[Ardour-Users] Ardour 3 - export bugs

[Kim Cascone]

I recently upgraded to a new laptop and switched from Ubuntu to Mint - 
*my config is in my sig at the bottom of this post

after my upgrade I bought the linuxDSP plugin bundle since they were 
being offered at a special price

all the LV2 plugs opened in Ardour2 with the old barebones generic UI's 
but it was suggested that I try them in Ardour3 to see the UI in its 
full glory

so I became a monthly subscriber then downloaded/installed Ardour3 
3.5.380-dbg

not having been keeping up with all the work being done in Ardour3 over 
the past couple of years many of the new features came as a surprise to me

e.g., no more auto-crossfading of regions in a track - this was a very 
handy feature which I realize can be replicated with more mouse-clicks 
and maneuvering but still...

and the fact that MIDI now needs a a2jmidid bridge to get my controllers 
to speak to Ardour (thanks to Robin G. for helping me!!)...I see where 
Jack is going and I welcome this - I look forward to the day when Jack 
becomes the CoreAudio/MIDI of Linux Audio

but the export window in Ardour 3 gave me more trouble and helped me 
decide to stick with Ardour2 until things get fixed

here's what happened:

- I imported a 23 minute piece of stereo audio (44/24 wav) into Ardour 3 
that I generated from Pure Data so I could trim, edit and make fade-in/outs
- when I clicked on export I fumbled through a hella-confusing export 
panel which kept duplicating tabs as I tried to create a new one
- the expected behavior was that I could simply add a new tab then edit 
it so I could modify that tab to export a file to a format and 
resolution I typically work in -- but this seems to be an inaccurate 
assumption on my part...?
- after becoming frustrated with how it behaved I deleted all the tabs 
in the export panel and successfully made one that would export 44/24 .wav
     - I clicked on the export button
- then a dialog window/log came up with an error (couldn't copy and 
paste this IIRC) but it looked as though it had rendered out a file in 
the tabbed panel underneath the error/log window but I can't remember if 
this was the case
- Ardour3 froze
- and would allow me to close the error/log window
- and I couldn't quit Ardour3
- I also couldn't close the export panel
- so I did a force quit using htop on the command line
- and rebooted the machine for hygienic purposes
- I discovered that I lost the directory containing my new Ardour3 
session (even though I saved it after I created the new session) as well 
as the presumably exported 44/24 wav file - which i'm guessing wasn't 
actually exported at all because of the freezing export panel and app
- thank goodness I still had the original export from Pure Data
- so I opened Ardour2 and quickly replicated all my edits and exported 
it without any trouble
~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~
so my questions are:
- after some Googling I found some old reports about this export bug but 
thought it had been squashed - is this not the case?
- can some illuminate me as to how the export panel is supposed to work? 
or point me to a RTFM link?
     - I've heard some grumbling about it not being very clear or 
intuitive and I have to agree
- is the region crossfade coming back? - this allowed me to quickly 
audition edits and was a indispensable feature for sound design when 
using Ardour as an audio EDITOR and not a multitrack DAW

anyway, I hope Ardour 3 continues to improve while retaining some of 
what made Ardour2 great but I'm not sure I'm ready to bump up to A3 for 
mission critical work especially since I use it for diffusing my work in 
live performance

thanks
kim

*
-- 
*my Linux audio perf config:*
Lenovo Thinkpad T500
Mint 14 (MATE && Xfce) i686 - 32 bit
kernel 3.5.0-48-generic
filesystem: ext3
jackdmp 1.9.9
Ardour2 2.8.14-1
Ardour3 3.5.380-dbg
Pd version 0.43.4-extended
Presonus Firebox audio interface
Korg nanoKontrols x3
cpufreq-set - both cpu's are set to 2.27GHz
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