Re: [Audacity-quality] Regression testing Macros versus Chains

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

On 23 March 2018 at 16:37, Bill Wharrie <bi...@go...> wrote:

>
> On 2018/03/23, at 12:24 PM, Steve the Fiddle <ste...@gm...>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 23 March 2018 at 15:51, Peter Sampson <pet...@gm...>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 23, 2018 at 3:29 PM, Bill Wharrie <bi...@go...> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On 2018/03/23, at 6:20 AM, Peter Sampson <pet...@gm...>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Consensus here seems to be
>>>
>>> a) *Applying Macros to files *should be an automated process with no
>>> need
>>> for further user input for things like file/folder locations.
>>>
>>> But note that if you have not turned off the warning on importing
>>> uncompressed
>>> files - you will get the warning as a user interrupt when you for
>>> example run
>>> MP3 conversion on a WAV file.   Can we assume that smart users will have
>>>
>>> turned this off anyway - or do we need to make Macros working in batch on
>>> files just bypass this message?
>>>
>>>
>>> Macros should ignore this setting. One is simply opening/importing the
>>> uncompressed file in order to process it then export it, then close the
>>> project (without saving changes) and move on to the next.
>>>
>>
>> That makes excellent sense Bill - I will add this comment to the Wiki
>> Macros page
>>
>
> +1, though ideally there would be macro commands for handling metadata.
>
>
> Ah, I hadn’t thought of the preference to display the Metadata dialog.
> That should be suppressed as well, regardless of the preference. On
> open/import of each file, the metadata is updated to reflect what’s in the
> new file, correct? So just pass this on to the exported file.
>
> If we go with my proposed “export to” dialog, it could have a checkbox
> “preserve metadata” if we want to give the user some control over this. In
> other words, they’d have the choice to pass the metadata through, or have
> not metadata in the exported/processed files.
>
> Macro commands to manipulate metadata is perhaps a little much at this
> point, but an interesting idea.
>

I agree, not for now, but could be a nice feature for those that use batch
processing and metadata (I rarely do either, so have little skin in this
game).

Steve


>
> — Bill
>
>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> b) *Applying Macros to project* - here the consensus appears to be that
>>> it is OK
>>> to halt the run of the Macro to prompt for user input, for say output
>>> folder location.
>>>
>>>
>>> Additionally ...
>>>
>>> c) *Standard output folder location*:  I personally would like to
>>> propose simplifying the
>>> process by always writing to exports to a fixed file location and I woul
>>> suggest:
>>>
>>> *... Documents \ Audacity \ Macros Output*
>>>
>>>
>>> No consensus on me on this one. As I’ve said before, I prefer a dialog
>>> (similar to the Export Multiple dialog) that lets the user set the export
>>> folder, and additionally add an optional prefix or suffix to the file name.
>>> This dialog would come up before the macro runs.
>>> Every other batch processing utility I have used allows the above
>>> options to be set.
>>>
>>
>> And it's unlikely to happen as James doesn't want to mess with it.  ;-))
>>
>
> I'm with Bill.
>
>>
>> The dialog approach  you like is fine for running Macros on the project -
>> as consensus says that user interrupts are fine there.
>>
>>
>> But for applying Macros to files are you happy that it creates a
>> "cleaned" folder in the same folder that the original file(s)
>> come from (as we have now in Chains) ?
>>
>> The downside I can see with that is that a frequent user of Macros/Chains
>> who doesn't clean up
>> after themselves could end up with many "cleaned" folders in different
>> folder locations. making
>> the use of file finders quite difficult.
>>
>
> The "cleaned" folder system has always seemed a bit of a kludge to me. I'd
> guess that it was designed for the specific case of the long obsolete
> "Clean Speech" project.
>
> Steve
>
>
>>
>> Peter.
>>
>>
>>
>>> - Bill
>>>
>>>
>>> That way
>>> i) there would be no need for dialog as in b) above
>>> ii) users wouldn't get "cleaned" folders all over the place
>>> iii) users would always know exactly where to look for their exports (I
>>> fell foul of this while testing)
>>> iv) it makes it simpler for us Forum Elves to tell  users where to look
>>> v) It would simplify the Manual's instructions (which currently are a
>>> little tortuous)
>>>
>>> Peter
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 4:53 PM, Peter Sampson <petersampsonaudacity@
>>> gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I will try and summarise people's positions in:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *https://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Macros_discussion_page#Regression_testing_Macros_versus_Chains
>>>> <https://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Macros_discussion_page#Regression_testing_Macros_versus_Chains>*
>>>> My preference is for Macros to continue to do it the way that Chains
>>>> does it.
>>>>
>>>> James is puzzled as he says he has not touched that part of the code
>>>> ;-//
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> If we don't just do what Chains does - the n I would like to think
>>>> about always using
>>>> a preset standard folder:
>>>> ... Documents > Audacity > Cleaned
>>>>
>>>> Then users would always know where to find their processed files - and
>>>> we'd know
>>>> where to tell them to look (I note a fair few posts about this on the
>>>> Forum)
>>>>
>>>> I'd also consider renaming the folder to Macros Output
>>>>
>>>> Peter,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 5:03 PM, Peter Sampson <petersampsonaudacity@
>>>> gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Dealing with the easy ones first Bill:
>>>>>
>>>>> >As I noted, it would be silly to apply a macro to files if it didn’t
>>>>> have an export step. Do we want to protect
>>>>> >users against this by disallowing “apply to files” if the macro does
>>>>> not contain an export step?
>>>>>
>>>>> +1
>>>>>
>>>>> I would very much like to see that.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> >I notice the new “Export MP3” step does not include any parameters.
>>>>> Perhaps it should specify at least an
>>>>> >MP3 preset, or the options shown in the Export dialog when exporting
>>>>> an MP3. Similarly for FLAC.
>>>>>
>>>>> -1
>>>>>
>>>>> Used this way it preserves the user's last-used MP3 export settings
>>>>> (just like MP3 expprt itself).
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Peter.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> ------------------
>>> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
>>> engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org <http://slashdot.org/>! http://
>>> sdm.link/slashdot_______________________________________________
>>> Audacity-quality mailing list
>>> Aud...@li...
>>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/audacity-quality
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> ------------------
>>> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
>>> engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org <http://slashdot.org>!
>>> http://sdm.link/slashdot
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Audacity-quality mailing list
>>> Aud...@li...
>>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/audacity-quality
>>>
>>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> ------------------
>> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
>> engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org <http://slashdot.org>! http://sdm.link/
>> slashdot
>> _______________________________________________
>> Audacity-quality mailing list
>> Aud...@li...
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/audacity-quality
>>
>>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------------
> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
> engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org <http://slashdot.org/>! http://
> sdm.link/slashdot_______________________________________________
> Audacity-quality mailing list
> Aud...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/audacity-quality
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------------
> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
> engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
> _______________________________________________
> Audacity-quality mailing list
> Aud...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/audacity-quality
>
>