Load mp3 from Harddrive on PC (again)

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Hi,

Wea are currently evaluating Unity to find out whether we can use it (free or pro license) to create our game. While the initial tests all worked out well, we have encountered a problem:

There seems to be no way to load mp3's from a users hard drive. Why is that? I have found a lot of questions on this topic but none gave an usable solution. Some suggest using the WWW class and give it OGG as an AudioType, that removes the "Streaming of 'mp3' on this platform is not supported" error, but the returned clip is still null.

We don't even want to stream the mp3s, just load them into memory. Is it a legal issue? Can it be solved by aquiring specific mp3 licenses? Why does it work on mobile devices, but not on pc?

Some suggested using different versions of Unity, or setting the stream-flag to false, but so far nothing worked. The Assetfolder Pro feature will be no help, because we need the user to load files from his/her harddrive.

greetings

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Answer by AVividLight · Apr 07, 2013 at 07:16 PM

Hey FreetimeCoder,

I'm sorry to tell you this, but Unity's version of FMOD only supports MP3s on mobile devices, due to licensing fees. If you still want to use Unity, you can use a third party dll for playing MP3s, and load the MP3 files using Unity's WWW class. If you plan on releasing your application, you'll need an MP3 license, however you would need that on any platform.

In case you haven't considered it, Unity's version of FMOD does support .WAV and .OGG ( http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/AudioFiles.html ), so you could easily use those. Anyway, I hope you figure out if Unity is the right engine for your plans, and I wish you the best of luck!

Gibson

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FreetimeCoder · Apr 07, 2013 at 09:28 PM 0

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Thank you for the answer AVividLight, sadly we are unable to pay the fees and pro licenses, so apart from necessity to implement our own code to play the audio (which I guess will not interface with Unity's native audio classes?) this pretty much precludes Unity for our project.

greetings

AVividLight · Apr 07, 2013 at 11:14 PM 0

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Well, FreetimeCoder, I'm sorry to hear that Unity isn't going to work for you. I don't know what your project is, but Unity Pro isn't totally necessary as the features it adds are mainly for projects that bring in over $10k. Also, you may not have to use MP3s, as WAV is better for audio quality, and OGG is a very good compressed format.

I hope you can find a suitable middle-ground, but if not, thanks for considering Unity!

Gibson

FreetimeCoder · Apr 08, 2013 at 06:07 AM 0

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The problem is, that in order to use native dlls it seems you have to use Unity Pro. Also, while I personally like wav and ogg our project is supposed to be a music based game that should allow the player to choose from his or her library and sadly mp3 is the unoffical standard for digital music.

greetings

AVividLight · Apr 08, 2013 at 04:11 PM 0

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You're right about compiled dlls only being supported in UnityPro, I'm sorry I forgot about that.

I'm also working on a music-based application, and have done a large bit of research. In my findings, most users have AIFF, as it the default format on iTunes (It should be noted that I have a Mac, and my research is focused on Macs). Also, in my research, I've come to the conclusion that most companies don't want to use MP3 because of licensing fees. I think that in the near future MP3 will be phased out and replaced with other-better (free)-formats.

Anyway, this is just my two-cents, I hope it's of some use to you, and that you can reach a good conclusion.

Best wishes, Gibson

Load mp3 from Harddrive on PC (again)

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