[Ardour-Users] Ardour 3 - export bugs

[Kim Cascone]

On 07/02/2014 03:14 PM, Paul Davis wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 2, 2014 at 6:02 PM, Kim Cascone <kim at anechoicmedia.com 
> <mailto:kim at anechoicmedia.com>> wrote:
>
>     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...
>
>
> The change was based on lots of feedback from many professional audio 
> editors.
not sure I get why pulling it out would solve anything for professionals 
- what behavior would they expect IF they are still allowed to overlap 
regions then? I would expect a mix of regions when overlapped - no? and 
if they do mix why not have them cross fade instead of doing a 
butt-splice mix?

sorry for rehashing all this - I know I'm late to the Ardour3 party and 
everyone is grumpy from overwork :\

> This type of xfade (as long as the overlap) is extremely unusual and 
> basically constitutes "mixing" for which there are other approaches.
right, some audio editors used to have a feature called "paste mix" 
which was also apparently of "no use to professionals" and why it's no 
longer found in mot editing apps - it was a very useful prototyping 
feature not found in the beige vanilla audio editors commercially 
available (Audacity also lacks this btw)

but yes the cross-fading overlapping regions was unusual and was part of 
what made Ardour2 a cut above the rest IMO
>
>
>     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
>
>
> You do not need a2jmidid if you use Jack 1.
I'll stick with Jack2 for now - I find that when I start "solving" 
problems like this in Linux audio new and bigger ones emerge and I can't 
afford the downtime in the studio right now
>
>
>     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:
>
>
> Most (not all) issues with export have been caused by Jack2. Some of 
> them are fixed with the version you have, but not all.
OK - is there a bug list I can look at?
>
>
>     - 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
>
>
> It is more confusing because it is VASTLY more powerful.
do clarity and power have to be mutually exclusive? I find that 
confusion in a UI leeches any potential power

for example: IIRC there wasa  tab called Redbook but I wanted to add one 
that suited how I work, so I added a tab and proceeded to edit it, I 
called it 44_24, so the new tab was created but it also replaced the 
existing tab that was Redbook with a duplicate of the 44_24 one just 
created so I wound up with two tabs called 44_24
> We would welcome suggestions on how to simplify it/ease its use.
good to know you are open to suggestions - I just want to be able to add 
a new tab then modify it with the various params I typically use for 
audio - it seems like it's almost there - it's just unclear exactly how 
to do this
>
>     - 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...?
>
>
> the format you want ought to be already available. if not, we should 
> add it.
not that I could see and why I tried to add it - I would expect that the 
user could add her own tabs with format/resolution/bit depth params for 
ease of workflow - is this not how its supposed to work?
>
>     - 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?
>
>
> the export dialog has not been written up in the manual.
I saw that -- but there was no indication elsewhere (that I could easily 
find) of how export should work
>
> - 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
>
> if you mean "crossfades that automatically span the entire length of 
> an overlap" ... i have some loose plans to reinstate it as an option 
> after an initial overlap is created. i have no plans to reinstate 
> tracking the overlap length and updating the crossfade based on that.
that's a shame since it made working on quick and dirty sound design 
prototyping very easy - I guess I'll just have to use the fade-in 
fade-out handles and kludge my own cross fades then :\


I understand I'm walking into conversations and debates that have been 
raging for some time now and probably everyone is sick of rehashing for 
people just migrating to Ardour3 now but I have been a evangelist for 
Ardour for years and a monthly subscriber now and would hate to see it 
become a design by focus group tool that is useful to people cranking 
out pop records and film soundtracks only (aren't there enough tools for 
those people?) - the thing that made Ardour killer is how simple and 
intuitive it was to use and how some of the features could be found 
nowhere else - I I like where Ardour 3 is headed but I hope you don't 
throw out the baby with the bathwater by killing all the charm of Ardour 
2...which is the version I'm rolling back to for now as Ardour 3 doesn't 
seem ready for prime time. :)

my 0.02 euros
kim


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