Re: [Audacity-devel] Redesigning effect dialogs
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From: James C. <cr...@in...> - 2004-10-26 19:09:52
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> It will just have to be like it is in other realtime systems; when you > run out of CPU, you have to do some rendering down, or turn off a few > effects temporarily. Most of my mixdown projects in Postfish > eventually exceed the processor and I have to do partial pre-renders > or let a final render proceed slower than realtime. DAW systems are > pretty much the same. I think we can do better. Instead of the user explicitly commanding a partial-pre-render, we can use 'idle time' to cache pre-renders. If advanced users don't like this, they can switch off the feature. For those users who spend most of their time working near the top of the effects stack, this will be a significant win. > > I am interested in working on GUI aspects that allow us to treat > > real-time and non-real time effects in exactly the same way. > > I envisage a progress bar tied to the actual time-base ruler. > > It shows how much of an effect has been rendered so far. You > > can start playing an effect even before it has finished rendering - > > whether it's a real time effect or not. > This emilinates _the_ great value of realtime... hearing your changes > instantly as an integral part of the workflow. Otherwise, it's just > batch with a fancier UI: 'twiddle, OK, listen, cancel, undo, twiddle, > OK, listen, cancel, undo..." I hear you, and I'm not proposing to eliminate the ability to twiddle values whilst a render is in progress. If the effect renders faster than you play, then you get conventional real-time effects which you can listen to and twiddle values as you do so. If the effect renders slower than you play, then you still get an enhanced 'batch mode', at least enhanced compared to the batch mode currently available in Audacity. You won't be able to play back the effect in real time, but no program could, without more CPU. The enhancements over normal batch mode are: - You can start using the audio before the render is complete. - You can twiddle a parameter e.g. an automation control point, whilst the effect is rendering in batch mode. Audacity will need to re-render some chunks, if it has already rendered that section, but that's all. - You can layer additional effects over a batch mode operation that is still in progress. - You can twiddle real time values in the effect layered over the batch mode effect, whilst the batch mode effect is still rendering - and can listen to the results as you do so for those parts of the batch mode effect that have been rendered so far. Are these standard in other programs? These 'enhancements' come from using enhanced real time effects code to drive batch mode. We have an effects stack, and we're keeping track of cached chunks of sound, whether we're in batch or real time mode. --James |