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Cutscene Audio(or Video?) Lag

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2011 2:05 am
by dragongaruda
Hi Guys, i'm running Win7 64bit. Got it to be installed, been running the game fine. One problem. In the Cutscenes(The opening one especially) The Audio, or the Video? Hard to tell. Either way, its not in sync.. and i don't mean a little, i mean a good 3-5 seconds out of sync... yeah... That bad.... any ideas?

Re: Cutscene Audio(or Video?) Lag

Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2011 9:11 pm
by Rich C
I just reinstalled recently and also had this problem, I had resolved to live with it as it's only a minor annoyance but then found this while checking old threads:
NonWonderDog wrote: The problem, I believe, is multi-processor handling. Windows tries to bounce XWA across multiple processors, and XWA gets confused. Hyperthreading is treated similarly to multiple processors in this regard. (I've got a Core 2 Duo, and the same problem.)


Once you know the problem, the fix is easy. Go here and download "runfirst", then put it in your XWA directory. Then go to the properties of your XWA shortcut (make a shortcut to XWA on the desktop if you don't have one) and change the target path to point to '"[PATH]/runfirst.exe" XWingAlliance.exe' without the single quotes, where [PATH] is the path to your XWA directory.

For example, my target path is: D:\Programs\XWingAlliance\RunFirst.exe XwingAlliance.exe

Yours will probably be: "C:\Program Files\LucasArts\XWingAlliance\RunFirst.exe" XWingAlliance.exe
(Quotation marks must go around any path with spaces in it.)

Then, whenever you want to run XWA with working music you have to use that shortcut.


This forces XWA to run on only the first processor (or the first virtual processor, in the case of hyperthreading). It fixes all the music problems for me. If you don't want to bother with RunFirst.exe, you can just open the task manager and set the affinity for XWingAlliance.exe to core 0, but you have to do it every time you run the game.
Was originally posted as a solution to looping music but I've just tested it and my cutscene probs have disappeared 8)

Re: Cutscene Audio(or Video?) Lag

Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2011 9:25 pm
by Darksaber
Changed to a sticky thread as this might be quiet useful

Thanks Rich C

Re: Cutscene Audio(or Video?) Lag

Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 3:48 pm
by dragongaruda
Thank you very much :D

A couple other options to set CPU affinity

Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2012 10:46 pm
by ffaaway
I will be referring to Windows 7 Professional x64 for this guide.


Set Affinity Option #1 (Any system)
Found on YouTube How To: Launch Program with Affinity Automatically Set (right click link, open in new tab or window or you may get this error (This content cannot be displayed in a frame)

Your paths may differ of course, just point to the correct folder on your system.

Create a shortcut to C:\Program Files (x86)\LucasArts\X-Wing Alliance\XWINGALLIANCE.EXE on your desktop.

Right Click your XWA shortcut : Select properties : Click the Shortcut tab :
Copy and paste the line below into the Target: box replacing whatever is in there.

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C start "" /affinity xx "C:\Program Files (x86)\LucasArts\X-Wing Alliance\XWINGALLIANCE.EXE" /skipintro

Replace the xx with your preferred core affinity option from the chart below and delete /skipintro if you want to see the opening movie.

xx=
01 - 1st CPU
02 - 2nd CPU
03 - 1st and 2nd CPU
04 - 3rd CPU
05 - 1st and 3rd CPU
06 - 2nd and 3rd CPU
07 - 1st 2nd and 3rd CPU
08 - 4th CPU
09 - 1nd and 4th CPU
0A - 2rd and 4th CPU
0B - 1st 2nd and 4th CPU
0C - 3rd and 4th CPU
0D - 1st 3rd and 4th CPU
0E - 2nd 3rd and 4th CPU
0F - 1st 2nd 3rd and 4th CPU
For CPUs with more cores, just continue the pattern.

(AFAIK, XWA still prefers to be run on one core, feel free to correct me on this if you have better info. Personally I havn't noticed any difference with Win 7 x64 but to be safe I use one core for XWA.)

This method should work for any game or application but a couple things I noticed were the icon switched to a default cmd icon, just change it back and it also seemed to disable the use of compatibility modes.
Set Affinity Option #2 (ATI Video Cards Only)
I recently switched to an ATI Video card to better use triple monitors for gaming and started using a third party utility called RadeonPro.

You can easily create a profile to set affinity with a simple tick box.

As an added bonus, in RadeonPro, enabling multisampling anti-aliasing makes XWA look great! It has the text corruption, but at least for me, the text is still 100% readable and it just gives the readouts a little extra "character."

Re: Cutscene Audio(or Video?) Lag

Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2012 10:49 pm
by ffaaway
p.s. If you have any trouble with the links in the above post, right click and choose open in new window, or open in new tab.

The YouTube link will not open directly from this forum.

Re: Cutscene Audio(or Video?) Lag

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 7:01 am
by Oldcode
Thanks dude! That seems to make it more stable for sure! :D

Re: Cutscene Audio(or Video?) Lag

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 10:26 pm
by ffaaway
No problem Oldcode, glad to pass on info. :)

Thanks to whoever fixed that image link above.

I used to be able to post pictures like in this thread using the normal [img] but I see a [specialimg] code in there now.

Is it ok for me to use this code in the future or is it a moderator only code?

Re: Cutscene Audio(or Video?) Lag

Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 3:17 am
by Bman
This was mentioned above, but again... for those who still use Windows XP O/S with hyperthreading enabled or if you have 2 or more CPU's in your system . . .

1) Launch the XWA game. When in main concourse press [Alt] + [Tab] keys to switch back to your desktop.
2) Bring up task manager by simultaneously pressing [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [Delete] keys.
3) Click on "Processes" tab.
4) In the list of running programs/processes, right-click on the "XwaAlliance.exe " file.
5) Click the last option on the popup menu called "Set Affinity . . ."
6) Leave CPU "0" checked. Uncheck all the other CPU's listed. Close task manager.
7) XWA is still running in background as shown in task bar (at bottom of your screen). Click it to return to game.
8) Problem solved.

Re: Cutscene Audio(or Video?) Lag

Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 3:32 am
by ffaaway
@Bman I bet the Option #1 in my post above would probably work in XP to automate the process you described. If you happen to be running XP w/ hyperthreading or multi-CPU like you mentioned in your post, would you mind testing that ? :D

Re: Cutscene Audio(or Video?) Lag

Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 4:28 am
by Darksaber
Trouble is Bman, you have to do that each time you run XWA

simply use ffaaway's first option

Code: Select all

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C start "" /affinity 01 "C:\Program Files (x86)\LucasArts\X-Wing Alliance\XWingAlliance.exe" /skipintro
or use the RadeonPro option, as you have an ATI card, but you have to run start XWA from Radeon Pro each time

Simplest way though is just to either use runfirst
Just place runfirst in your XWA folder and change the shortcut to

Code: Select all

"C:\Program Files (x86)\LucasArts\X-Wing Alliance\RunFirst.exe" XWingAlliance.exe
or whatever your path maybe,

When run a cmd popup window will appear then XWA will start with only one CPU

or if you don't want to add miscellaneous *.exe files to your XWA folder just use the affinity shortcut options, both just use 1 CPU

Re: Cutscene Audio(or Video?) Lag

Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 7:06 am
by Bman
Thanks DS and Ffaaway. Yeah, I posted the long way. Shortcut is always easiest route. :-)
Tested... option 1 and it does not work. CMD prompt says the " /affinity 01" is an invalid switch. There's probably a different syntax to write this under the XP O/S. I'll have to google it unless someone else has a quicker answer.