QTractor's Gaping Hole of Video Demonstrations

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qtractor

For me, the most exciting part of a multi-track sequencer is HEARING the results.

At the moment, the Qtractor website features:

  • great screen shots
  • an exhaustive manual
  • a clearly-explained change log (something missing from MANY Linux projects)

However, Qtractor is missing a very basic but POWERFUL method of getting people excited...VIDEO DEMONSTRATIONS!
For me, the most enthralling part of discovering new software is SEEING someone USING it to create amazing results!

__________________________________________

Here's are two video demonstrations of similar software to QTractor; called Open Octave:

======================
Video Demonstration Examples
======================

1.) Using Open Octave's GUI:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcKz3Aw8zP8#t=19s

2.) Some of the dramatic results possible with Open Octave's tools:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv65yBQIdOg#t=36s

I definitely prefer QTractor to Open Octave, because (among other things) QTractor is better combined into one package. (and I love how it remembers my Jack settings)

Open Octave require running scripts and other complications, while QTractor allows me to get started faster.

__________________________________________

So if you (and perhaps the QTractor community) would take even a LITTLE time and make some BASIC video demonstrations of the music creation possible with Qtractor, I think it would be a HUGELY beneficial addition to the website.

I would suggest YouTube, because other video hosting services often take awhile to buffer. (Vimeo!! >_>)

Thanks for reading.

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Well, that one you can blame the graphis driver and your composite manager, or the lack of it (Compiz? XRender, OpenGL ?) ... I'm using plastique since before it was called plastik, and never saw such artifacts... desktop effects are all full-steam here (nvidia and intel drivers) but, pardon moi, this is a KDE4 shop anyway :)

Cheers

I do have the nvidia proprietary driver and latest kernel-rt and seeing no problems at all. I know it taints the kernel so that reporting bugs on this kernel setup is pretty useless. But again, I have seen no problem at all (latest is 2.6.33.5-rt23 attotw).

However, I do my own kernel builds ;) and a special but pretty dumb patch should be applied to the nvidia wrapper source for it to work properly on rt kernels. That also means that you must have distinct nvidia kernel modules for each kernel, vanilla or rt. Isn't that your case?

Byee

Submitted by AutoStatic on Sun, 22 Aug 2010 - 11:17

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Hello guys,

Just uploaded a new Qtractor tutorial to YouTube: Sidechain Compression in Qtractor

It's a little tutorial on how to do sidechain compression in Qtractor. I did the screencast with recordMyDesktop that I packaged myself for Ubuntu 9.10 because of several bugs. So Rui, if you want to try yourself, make sure you have the latest svn checkout of recordMyDesktop. in 10.04 both gtk-recordMyDesktop and recordMyDesktop are broken again and useless for working with JACK :(
I'm now experimenting with ffmpeg, but found out ffmpeg has no JACK support anymore. So I'm trying to work with the ALSA-JACK plugin, hopefully it doesn't generate too much xruns. But hopefully I can get it too work because the quality of the output of recordMyDesktop is too low if you want to edit it afterwards and upload it to YouTube. This way it gets decompressed and uncompressed 3 times, resulting in major quality loss.
And I had to do the editing (I use OpenShot for this) on Fedora 13 because melt is broken or not fully functional in every single Ubuntu install I have atm. Video editing still has a long way to go on Linux, contrary to music production ;)
Next tutorial will be about using a vocoder in Qtractor.

Best,

Jeremy

Astonishing!

You're doing do a fantastic job. Keep up doing some more and maybe I'll forgo your promise in helping on the user manual... or was it about documentation in broader and general sense? I guess you're almost redeemed :))

It's also clear that you're probably using a prior build that svn trunk's 0.4.6.15, or is it telling us that that lame-green-on-white display on GTK based themes is not fixed still?

Cheers

ps. As with Louigi's demo above, took the liberty to embbed the youtube video on your original post.

that lame-green-on-white display on GTK based themes is not fixed still?

The only way I've found to change the background of the display to black is to change the background of all input boxes in Gnome to black but it's not cool, because qtractor looks better but all the rest of the windows don't. If there's a better way to do it I'd like to know.

In the qtractor svn version I'm using now (thanks for that btw ; )) the lame green is gone, I have black fonts over white background which is much better. But green over black looks too good to be dismissed!

PS: awesome tutorial!

Hello Rui, thanks. I think I've offered to write a README for rtirq a while ago. I could still do that now that I grasp better what it actually does :) Concerning the tutorial, I'd like to do more.

And yes, I'm using 0.4.6.4 I think. I've grown attached to the green on white time display. I will miss it when it turns from radiant white to sultry black...

Best,

Jeremy

Ah OK. Think I have lost track of all the Qtractor user-manual contribution bids. I wrongly assumed you were on of those :)

Re. green-on-white, the new display colors should show up as bland regular black-on-white or whatever is from your global GTK theme, so that you won't miss much but that lousy black frame ;)

Anyway, I will recommend you to update to the latest and greatest SVN trunk just because there's a plenty of improvements and fixes that I'd like you to harness and, to be honest, let me feel a lot more confident ;)

Cheers

Done, I'm now on 0.4.6.66 (rev. 1652). The display is now black on white. I'm going to test a bit further considering the huge changelog :)

Best,

Jeremy

Edit: Qtractor segfaults with my original .config/rncbc.org/Qtractor.conf file. After renaming it Qtractor starts up again.

Submitted by rncbc on Fri, 10 Sep 2010 - 07:05

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Does it segfault right on start up or is it somewhere later? Can you reproduce it back, by restoring the old .conf file again and taking a stack-trace dump for the record? Remember to do that with a debug build (./configure --enable-debug).

A diff -u against the old and newer .conf files would be also interesting. Even more interesting after you replicate all your older options into the newer as much as possible, please.

Cheers

Submitted by AutoStatic on Fri, 17 Sep 2010 - 12:38

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I just discovered this setting in the Controllers window and how awesome this setting is! I immediately created 2 new presets for my BCF2000 and added the corresponding mappings. Bam, 32 tracks I can control from my BCF2000! Thanks Rui!
And I will upload my original Qtractor.conf that causes the segfault file tonight. If I have time this weekend I'll also try compiling a debug version. Does a strace help at the moment or not?
And on-topic: I've set up a completely new screencast environment with ffmpeg, jack_capture and a nested Xephyr session at a 1280x720 resolution which should yield the best results on YouTube. To be continued :)

Best,

Jeremy

Does a strace help at the moment or not?
not much. strace is mostly a system-call tracer and the problem here is likely to be on a pretty higher level (my best guess goes to some old option setting being parsed in still and causing unexpected program operation) ...

Byee

Speaking of which, I think I've finally discovered what was going wrong with my trials with recordMyDesktop. It was just on the last few days that I've searched a little deeper on the interwebs and found the hack: a --v_bitrate 2000000 particle was missing on the Advanced.../Misc/Extra Options.

Now I finally could do some real screencasting and voilá, here the first couple of crappy results:

qtractor-bbe-1.avi (1024x720, xvid)

qtractor-bbe-2.avi (1280x720, xvid)

Submitted by rncbc on Fri, 17 Sep 2010 - 21:49

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qtractor-oaemr-1.avi (1280x720, xvid)

hmm..., there's really serious trouble on video vs. audio sync... and it seems to purport related to graphics/system load (cpu%): the heavier the later video is. audio doesn't drop a frame, of course, it's jack in the back (audio-time is real-time:)

qtractor-omg-1.avi (1280x720, xvid)

Submitted by rncbc on Sat, 18 Sep 2010 - 12:22

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crash reproduced, fixed on the spot. qtractor svn trunk r1662 (0.4.6.75+) might add a little bliss :)

- Metro/player-bus lifetime race condition fix.

cheers

Hi Rui,

Im using the 0.4.6.75 and I've noticed something that didn't happened in previous versions. When I hit F8 or F9 to pop up connections or mixer, the window appears unselected, this means that pressing F8 (or F9) to close it won't work because I have to click on the window to select it in order for it to get the key's order. Esc don't work neither. It's a small bug I guess because it wasn't there before and the workflow seems slower that way.

see you

Submitted by rncbc on Sat, 18 Sep 2010 - 21:32

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I can confirm the Esc key not doing its deeds when the connections or mixer windows have no focus, but their respective F8 and F9 default keyboard shortcuts do work here as advertised unless,... hmm... try switching on the infamous View/Options.../Display/Keep tool windows always on top option, things might start behaving a little differently ;)

cheers

Thanks, I found that the "Keep tool windows always on top" option was already ticked on, but I'm still on the same condition. I tried on the regular Qtractor I have installed (0.4.6) and I realized that it had the same behaviour, I think there must something with my desktop manager (Gnome) because I tried Qtractor in IceWM and worked fine.

Some times things get fixed magically, sometimes they break (tragically). I'll do some searching and try to solve this thing.

Sorry for blaming on you!
see you

No, it's the same. The problem is because the connections/mixer window doesn't pop up selected, I have to click on it and then if I press F8/F9 again it goes away. The shortcuts work but I have to select the window.

Sorry, yes I did, I have the 0.4.6.76. But if it works for you and it works in IceWM, it has to be something wrong with my setup because I used it fine two weeks ago. It won't prevent me from using qtractor though.

thanks for the concern and patience Rui

Submitted by maghoxfr (not verified) on Tue, 28 Sep 2010 - 03:36

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I updated to the propietary nvidia drivers (I didn't have them installed, who knows why) and all my problems (pc realted of course) faded away. Starting by the little issue concerning qtractor pop up windows, and following by the major slow performance overall. Great relief! Sorry for blaming on you...again! LOL

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