File	Date	Author	Commit
COPYING	2013-05-30	Sergey Pushkin	[87c079] licensing information
README	2013-06-13	Sergey Pushkin	[57c658] typo
README-windows.txt	2013-06-27	Sergey Pushkin	[0f883f] Windows build script and readme
build-windows.bat	2013-06-27	Sergey Pushkin	[0f883f] Windows build script and readme
livemix.pl	2013-06-14	Sergey Pushkin	[cfa456] progress indication

Read Me

Livemix is a tool for automated downmixing of live multitrack sound recordings.

Livemix will search directory tree for audio files, assuming each of them is a 
separate track, then group them into sessions based on file size, and then
create a downmix for each session.
Silent tracks are ignored, the others are processed by applying some effects
such as compand, then normalized and then combined into downmix with equal
volume. Sessions are named by the time of recording in YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS format.

Intended use is to quickly generate mp3 previews of live multitrack music
recordings (such as rehearsals or live performances), created by some sound
recording software (Avid ProTools or Audacity for example).

Livemix uses SoX sound processing utity to do all the work with tracks
preprocessing and mixing, and LAME mp3 encoder to produce final mp3 file.
Therefore, livemix needs sox and lame executables to be in search path
or in the same dir as livemix executable.

Help on switches:

./livemix.pl [-h|--help] [--wav] [--mp3] [--format=output format]
	[--start-from=datetime]	[--silence-threshold=number]
	[--effect=[!]regex,effect,args] [--sox=path args] [--lame=path args] 
	[source dir] [target dir]

<source dir> : path to directory where to search for track wav files, 
	current directory is the default

<target dir> : path to directory where to place resulting files,
	current directory is the default

--wav, --mp3 : output format, you can specify any, both or nothing of these,
	mp3 is the default

--format : output format for resulting wav file,
	default is "--bits=16 --rate=44100", see sox documentation for details

--start-from : time in YYYY-MM-DD[ HH:MM:SS] format, the tracks recorded
	earlier this moment will be ignored. if not specified, start time
	will be taken from the last YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS file in target dir.

--silence-threshold : is the minimum value for difference between maximum and
	minimum amplitudes in a track to consider it as a silence

--effect : effect specification, consists of regular expression to filter
	track by filename and sox effect specification to apply to track.
	filter expression may be negated by ! exclamation sign at the beginning.
	You can specify any number of effects. The default behaviour is to
	apply the same compression to all tracks. For list of effects and
	their specification syntax see SoX documentation.

--sox : path and parameters to pass to sox executable, 
	default is "sox --combine=mix --norm=-3". You can change this to specify
	sox location in your system or to change tracks combining parameters.

--lame : path and parameters to pass to lame executable,
	default is "lame --quiet --abr 160". Change this to specify lame
	location in your system or bitrate of resulting mp3 file.

Invocation example, on windows:

livemix.exe "C:\ProTools Sessions" "C:\livemixed" ^
	--start-from=2013-01-01 ^
	--silence-threshold=0.2 ^
	"--effect=,compand 0.2,1 -70,-60,-30,-30,-20,-10,-20,-5,-50 -5 -90 0.2" ^
	"--lame=lame --quiet --abr 192"

no trailing backslash in paths!

Invocation example, on unix:

./livemix.pl ~/recordings/ ~/livetest/ \
        --start-from=2013-01-01 \
        --silence-threshold=0.2 \
        "--effect=,compand 0.2,1 -70,-60,-30,-30,-20,-10,-20,-5,-50 -5 -90 0.2" \
        "--lame=lame --quiet --abr 192"

--
Sergey Pushkin <pushkinsv@gmail.com>