[Ardour-Dev] Ardour 2.3 released

[Paul Davis]

On Mon, 2008-02-11 at 21:53 +0100, Fons Adriaensen wrote:

>   - the 'nudge' keys. Currently the smallest step is 10ms,

not true at all. nudge uses the value shown in the nudge clock, which
can use any units. you can switch the nudge clock to "samples" and nudge
by 1 sample at a time.

there used to be a "nudge by next increment" command, but i recently
removed it because i suspect it was never being used. btw, nudge
playhead was also recently bound to Alt-{right,left}arrow.

>     and that's too much. Also it's a pain to change the 
>     step size, and the hh:mm:ss:dd format isn't really
>     what you need here. There are several solutions for
>     this that would not take up more screen space than
>     the current controls.

don't leave us hanging....

> * Some way to 'scrub the tape' would be very practical
>   to locate the point you want to edit. All it needs is
>   a small textured strip somewhere that you move with
>   the mouse, and having a variable scale factor.

have you tried the existing scrub/audition mode? have you used the
shuttle controller in the upper left? to be fair, i've been listening to
PT and Logic scrub modes and they do something entirely and totally
different to what ardour does (which is just to run the transport at
varispeed. PT in particular seems to do a sort of large-scale granular
operation - each pixel the mouse moves stuffs a fixed quanta of audio
into the playback pipe, and how fast the mouse moved controls how fast
that quanta plays back. if you move pixel by pixel in PT, its quite a
strange effect, but once you keep moving the mouse, it starts to make
sense. its a nice system, but it won't be happening in ardour any time
tomorrow.

> * Some way to quickly test an edit (i.e. hear it in
>   context) without having to scroll the screen, move
>   the edit cursor, etc. Single button, with configurable
>   pre- and post times. Variations on this are to hear
>   only the first half, or the second (i.e. the fade-out
>   or fade-in). 

what is "an edit" ? 

also, fons, what version are you using, and have you read
http://ardour.org/new_editing_model ?

> * Easier control over the shape and length of the cross-
>   fade.

some work on this has been happening, motivated by discussions about the
merits and downfalls of ardour's xfade editor vs the Neve audiofile
(apparently beloved of many BBC audio editors).

> * A difficult one: a practical way to handle level changes
>   over an edit.

i think you're overloading "edit" to mean something more specific than i
take that work to mean (for me, an "edit" is anything done to change the
arrangement of or actual material on the timeline)

> In the 'small pains' department: the varispeed wheel.
> Try to get exactly 50% - not possible, you can have
> 49 or 55. Same with the semitone scale: 11 or 13 but
> not 12. The control law (more resolution around zero)
> is well chosen, but the effect of its quantisation to
> integer (pixel) inputs was apparently never considered.

no, its just a bug. i'll fix it before 2.4, along with your complaints
about auditioner auto-connect.

> Going to the 'attention to detail' level, arbitrary
> quantisation of control values is a general problem.
> Sometimes you want to set up *exactly* -20dB gain for
> example. On a 'professional' tool it should be possible
> to do this (but maybe I'm missing the trick).

type -20 into the gain indicator above the fader.

--p