpos = msg.GetIndex()
			print "Event type: "; msg.GetType()
			print "Playback position: " + nowpos.toStr()
			
			list.clear()
			device.clear()
			xml.clear()


					if (device.overlay <> "") and (device.nextoverlay <> device.overlay) and ((device.timeleft < url.PositionNotificationPeriod) or (device.timeleft - 5 < url.PositionNotificationPeriod)) then
						if device.overlayfontcolor <> ""					
							fadelevel = CreateObject("roByteArray")
							fadelevel.fromhexstring(device.overlayfontcolor)
						end if					
						'printaa(device)
						overlaytimer = CreateObject("roTimespan")
						overlaytimer.Mark()

						while true
						
						if overlaytimer.totalseconds() <= device.timeleft  then
						'********************
						'***** Fade Out *****
						'********************
						
							if overlaytimer.totalseconds() > 4 then
								tempRect = {x: device.overlayX, y: device.overlayY, w: device.overlayW, h:device.overlayH}
								tempitems = {
									CompositionMode: "Source"
									Color: device.overlaycolor
									Text: device.overlaytext
									TextAttrs: { font: device.overlayfontsize, color: "#" + device.overlayfontcolor, HAlign : device.overlayfontHAlign, VAlign : device.overlayfontVAlign}
									TargetRect: tempRect
								}
								tempcanvas.SetLayer(0, { url: device.overlayurl, Color: "#" + device.overlaycolor, CompositionMode: "Source" })
								tempcanvas.SetLayer(1, tempitems)
								tempcanvas.show()
								'Print "Time left is " + device.timeleft.tostr()
								sleep(1000)
							elseif overlaytimer.totalseconds()<= 4 then
								while fadelevel[0] > 10 
									'print "Fade level**********"
									'print fadelevel[0]		
									'print "#" + fadelevel.tohexstring()
									tempRect = {x: device.overlayX, y: device.overlayY, w: device.overlayW, h:device.overlayH}
									tempitems = {
										CompositionMode: "Source"
										Color: "#" + fadelevel.tohexstring()
										Text: device.overlaytext
										TextAttrs: { font: device.overlayfontsize, color: "#" + fadelevel.tohexstring(), HAlign : device.overlayfontHAlign, VAlign : device.overlayfontVAlign}
										TargetRect: tempRect
									}
									tempcanvas.SetLayer(0, { url: device.overlayurl, Color: "#" + device.overlaycolor, CompositionMode: "Source" })
									tempcanvas.SetLayer(1, tempitems)
									tempcanvas.show()
									fadelevel[0] = fadelevel[0] - 4
									'Print "Time left is " + device.timeleft.tostr()
									sleep(39)
								end while
								sleep(1000)
								'exit while
								canvas.show()
								sleep(device.timeleft + 8 * 1000)
							end if
						else
						'********************
						'***** Fade In  *****
						'********************
							print overlaytimer.totalseconds().tostr()
							if device.nextoverlay = ""
								exit while
							else 'if overlaytimer.totalseconds() >= device.timeleft + 3 then
								fadelevel = CreateObject("roByteArray")
								fadelevel.fromhexstring(device.nextoverlayfontcolor)
								i = fadelevel[0]
								fadelevel[0] = 0
								while fadelevel[0] < (i - 2) 
									tempRect = {x: device.nextoverlayX, y: device.nextoverlayY, w: device.nextoverlayW, h:device.nextoverlayH}
									tempitems = {
										CompositionMode: "Source"
										Color: device.nextoverlaycolor
										Text: device.nextoverlaytext
										TextAttrs: { font: device.nextoverlayfontsize, color: "#" + fadelevel.tohexstring(), HAlign : device.nextoverlayfontHAlign, VAlign : device.nextoverlayfontVAlign}
										TargetRect: tempRect
									}
									tempcanvas.SetLayer(0, { url: device.nextoverlayurl, Color: device.nextoverlaycolor, CompositionMode: "Source" })
									tempcanvas.SetLayer(1, tempitems)
									tempcanvas.show()

									fadelevel[0] = fadelevel[0] + 2
									'i = i + 2
									sleep(39)
								end while
							exit while
							end if
						end if
						end while	
						
						
					elseif device.overlay <> "" then
						tempRect = {x: device.overlayX, y: device.overlayY, w: device.overlayW, h:device.overlayH}
						tempitems = {
							CompositionMode: "Source"
							Color: device.overlaycolor
							Text: device.overlaytext
							TextAttrs: { font: device.overlayfontsize, color: "#" + device.overlayfontcolor, HAlign : device.overlayfontHAlign, VAlign : device.overlayfontVAlign}
							TargetRect: tempRect
						}

						tempcanvas.SetLayer(0, { url: device.overlayurl, Color: device.overlaycolor, CompositionMode: "Source" })
						tempcanvas.SetLayer(1, tempitems)
						tempcanvas.show()
					else 
						tempcanvas.Clear()
						canvas.Show()
					end if
						
					if device.status <> "OK"
						Print "Status not OK. Stoping."
						viewpost = "...."
						http = NewHttp(viewpost)
						http.PostFromStringWithTimeout(viewpost, 10)
						'sleep(1000)
						result = false
						exit while
					end if
			end if
		end if	

		end if
	endif
end while

Well, one thing is you don't need to wait for the next position notification event to wake up. You can put a short timeout on the wait, or use ifMessagePort.GetMessage.

--Mark

I'm afraid I don't understand what you're referring to?

I didn't review all your code but I see at the top you're calling wait(0,port). This waits until the next message is sent to the port. If you replace the 0 with a timeout in milliseconds, the wait will return after that amount of time even if no message has been sent. GetMessagePort is even faster, it returns immediately whether or not there is a message. So you don't have to depend on the timing of the position notification events.

--Mark