[Ardour-Users] Cleaning up unused regions

[Thomas Vecchione]

> Why do you want to encode while recording? Doesn't make sense to me.
> You'd have to encode on recording and to decode on playback, rendering
> etc. everywhere where it hurts and very often.

Well as I already mentioned, initial testing meant that it wasn't a
huge hit, and might be very viable for tracking small sessions.
Beyond that...

Because in my particular case, and in cases where there is plenty of
processing power(Ardour really doesn't use much) it makes perfect
sense.  If I have close to an hour of silence on a track, and 5
minutes of material, then the amount of space saving approaches 90% if
not more(I don't have the logs of the testing in front of me).  And
yes it requires processing to encode and decode, though flac is
already written in a way that the decode processing is minimal and
there are other options to consider that would allow for those
processing concerns on playback to be even less.

And just because there is no need for you to keep it small, doesn't
mean that space isn't a consideration when you are tracking hours of
material in 16 or more tracks every week;)  Even moreso if you get
into the 40+ range though I suspect in that area processing during
recording may become more of an issue.  I have far more processing
power available than I do HD space on occasion.

> Another 25% space can be saved by setting the wave format to 24 bits
> instead of default(wonder why) 32b float. As most soundcards have 24 bit
> adc you should not lose precision on recording.
> /mn0

Technically most sound cards AD processes are closer to 20bit IIRC,
but that is details, they do report 24 bit and pass data like that.
The reason the internal format of Ardour is by default in 32 bit is
likely for two reasons, one Jack is 32 bit and it is relatively easy
to pass identical data back and forth as a result, but also because
when modifying and mixing 24 bit audio you might find you need more
data precision to lessen any loss from mathematical limitations (For
instance numbers that need infinite precision) thus why Jack does it
mixing in 32 bit, but then are you going to dither down or worse yet
truncate down the output to 24 bit when you bounce the result to disk
to work with more(For instance freezing a track with processing)?

        Seablade

On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 1:08 PM, fukked up <fukked_up at gmx.net> wrote:
> Am 05.10.2011 13:39, schrieb Thomas Vecchione:
>> my plan is to eventually implement the ability to record to
>> FLAC, it causes a performance hit, but in initial testing it seemed
>> acceptable.
> Why do you want to encode while recording? Doesn't make sense to me.
> You'd have to encode on recording and to decode on playback, rendering
> etc. everywhere where it hurts and very often.
> I planned to archive my ~1TB ardour sessions with a script that encodes
> every *.wav into FLAC and then tar the whole project for easier
> synchronisation. One big file is read faster than several small ones.
> You need a second script to get the session back again. You only have to
> encode when you've finished editing and to decode when you actually want
> to use an already archived project.
> There's no need to keep the project, that you're currently working on,
> small.
>
> Another 25% space can be saved by setting the wave format to 24 bits
> instead of default(wonder why) 32b float. As most soundcards have 24 bit
> adc you should not lose precision on recording.
> /mn0
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ardour-Users mailing list
> ardour-users at lists.ardour.org
> http://lists.ardour.org/listinfo.cgi/ardour-users-ardour.org
>