Add new comment

rncbc,
* Object editing

I guess most of editing in qtractor follows the non-linear, non-destructive model way as you suggest........

Each track should be able to contain unlimited OBJECTS. Tracks can have any number of clips. The clips can even overlap each other (no auto-crossfades yet:)

Ah, you touched on a point. This is something else a "Clip Editor" (CE, I was previously referring to this as Object Editor, OE) could have within it. One tab would be the functions I discussed earlier (eq, vol, pan, plugins) while another could be the types of available crossfades, and allow for dragable curves and distances per clip.

Each OBJECT should also support Linux plugins. Plugins are inserted at the track which a clip (aka object) belongs to. So there's no support for dedicated clip plugins, but only for tracks and buses. However, clip plugins might be an interesting feature, nevertheless.

This would certainly be a very powerful feature. :)

Each clip can be selected, dragged, dropped, moved, resized, cutted, copied, pasted, deleted, and all these operations have full undo/redo support as you might expect on a modern non-destructive editor. You can drag and move the selected regions either with the mouse or the keyboard (arrow keys). One additional clip property, which has been recently implemented, was time-stretching, very experimental though. Pitch-shifting is not currently available, you'll have to live with some track wide plugin for just that, sorry.

The LADSPA plugins I've seen for pitch shifting and temp correction have not been all that impressive, unfortunately. We'll get there eventually, no doubt.

A track/wav editor. To be honest, an audio sample editor is not very high placed in my TODO list :) but it's not forgoten either. I believe that is a perfect example sub-project for have it out-source, don't you think?

It would not have to be all that complicated as far as features. Basic destructive editing features such as cut/copy/paste would most likely be enough to satisfy most. Eventually sample rate conversion could be handy as well. However, Audacity does a fine job of this as is, it is just not integrated. Not really a big deal ATM.

Splitting a track. Splitting clips is indeed a minor pain. There's no single operation to split a clip at a given location. You can always select, cut and paste as workarounds :) The split operation is however very easy to get implemented. Noted.

Cool!

What you call rubber-band editing is here assumed to be mapped as envelope automation of control parameters, or whatever we agree to call it. It's in the major plan, yes. The way I'm planning it is having any track control parameter, and that includes any plugin control parameter too, to be the subjects of dynamic envelop curves. That curves will show up on the track timeline and editable and recorded as usual. I guess this will happen sometime in the new year ;)

This sounds great too!

Built in basic effects. I confess that built-in effects are not in the horizon. At least until this moment :) As you said, you can almost do anything with the available LADSPA plugins. However, yet again, if someone ever volunteers with some high quality (SSE2 optimized) DSP code for those standard effects, I'll be all for it :P

I'll see what I can come up with regarding this. Something else that is a really nice feature of Samp, when you double click on any of the four EQ knobs, it brings up a 4 parametric EQ. This works on each of the four EQ bands, and allows one to have a 4 band parametric on each of the 4 separate EQ knobs. Not that I've every used it on all four bands, but I'll bet someone has. ;) Very powerful stuff.

Mixer Snapshots with quick retrieve buttons. 8 should be plenty. That's an good idea. What about named presets, similar with what you already have on plugins?

This would work fine I suppose. It would need to be set up in such a manner that one could quickly A/B/C/etc between snapshots via a single mouse click, while the mix is playing.

Master Mono/Stereo switch. Right. But is this really strictly necessary? Unless you give a very good reason, I'm failing to put this one any higher from the bottom of the list ;)

Actually there is a very good reason for this. Switching to MONO on the fly is a very easy way to check for phase problems. Having to center all the pan controls could be a bit of a pain.

Phase reversal switch (could be a track option instead). Any pointers on what this actually means? Is it turning upside-down the signal, positive being negative and vice-versa (ie. 180º phase-shift) ? In what situations could that be an option? I'm ignorant but I'm all ears :)

Yes, you are correct in your understanding. This is really for microphone use. Especially drums. It is very handy for controlling leakage from other drums, and correcting for placement techniques. ie, some mics pointed up, others down. Here are a few links explaining some of this:

http://www.homerecordingconnection.com/forum.php?action=view_thread&id=7...
http://www.homerecordingconnection.com/news.php?action=view_story&id=133

Master Compressor/Limitor on Main outs, or bypassable with user plugins.
Yes, plugins seems to be the way. And if you're thinking about mastering, you can always have JAMin plugged on the master outputs and bounced back.

Yes, I kinda was thinking about Mastering, but the Jamin method should work fine.

All knobs (pan, eq, reverb, etc) should be easily reset (centered) with a double click.
Chalked. Just one middle-button click away, not a right-button double-click.

That will work fine :)

At leaset 8 AUX sends and returns.
This is also in the TODO list, but I'm thinking on a special pseudo-plugin that exposes track send outputs and return inputs as JACK audio ports, which will let you do whatever you want with the signal externally and then inject the result back in qtractor track output bus for mix-down. Does it seem reasonable?

This should work very well. Nice idea!

* MIDI support
Does Qtractor support JACK MIDI? No, not yet. ALSA sequencer only.

I'm not even sure this is necessary. I only brought it up because a few nights ago, qtractor was the topic of discussion on the #LAD irc channel, and someone was asking if qtractor supported it. After that, I started searching for Linux apps that supported it, and came up with none....at least none of the more popular apps support it. It was mentioned it was required for sample accurate sync. I wouldn't think this should be the case if everything is following the JACK master clock anyway. I'm still a bit unclear on all of this however.

External Controllers. Currently, only MMC is supported for the most transport controls (rew, play, stop, ffwd, rec) and track switches (rec, mute, solo). Continuous controls (MIDI CC#s) are certainly a must have feature and is thought to be integrated when the envelop/automation batch gets it's due.

Understood. The Behringer BCF2000 and BCR2000 with automated (flying) faders is a popular unit, mostly due to it's low cost. It is MIDI or USB connected. I will try mine out with qtractor (I think it supports MMC) in the next few days.

Advanced quantization of midi tracks or ranges - Don't know whether it's advanced enough for you, but the MIDI clip editor already has this special batch tools that you can apply to selected MIDI events: quantize, transpose, normalize, randomize and resize. What's still lacking is something that I also care about which is a swing- or groove-quantize tool and also still in the TODO list.

I guess I wasn't being very fair here, as honestly, I have spent very little time on the MIDI section of qtractor. I will play with it some more.

* Audio metronome
This has been the subject for its own topic here. As there said, it will get its due implementation whenever out-of-session audio file preview/audition gets to the top of the backlog.

Yea, I had originally posted in that topic regarding this. I just thought I would bring it up on this list to keep some type of organization about it.

Tempo Maps. This is certainly a current major design shortcoming. There's no support for tempo nor key signature map, and that will last for quite a while, I'm afraid.

I admit this is a very complex thing to implement, and even harder to make it work correctly. Perhaps if the MIDI engine code were separated from the main tree, it would be easier to get third party help on this. Admittedly, I have not looked through much of your code. I'm not much on C++ anyway, but experience with C and other languages makes it easier for me to understand what is going on, in most cases.

* Keyboard commands
The Home key already does the track-view to reset position at the beginning of session. It does not affect the play-head, that's true. What about Shift+Home for just that?

That would be okay, but what about reversing that idea? Use Shift+Home to reset the track view, and Home to return the playback head.
EDIT: Actually, don't change anything. The backspace key is perfectly fine. I guess I hadn't realized the backspace key function. What about a Shift+Cursor left and right for a scrubbing function? The speed of the scrub could be set somewhere else, or use Shift+Cursor for slow scrub, and Ctrl+Cursor for faster scrubbing. What do you think?

Regarding Numeric Keys 0-9: that will have it's right place when location markers gets real, which are also in the mighty TODO list.

Yea, I guess that is like putting the cart in front of the horse. ;)

A Key: Brings up Mixer is indeed a very good thought. Will try to remember that next time I deal some code from the deck :)

Thanks! :)

Keep'em coming :))

I certainly will, and thanks for your time on this. :)

Lexridge