Re: [Audacity-devel] Adjustable fades

[Steve t. F. <ste...@gm...>]

Thanks for the comments.
I think I need to give a brief overview and update of what I've been working on.

I agree that we don't want too many fade effects in the Effect menu,
but I hope to be able to replace the Cross Fade In and Cross Fade out
so that we eventually have:

* Fade In (linear) - the current built in effect.
* Fade Out (linear) - the current built in effect.

* Adjustable Fade - a versatile fade effect capable of different fade
shapes and arbitrary start and end gain
* Pro Fade Out - (non-linear one click effect) - recently committed as
"One-click Fade out"
* Pro Fade In - (non-linear one click effect).

* Pro Crossfasde - (non-linear one click crossfade).
* Text envelope - an accessible envelope tool.

"Crossfade" and "Text Envelope" go some way beyond what would normally
be thought of as "Fade Effects".

The reason for returning to the "Pro" nomenclature is not only that
they sound "more professional" than linear fades, but because they
will be 'programmable' with a simple configuration tool. (the name is
not essential).

It has become evident that many users have their favourite non-liner
fade type which they use regularly. Having this available as a one
click effect can be of great benefit to productivity / work-flow.

Current status:

The "One-Click Fade Out" is fully working and has been committed.

The "Adjustable Fade" is in the final stages of completion and should
be ready (including documentation) in time for 2.0.3 release. This
effect includes presets for log, square root, and other commonly used
fade-in/out effects. It also provides a *much* more convenient and
accessible method for adjusting the level and providing a huge range
of fade types. Personally I think that the Adjustable Fade effect is
an indispensable tool.
Old versions of this have been in my "essential plug-ins" pack and
used regularly for years. I think that the current version represents
an excellent balance of functionality and ease of use.

"One-Click Fade In", "One-Click Crossfade" and the Configuration Tool
are currently in "beta" versions and are not currently in line for
2.0.3 release.

The Configuration Tool enables the fade type to be set (independently)
for the three "One Click" effects. It is not 'required' for these one
click fades to work. It is only required for those users that wish to
use a different fade curve in their "one click" fade effects. In this
sense it could be seen as an "advanced" tool and could be an optional
(downloadable) add-on.

Text Envelope is currently available on the wiki:
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Nyquist_Effect_Plug-ins#Text_Envelope
This will be updated in the light of feedback from the "Adjustable Fade" effect.

I would hope that the Adjustable Fade effect will eventually be
superseded with a superior C++ version but I would like to see the
Nyquist version included with Audacity until such time as something
better is tried, tested and on the table. I hope to have a "release
ready" version available within the week.

Steve



On 3 December 2012 23:40, Peter Sampson <pet...@ya...> wrote:
> Richard,
> I'm no expert here (I've never used a mixing board, but I have
> been somewhat heavily involved in testing Steve's Adjustable
> Fade - as a relatively un-expert user, at least in this respect).
> I would agree that with this we would seem to have too many
> fades - but be aware that  should we choose to implement Steve's
> Addjustable Fade - then AF could easily replace the existing
> Cross Fade In and Cross Fade Out (and the linear fades too)as their
> shapes can readily be created in AF.
>
> Also please be aware that Steve is working on a configurator tool
> for the Pro Fade (which you recently committed) which will enable
> power users to create their own shape and fade for Pro-fade.
> And he is also working on a one-click musical fade in (Pro Fade In?).
>
> Much discusssion has taken place on the Forum (mainly by the QA team)
> in recent months on the late development of Adjustable Fade which has
> honed the effect into its current state (almost ready for commit imo).  It
> would
> be a shame to see all this valuable work bypassed in favour of an old  patch
> which you acknowledge got bogged down in build issues
>
> My vision for the future is based on just this pair of fades, both
> configurable,
> Pro Fade and Adjustable Fade.  Pro Fade (in and out) would be the easy to
> use one-click fade (but still configurable by power users) with Adjustable
> Fade
> as the power-users tool.  Either of those tools could be configured by a
> user to
> deliver a simple linear fade should they desire.
>
> I fully acknowledge (and I think Steve does too) that in the fullness of
> time
> Adjustable Fade would benefit from a rewrite in C++ which would extend its
> capabilities which are currently limited by Nyquist - but that C++ work is
> beyond Steve's capabalities I believe.
>
> This is a long way of saying +1 for Steve's AF over Norm's patch ;-)
>
> Thanks,
> Peter
>
> Peter Sampson
> Tel: +44 (0)1625 524 780
> Mob: +44 (0)7732 278 299
> From: Richard Ash <ri...@au...>
> To: aud...@li...
> Sent: Monday, December 3, 2012 11:00 PM
> Subject: [Audacity-devel] Adjustable fades
>
> On Sun, 25 Nov 2012 14:51:01 +0000
> Steve the Fiddle <ste...@gm...> wrote:
>
>> On 25 November 2012 11:56, Peter Sampson <pet...@ya...>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > Also his "Adjustable Fade" which has been through several variations
>> > as it has been under development and is now at version 30.  I have
>> > been testing this for Steve too and my personal belief is that it
>> > could be considered
>> > for release.  It is not perfect yet, but it is better than anything
>> > we currently
>> > have (and what it does, it does well).
>
> (especially those who know more nyquist than me)
>
> We have far too many ways of doing fades in and fades out in the
> Effects menu (ignore envelopes for the time being) at the moment - a
> menu that lots of people complain is too crowded.
> I count up:
> * Fade In (native above the divider, does linear)
> * Fade Out (ditto, other way)
> * Cross Fade In (nyquist, power law?)
> * Cross Fade Out (ditto, other way)
> * One-click Fade out
>
> and now a new way of doing fades with the adjustable plug-in, which
> does:
> * Linear fades (but doesn't say they are)
> * S-curve fades (with parameters).
>
> I tend to agree with Norm that we need one tool which allows a choice
> of laws - not least because I tend to use a logarithmic (even dB steps
> fade) which is not in there at all.
>
> Either way I struggle to justify having more than a couple of entries
> in the menu:
> * Fade... (leading to a dialogue which can do whatever parameters the
>   user needs)
> * One-click Fade out (because it's not a straight fade, but a lot of
>   users want to achieve this without having to think).
>
> So to eliminate current one-shot fades, we need to add square, square
> root and logarithmic to what we have.
>
> At this point I noticed that Norm had sent a patch to -devel doing
> large parts of this in native code back in January(!) but the thread
> seemed to get bogged down in build issues and didn't get reviewed to
> any extent.
> http://audacity.238276.n2.nabble.com/Fade-in-out-not-general-enough-td7149431.html#a7163453
>
> Anyway, that patch still applies quite happily to the current audacity
> sources.
>
> The UI isn't especially nice (in particular using text fields for start
> and end gains), but it provides a choice of four fixed fade laws
> (linear, square, log, square root) which work nicely, and a handy
> button to swap the start and end (for switching between fade in and
> fade out).
>
> Again, it isn't all there - we can't do S-curves (which I can see the
> use of) with this effect, although I think everything else can be.
>
> My preference would be to get the native code implementation doing
> S-curves (probably looking not unlike Steve's design, in terms of fade
> type being a drop-down list at the top, with curve tweaking and
> start/end levels below it. I like Norm's swap button and the way the
> start and end levels produce the same sound whether you use % or dB
> however.
> My main reasoning for preferring a native implementation is that it
> would be fully translatable, and we get
> to loose some odd small files from the distribution.
>
> Norm, how hard would it be to add S-curves into your fade patch to
> Audacity?
>
> Richard
>
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