[Ardour-Dev] Feedback

[Paul Davis]

On Wed, 2008-10-08 at 11:58 +0300, Juhana Sadeharju wrote:

i seem to recall you using ardour several years ago too.

> ardour: Track could display how many channels it has. I have mono
> sample which goes only to left channel in stereo track, and to
> both output channels when it is in mono track.

precisely as intended.

> Can these default track/output cabling configurations be changed?

click on the input or output button of the relevant mixer strip. Press
Alt-m to make the mixer visible, or Shift-E to get a single strip in the
editor window.

the dialog for this has been (and is still being) radically redesigned
in version 3.0.

> ardour: Rearrangement of the tracks? Now for unknown reason
> the master track rearranged from top to bottom. I have now 16
> tracks stereo at top and 8 mono tracks at bottom. I may want
> want rearrange the tracks.

on the left hand side of the editor window is a tabbed notebook. make it
wide enough to see. click on "Tracks/Busses". drag the names up and down
to rearrange them.

then read the front page of http://ardour.org/

> ardour: Regions window could display the clips visually by region
> length. The sample set contains samples for three songs with different
> beat each. I'm probably doing the right thing when I now test and
> group the samples in this sessions, then rename the files, and
> then start a new sessions. But a visualization possibility of the
> samples never make Ardour worse.

I have no idea what any of this means.

> ardour: In Rosegarden, I used muted tracks as sample storage.
> It could be better: (1) Two simultaneous sessions: one for remix,
> one for samples. Grab&drag should be possible between sessions.
> (2) All samples in the sample session should be locked so that
> I won't be able to remove the samples.

i agree that DnD between ardour instances would be nice. ardour never
destroys files without explicitly prompting you, and even then, only
files that it created. we have new "import Foo from other session"
functionality in 3.X, but this is a little different than what you are
asking for. removing regions from the region list is very difficult to
do accidentally in ardour.

i have never heard of anybody working in the style that you are
describing. the work to support what you are asking for is pretty
enormous. i think you need to re-examine some of your assumptions and
goals. 

> ardour: When I take regions to tracks, the region window could show
> how many copies are in the tracks. Specially now I want just exactly
> one copy of each and no misses.

version 3.0 does precisely this. this will probably not be back-ported
to 2.X (though who knows).

> ardour: How to vertically minimize all tracks?

select them all, go to the Regions menu, select Height -> Smallest.

> ardour: Multiple pages? Now all tracks are in one sheet. Multiple
> pages would help. Tab-pages perhaps. Each page would have its own
> set of tracks. 

put the tracks into edit groups. show/hide the groups from the left-hand
side tabbed notebook, under the "groups" section. this is where you
create and delete groups too.

> Sometimes it is useful to have the same view in
> multiple pages (when the same arrangement is just divided to
> multiple pages) and sometimes not to have same view (when the second
> page is used as sample clipboard, or when second page contains submix
> which is shown as a region in the first page). The vertical "zoom"
> is not that important in this context as is the time-zoom.

ardour 2.5 has "zoom state". you can have up to 9 different zoom states
accessible via keyboard commands.

> ardour: A region has simple envelope (up,sustain,down). When I shorten
> the region, release mouse button, and then lengthen the region back,
> the envelope has changed.

could be a bug, not sure. please file a report in mantis on this, so
that it doesn't get lost.

> Solution: The shortening should stop when the slope angles are about
> to change.

not going to happen. this is an arbitrary and generally silly concept of
what the region envelope is.

> Note: Perhaps region related undo. Perhaps I should copy the region
> before shortening that much. These are not as nice as the suggested
> solution.
> 
> ardour: A shortened a region to minimum, and I'm now unable to
> lengthen it at all. The region is just a vertical line.
> Note: Temporary zoom-in helped, but this is not nice solution.

i agree. we don't have a better one right now. adding a new mouse mode
that only trims regions is a nasty solution too, and we're out of
modifier keys for this purpose.

> ardour: When importing audiofiles to region list, I get errors:
> ERROR]: Import: cannot open input sound file
> These files goes ok when I take a second attempt to load them.
> The problem is not the files, that is sure.
> Note: Ardour opens a window for each individual file. The screen
> goes wild when 100 windows comes and go in rapit fashion.
> The cancel button is totally useless. I simply have to wait
> until this mad import has been finished. And what would the cancel
> button cancel? Only one soundfile? More useful would be to cancel
> the whole import process (as much as 100 soundfiles).

what version of ardour is this anyway?

> Suggestion: Make only one import window with cancel button.
> Quit importing the rest of the files when the cancel button has
> been pressed.

that is how it is designed/intended to operate. the window should
contain messages like "blah blah (8 of 100)"