Failure to fully understand the way how Wwise playing converted media files

Question

 

Hello!

 

I don't have a big experience in game audio and while reading Wwise user guide I had a problem with understanding how the conversion and the playback of converted audio files is working in Wwise.

 

My main question is what exactly is happening when Wwise is playing for example an “ogg” file? Does Wwise always streaming that file (even if stream options is disabled) or decompress it in “wav” format in the moment of playback start?

 

There is the table with tips for conversion in "Managing Platform and Language Versions" chapter, from which I can understand that “ogg” is good for disk space but bad for CPU and vice-versa for “wav” format. But, can I for example store all my audio data in "ogg" and decompress it not in the moment of actual playback (if, Wwise does it in that way), but at certain indicated moments? A level loading for example.

 

Maybe there is an explanation of this in the manual but I couldn't find it.

 

Thank you!

Answer 1

When playing any compressed format, such as the Vorbis format, Wwise decompress the data in real-time during playback.  It does not store it for later use.

Wwise will stream the file if the streaming option was specified in the Sound's properties.  When the stream option is disabled, the compress data is stored in the soundbank and loaded in memory with the soundbank.  However, when played back in Wwise directly, the files are always streamed.  The stream option is only used in-game.

Please note that, for authoring purposes, when the Original button is ON (blue) in the transport, the original wav file (as imported) is used for playback.  When the Original button is OFF (gray), the converted file is used for playback.  You will then need to convert it before you can play it back.

Comments

Thank you for the explicit answer, Bernard.