Why use Media Utils?

Playing a video in Scratch is impossible. If you want to make an interactive animation or AVG in Scratch, it is also an almost impossible mission. So we built Gandi Media Utilities not only to solve these problems but also to provide a simple audio engine with lazy-load features built in. With Gandi Media Utils, you can:

• use a video as a sprite
• lazy-load audio or video and control its playback (reduce first load file size)
• apply some audio effects to each channel (LPF, reverb, delay)
• (planned) play music with a sampler or a digital audio instrument

Best Practices

[ will be attached very soon ]

Modules

The extension contains four modules for now. A new digital audio instrument module will be added in the future.

Functions and Definitions

💎 Resource

Reload resource list

This button will be placed on the first item in the resource. If you uploaded a video or audio to the Cloud Library, tap Reload lazy audios/videos, and the list will be synced with the cloud library.

Lazy load video or audio

Load a video or audio and assign a name to it in this project.

Events when loaded

When a video or audio resource is loaded, the event will be dispatched.

Dispose of resources

If the resource is not used, you can dispose of it to reduce memory usage.

In this case, a video or audio named ‘bgm’ will be unloaded.

Check the status of resources in the project

Sometimes your project needs to load more than one resource at the same time. You can use this block to check the loading status.

🎬 Video

Loading status of a video resource

In this case, this block returns true if the video named ‘thinkDifferent’ is not loaded.

Properties of a video resource

You can get these properties:

When a video event is received

Possible events while a video is playing include:

Play a video

Play a video at a particular start time. You can choose to loop or stop the playback when the video reaches the end.

Stop a video

You can choose whether to pause or to stop and remove the video.

When a video is removed, you won’t be able to play it again unless it is reloaded.

Draw a video on a sprite

Draw a video on a sprite layer. You should note:

i: x and y are not the positions of the video. They are the offset of the video. For example: You draw a video called thinkDifferent on the current sprite with an offset x: 10, y: 20. The current sprite's position is x: 5, y:6. The video will be placed on x: 10+5, y: 6+20.

ii: The scale of the sprite will affect the video too.

iii: If you leave the width and height options empty, the video will be drawn with its original size.

iv: If you leave the height option empty, the height will be calculated automatically based on the given width and the original video's aspect.

v: If you leave the width option empty, the width will be calculated based on the given height and the original video’s aspect.

iv and v are very useful. NEVER CHANGE THE ASPECT OF AN IMAGE OR A VIDEO is a good rule of thumb for a fine design. My most used code snippet is this:

Set a volume

0 dB represents setting volume to 100%. -3dB = 50%, -6dB = 25%, -96dB essentially equals 0%, 3dB = 200%.

🎹 Music

Status of an audio

You can get these statuses:

• is not loaded?
• is loaded?
• is playing?
• is paused?
• is ended?

When status is changed

You can listen to the statuses play, end, pause, and resume.

Play an audio

Play audio at a start time. When reached the end, loop or stop the audio.

Pause/Resume/Remove an audio

The property of an audio

Change the volume

Ramp volume of the audio to a destination volume at a specific time. This is very useful to fade in or out audio.

🎛 Audio FX

You can choose which channel to apply audio effects to.

• Master: all audios in the project will be connected to the master channel;
• Media Util: all lazy-load video and audio will be connected to it;
• Scratch: all sound blocks from Scratch.

All available FX

The blocks:

🔬 Experimental

We are planning to bring audio instruments, including samplers and synthesizers, to Scratch. Currently, you can play with the following experimental synthesizer:

Roadmap and Change Logs

Credit