I don't know, I guess MIDI authors just like leaving a "count in" at the beginning of their files?

And a one, and a two, and a one two thee four!

I once searched for a way that would let me easily crop a midi file, but there were always weird unintended consequences to editing a random midi. The weirdest were the ones that loaded up as a single track, even though there were clearly many different instruments. And then there were the seemingly obfuscated ones that loaded up with all the notes on the very first beat of the song, and then nothing after it. There is a lot about midi that I don't understand!

So then I started doing calculated delays, so that the screen would be blank until the opening bars of the midi played. I guess I did that enough that EffBee put a joking reference to it in his KOTM50 megagame.

edit: noyb pretty much explained it. i guess it's the same for most programs with midi delay, but it's especially annoying in knp since it fucks up timer events.

if you need to sync something (knp) then either

1. use .wav music. additional pro: zero loading times. cons: enormous filesize with a lot of music.
2? do something like an active object with a path it finishes instantly, and add to a counter always after it has finished (nothing moves until the midi is loaded)

Apparently the way Clickteam products handle a MIDI embedded in one's game is to first write it to disk as a temporary file, then play the MIDI from that temporary file. This introduces a significant I/O delay upon playing a MIDI file.

If you want good timing, it's probably better to convert it to an ogg (or wav in KNP) using something like Modplug Tracker.

Actually, Snapman was right. I didn't mean the freeze at the start of a frame.

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