Qtractor 0.4.8 - The Fiery Demigoddess released!

So I lied, bluffed all the way, so what? What you'd expect from this one self-called über-procrastinator ? And then there's hope. Alas, not the messiah, rather my development drive at my own pace. Believe it or not, it is on-going and it will sure happen real soon ;)

No sweat. The whole automation prophecy will be realized and delivered. Yes, TYOQA (The Year Of Qtractor Automation:) just failed, slipped a bit. It doesn't mean it was abandoned or, uh, procrastinated... well, it's only a Happy New Year after all :)

The road to automation is already being paved and walked although, I must say, it is no yellow-bricked one. The drive has begun. Definitely, 2011 will be TYOQA (aha, read that again with a bold tee:)! More than automation, which infrastructure is already lurking in there, trust me, all work is being carried out at the backyard for the time being.
Blossoms might just pop out this Spring ;)

One thing I may wish to leave sound and clear: it is very likely that, in the very near future, that there will be some dot-release before the all-mighty-one release, whatever. Now that the surprise-effect is gone, the long overdue and hailed beta release cycle that will present you and carve its deeds on stone with the dynamic-curves and automation features et al., will be nothing less nor before the coming version numbered as the 0.5.x scheme. Then, and only then, the current alpha-cycle will be concluded. Of course, that will be also the time for translations to be called in. Just be a little more patient :)

And then I lied a second time, when said those parodied F&D release code-names were exhausted. Thanks to a lengthy but intermittent Fall/Winter-of-coding period, I had the chance to wake up one morning with the imagination score in its lowest end and roar an inner WTH! As they say around here, there's no second without a third. So another lie is there waiting to be told. Or is it not? There, one would say: time will tell...

Nuff said.

Release highlights:

• Archive/Zip session file bundle (save as... .qtz suffix) (NEW)
• Mixer MIDI controller mapping/learn (NEW)
• LV2 GTK UI support (NEW)
• LV2 Persist extension support (NEW)
• MIDI Tools on main track/clips view(NEW)
• Floating tool-tips while dragging/moving/pasting (NEW)
• Rescale and Timeshift MIDI tools (NEW)
• MIDI Quantize percentage (NEW)
• Track range selection (NEW)
• Audio insert send, wet/dry controls (NEW)
• Audio clip pitch-shifting (FIX)
• Metronome dedicated outputs related crash (FIX)
• Stop transport tool/button action (NEW)
• Mouse-wheel zooming (NEW)

and a few more assorted features and fixes--see below the complete (boring) change-log for gruesome details.

You can also

Website:

Project page:

Downloads:

• source tarball:
  qtractor-0.4.8.tar.gz
• source package (openSUSE 11.3):
  qtractor-0.4.8-2.rncbc.suse113.src.rpm
• binary packages (openSUSE 11.3):
  qtractor-0.4.8-2.rncbc.suse113.i586.rpm
  qtractor-0.4.8-2.rncbc.suse113.x86_64.rpm
• user manual (archeologically dated):
  qtractor-0.3.0-user-manual.pdf

Weblog (upstream support):

http://www.rncbc.org


License:

Qtractor is free, open-source software, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 or later.


Change-log:

• MIDI controller mapping/learn is now possible on all mixer controls (monitor, gain, panning, record, mute, solo).
• An internal rewrite (aka. refactoring) have been carried out, making sure that all track state action buttons (R, M, S) are now all under the observer pattern umbrella.
• Single track range selection is now available on main menu (Edit/Select/Track Range; default keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+R); additionally to vertical range and horizontal track actions (Edit/Select/Range, Track) all these operations can now toggle over the previous selection.
• Direct clip selection from Files list item has been brute-forcefully implemented (after being challenged by Jiri Prochaszka aka Anchakor:).
• Files tree widget sticky "New Group" item fixed.
• A new menu option has been added (View/Tool Tips) to show/hide a floating tool-tip while dragging, moving, resizing or pasting selected clips or events over the main tracks view and MIDI clip editor (piano-roll) respectively, displaying current target position and status.
• Attempt to reset audio/MIDI time drift compensator on every engine start and loop turnaround.
• Moving the punch-out marker over the main track time ruler was failing to shrink the punch-in/out range, now it does (not).
• MIDI clip tools (quantize, transpose, normalize, randomize, resize, rescale and the new timeshift) are now all accessible from the main tracks view (Edit/Clip/Tools menu) and apply to all events on current selected clip(s).
• LV2 Persist extension support is being introduced.
• A new timeshift MIDI tool has been added, after an awesome patch by Jiri Prochaszka aka Anchakor; applies to selected events between edit markers, distorting their time and duration (optionally), either slowing down and accelerating, based on a given parameter P value.
• Audio clip/buffer pitch-shifting fixes with regard to latency correction due on the RubberBand library one-pass (real-time) processing mode.
• New Send Gain and Dry/Wet control parameters have been implemented for audio Inserts pseudo-plugins.
• MIDI channel/master volume enqueued events are now affected by the current track/bus volume (0-100%).
• Prevent old rounding error when resetting to plugin parameter default value with the mouse middle-button click while hovering a slider widget (observer).
• A quantize percentage has been added to MIDI clip editor quantize tool (Tool/Quantize...) for time and duration quantization (0% for none; 100% for full regular quantization).
• Metronome bus/ports are now created at engine start and not when user switches it on anymore.
• Make sure all audio clip buffers are in sync upon smooth-ramping going off and playback is rolling.
• Copy-pasting across controller event types is now possible on the MIDI clip editor (aka piano-roll).
• Finally indulged, the genuine transport stop button makes its appearance on main toolbar and menu.
• Main tracks grid visibility option (View/Snap/Grid).
• Yet another off-by-one (frame) audio buffer bug got squashed away: rare symptom was that some audio clips were being left dead silent right after playback of their first looping period.
• Plugin parameter name/label now a proper attribute of its respective MIDI Controller observer instance, allowing to be shown on dialog title (MIDI learn).
• Default session file format saved on JACK session demand is now the bundle archive/zip one (.qtz).
• Plugin selection dialog now shows whether a plugin features its own editor (GUI) and/or external state configuration (EXT).
• Help/Shortcuts... window positioning and sizing are now preserved.
• All plugin chain changes over the track properties dialog now sure counts as a dirty action (possibly fixing bug #3104129).
• Newly extracted archive/zip session directories are now removed automatically from the file-system on session close, prompting the user for confirmation (cf. View/Options.../Display/Confirm Removals).
• Ctrl+mouse-wheel is now set for zooming in/out, on main track-view and all applicable MIDI clip editor views (piano-roll), according to current zoom mode (see View/Zoom Horizontal, Vertical or All for both ways simultaneously).
• New MIDI clip editor (piano-roll) mouse hovering effect (eye-candy++).
• After too many a user request, a brand new session archive file type is being introduced (.qtz) which tries to bundle in one single zip archive all the media and contents of a session.
• Add that to eye-candy: either loop or punch-in/out outer ranges are now shaded on the main track-view, thumb-view and MIDI clip editor (piano-roll) views.
• LV2 GTK UI plug-in hosting is now roaring its ugly head (EXPERIMENTAL).
• Ignore all initial and decremental notifications of audio engine's buffer-size changes.
• Internal audio buffer loop points were not being set properly for non-zero clip offsets, leaving some as severely out-of-sync while rolling over loop turns. Now fixed again, hopefully.
• Avoid audio peak file clashing when deriving from audio sample files with distinct absolute paths but the very same file (base)name.
• A new MIDI editor (piano-roll) tool has been added: Rescale event times, durations and/or values by a percentage between 1 and 1000% (adapted thanks to patch #3081954, by Jesse Lucas).
• Attempt to mitigate audio clip sequencing glitches on single-core/single-thread machines.

Cheers && Enjoy (be happy!)