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Qtractor 0.6.3 - The Armed Hadron beta release!

22 September, 2014 - 17:30 — rncbc

Ah, the equinox...

Twice a year a cherished planetary alignment checks in on schedule, once again.

The little rock gets another round from its warmy solar furnax, from which were forged. The pale blue dot gets yet another round and to no surprise, another tinier dot gets here around:

Qtractor 0.6.3 (armed hadron beta) is now released!

Release highlights:

  • Revamped mixer (un)dockable panels (NEW)
  • Plugin preset selection sub-menu (NEW)
  • LV2 Time position/transport event support (NEW)
  • Constrained plugin multi-instantiation (FIX)
  • Automation curve node resolution (FIX)

Qtractor is an audio/MIDI multi-track sequencer application written in C++ with the Qt4 framework. Target platform is Linux, where the Jack Audio Connection Kit (JACK) for audio and the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) for MIDI are the main infrastructures to evolve as a fairly-featured Linux desktop audio workstation GUI, specially dedicated to the personal home-studio.

nb. Despite the old Qt4 stance, but still recommended, Qtractor does build, runs and does it all on Qt5 for quite some time now. However, the former recommendation prevails as the despicable LV2 plugin GUI X11/embedding support through libSUIL just does NOT work on modern Qt5.

Website:

http://qtractor.sourceforge.net

Project page:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/qtractor

Downloads:

License:

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

Change-log:

  • Make the mouse-wheel to scroll the plugin list views, when not hovering a direct-access parameter slider.
  • Mixer widget gets (un)dockable Inputs and Outputs panels, also with their respective title captions.
  • Plugin instantiation is now constrained as much to prevent any audio channel output overriding.
  • Existing plugin presets may now be selected right(-click) from plugin list context-menu (ticket by Harry van Haaren, thanks).
  • So-called "painting" over multiple selected event values, while on the MIDI clip editor view pane below the main piano-roll (eg. note velocities, controller values, etc.) is now split into two similar painting modes, whether the sub-menu Edit/Select Mode/Edit Draw is set on (free-hand) or off (linear).
  • Drag-and-copy of plug-in instances across tracks or buses (ie. cloning) now also copies the direct access parameter setting (ticket by Holger Marzen, thanks).
  • File/Save As... now prompts and suggests an incremental backup name for existing sessions files.
  • Zooming in/out increment is now augmented by whether shift /ctrl keyboard modifiers are set (on a ticket request by Holger Marzen, thanks).
  • LV2 Time position event messages for plugin atom ports that support it is now being implemented.
  • Attempt to break extremely long audio file peak generation on session close or program exit (as reported by EternalX, thanks again).
  • MIDI Controllers Hook and Invert properties are now properly saved for tracks (after bug report by Nicola Pandini, thanks).
  • A segmentation fault when closing with VST plugins open has been hopefully fixed (after a patch by EternalX, thanks).
  • Messages standard output capture has been slightly improved as for non-blocking i/o, whenever available.
  • Automation curve node editing has been slightly improved in regard to time positioning and resolution.

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Enjoy && Have fun.

Comments

23 September, 2014 - 22:43 — yPhil
yPhil's picture

does "Revamped mixer (un)dockable panels (NEW)" mean,

it means you can now detach and (re)attach the "Inputs" and "Outputs" panels wherever you like; you can have them floating aside too; just click and drag over the new caption titles and you'll see what it means :)

also, the plugin list box now auto-resizes in proportion to the mixer window height (1:4) . all in all to give you a little more flexibility in screen real-estate ;)

hth.
cheers

24 September, 2014 - 10:22 — yPhil
yPhil's picture

> the plugin list box now auto-resizes in proportion to the mixer window height (1:4)

Now that is great. Thanks again, Rui.

13 October, 2014 - 12:58 — yPhil
yPhil's picture

Hi!

First things first: Everything works fine, QTractor rules. Now for the glitches :

- Everytime I display the mixer window (either by pressing F9 or clicking its button) it jumps 5 pixel up :) So I'm always putting it back in place...!? (in Unity (3.13.0-37-lowlatency #64-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT Mon Sep 22 21:56:22 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux)).
- The KB shortcuts don't work anymore ! This one is harsh. The only working KB shortcuts are alt ones (handled by the WM I guess), F keys, and arrow keys to scroll windows (WM again) and thats it. No copy and paste, no select modes, at least in the timeline. In the menus, they are greyed out ;-(

In clip edit, more KB shortcut work, maybe all, no time to test everything, at least copy and paste work (thank God).

All this applies to both latest SVN, and 1:0.6.2-1kxstudio1 deb package.

Now about the SVN version, since I could only build it using QT5 (I filed a bug for that - https://sourceforge.net/p/qtractor/tickets/136/) I noticed a plugin UI PB, probably not on QTractor's side : The DrMr (https://github.com/nicklan/drmr) plugin now can't display it's GUI :

suil error: Unable to wrap UI type http://lv2plug.in/ns/extensions/ui#GtkUI as type http://lv2plug.in/ns/extensions/ui#Qt5UI

Only the generic UI, but then no more access to Hydrogen banks.

In the deb package version, it works, only coffs a bit on some heavy Hydrogen banks. Oh, and it forgets its bank in between session loads, that is a (workable around) problem. Other tried plugins load their preset/bank or state fine : Calfs, ZASFX (carla lv2 version), TAL NM.

My main concern is that KB shortcut issue, it's horrible, what could it be?

PS - The "Help/About..." window says "JACK Metadata support disabled." that is new, and I found nothing in configure --help about that ; could it be the cause of any of the above stated PBs? I must say, all other plugins tried load their preset / state just fine.

13 October, 2014 - 15:07 — rncbc
rncbc's picture

First things first: Everything works fine, QTractor rules.
thanks

- Everytime I display the mixer window (either by pressing F9 or clicking its button) it jumps 5 pixel up :) So I'm always putting it back in place...!? (in Unity [...])
i'm sure that's a dang WM issue all along. for years and years ever since Unity come into scene. well, there are some gnome'sh WM's that suffers from the same illness. let me lobby about kwin: it's a bliss. look, anyway, you'll have to brag about this one to the unity WM devs. if they care. i'll wish you the best good luck on that one :))

- The KB shortcuts don't work anymore ! [...] In the menus, they are greyed out ;-(
wait, is that Unity top application's menu all about? i guess things just doesn't work with Unity when you try to emulate that "bitten fruit" environment whatever :) let me say that Unity is reading its own book, not giving a damn to roads paved by others way too long and years before. get over it!

In clip edit, more KB shortcut work, maybe all, no time to test everything, at least copy and paste work (thank God).
why thank god? it's all (hu)man's, all the way down/up ;)

Now about the SVN version, since I could only build it using QT5 [...]
Only the generic UI, but then no more access to Hydrogen banks.
i think you either didn't read the "nota bene" call on the above annoucement (risking to be pedantic myself, "nb." is latin for "pay attention to this note!":))

but still, ask the drmr devs to add lv2_external_ui support, or better yet, the neweest lv2_idle/show_interface. that will do it ;)

bottom line says that all gtk (or anything else but qt5) lv2 uis won't ever work through suil or will never get shown on a qt5 lv2 host unless they implement the lv2_external_ui/idle+show_interface stuff. not even those qt4 ui plugins (yep, v1s included), which will crash qtractor on sight (not)--beware! :)

PS - The "Help/About..." window says "JACK Metadata support disabled." [...]
ignore that. it only gets away for latest jack1 (>= 0.124.1). afaict. jack2 doesn't yet implement the metadata API. so sorry. anyway, that would only deal with jack audio client/ports pretty-names aliases (designated via jack metadata properties).

i'm an old-schooller, i use jack1 (every once in a while i do test jack2 in some sandbox, but that's all:))

hth.
cheers

13 October, 2014 - 16:27 — yPhil
yPhil's picture

Thanks a lot!

> wait, is that Unity top application's menu all about?

Bug filed: https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/1380702 ; I like Unity. KDE just lost me years ago (around the time they stopped making the super key open the K menu, or do anything useful) ;) I also use i3 a lot on my laptops, I'm sure QTractor rocks on it. BTW, I like the new theme option. WoTon soup looks almost good in Unity (Not that you care) :p

Unity is the only desktop I know now that I can use almost right away. Designers worked on it, not only developpers. Ergonomics over anything else. I guess I need vertical screen real-estate more than you ;)

> bottom line says that all gtk (or anything else but qt5) lv2 uis won't ever work through suil (...)

BTW, is there anywhere on the web a documentation on how to do just that (a LV2 plugin UI using QT5)?

13 October, 2014 - 18:44 — rncbc
rncbc's picture

meh. kind of of a chicken and egg question/answer, but there it goes:

  • qt5 is not supported by SUIL, nor the other way round; so no qt5 ui embedding is ever possible, not even in ardour3;
  • qt5 plugins are not in-process loadable into qt4 hosts (also, having SUIL to load them just makes any host a qt4-like one, so it will crash as bad), and vice-versa;
  • that said, qt5 ui plugins will possibly work either on a qt5 host or else if both implement the lv2_external_ui and/or lv2_idle/show_interfaces (the former is deprecated while the later are the recommended form nowadays);
  • not much documentation about all this, but you can sort the vee-ones, and qtractor of course, as they implement all of the above scenarios;

good luck!
cheers

15 January, 2015 - 09:13 — yPhil
yPhil's picture

Hi All

Just a quick note : Now QTractor works flawlessly inside Unity/GTK3, the menu bar is integrated, and the keyboards shortcuts work, everything is a breeze.

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