# how do you tell if an event instance didnt start playing

**URL:** <https://qa.fmod.com/t/how-do-you-tell-if-an-event-instance-didnt-start-playing/11810>\
**Category:** FMOD Engine\
**Created:** [January 28, 2015, 12:51am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/how-do-you-tell-if-an-event-instance-didnt-start-playing/11810 "2015-01-28T00:51:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![davecazz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3ab097/32.png) [@davecazz](https://qa.fmod.com/u/davecazz)\
**Post date:** [January 28, 2015, 12:51am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/how-do-you-tell-if-an-event-instance-didnt-start-playing/11810/1 "2015-01-28T00:51:15Z")

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in order to clean up my event instances, I use the call back to tell me when they finish so I can release them.

However, I find that many times an eventInstance will not start playing (either due to max voice constraint or something else).

in that case, there is no callback or any method as far as I can tell to inform me so that I can clean up the instance and not wait for a callback that will never happen.

The only method I can think of is to set a flag from the callback when the instance actually starts playing, and poll all event instances to see which ones didn’t start after a second or so.

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**Author:** ![geoff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a3d4f5/32.png) [@geoff](https://qa.fmod.com/u/geoff)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2015, 11:15pm UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/how-do-you-tell-if-an-event-instance-didnt-start-playing/11810/2 "2015-01-29T23:15:51Z")

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There isn’t a good way to do that via a callback at the moment, so polling would be the only option. We’ll consider adding a new callback type that would allow this to be done in a simpler way.

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**Author:** ![geoff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a3d4f5/32.png) [@geoff](https://qa.fmod.com/u/geoff)\
**Post date:** [July 10, 2015, 5:24am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/how-do-you-tell-if-an-event-instance-didnt-start-playing/11810/3 "2015-07-10T05:24:25Z")

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This was added as FMOD\_STUDIO\_EVENT\_CALLBACK\_START\_FAILED in the event callback type. See the event callback section for more info:

[http://52.88.2.202/documentation/#content/generated/FMOD\_STUDIO\_EVENT\_CALLBACK.html](http://52.88.2.202/documentation/#content/generated/FMOD_STUDIO_EVENT_CALLBACK.html)