Why does audio sound so slow? -or- How do I speed playback?

[Lost Marble]

Question:

I added a soundtrack to my animation, but when I play it back, the audio sounds slowed-down. Why is this, and what can I do?

Answer:

When you play back an animation in Moho, the program does its best to play back at the proper speed. However, depending on the speed of your computer, the complexity of the animation, the size of the main Moho window, etc., Moho may not be able to play back the animation at full speed.

During playback, in the lower-right corner of the main Moho window, you will see a display of the actual frames per second. For example, if your animation is supposed to be 24fps, the display in the bottom-right corner may actually indicate 20fps. In that case, Moho is not able to play back at the full 24fps. Your final output will not be affected by the playback speed in Moho - when you render your animation out as a movie file, it will play back at the proper speed.

What this means for audio is that the soundtrack must be slowed down to keep in sync with the animation. If the soundtrack were to keep playing at full speed, it would get way ahead of the animation. So, when the audio sounds like it's playing too slowly, that's because it's intentionally keeping in sync with the animation. Again, this won't affect your final output - if you render out a QuickTime movie, both the audio and video will play at full speed, and properly in sync.

Now, there are some things you can do to speed up playback in Moho:

1. In the Display Quality popup box in the lower-right corner of the main Moho window, turn on the option labeled "Fast Buffer". This is a faster method of drawing, but with less accurate colors.

2. In the Animation menu, turn on the "Allow Frame Skipping" option. This tells Moho that it's OK to skip a frame or two when necessary to keep playback at the proper speed. The animation may appear a little jerky when this option is on, but it should play at the overall correct speed. Since the animation is playing back at the correct speed, the audio will as well.

3. Reduce the size of the main Moho window. If you have a large monitor, and the Moho window is very large, that means Moho has to draw more pixels per frame. Shrinking the window can speed up playback a lot.

4. Close the Timeline window. If you don't need to see what's in the timeline, go ahead and close it. Playback will speed up. You can later bring the Timeline back by selecting "Timeline" from the Window menu.