From: Robert J. <rob...@da...> - 2004-01-26 05:33:47
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Hi guys, This is pretty much a cronological brain-dump about routing, automation and the 1920's, make what you wish of it. I was doing a little test recording that had just gotten to 4 tracks of audio. I then discovered the VyNil plugin which gives that reeeealy old feeling to the recording. And I thought I'd take a stab at trying to achieve that instant transition from 1920's recording to present day sound that is so popular these days. Okay, my thought was to add two groups between the tracks and the master-out, route all tracks through both groups and add the VyNil plugin to only one of the groups. And then, BAM, apply a volume transition, using automation, in the middle to quickly go from one group to the other. As it happens I never got it working... but it would have been cool :) It seems the sound was only routed to one of the groups, the other group received nothing...(i think it got static a few times though) However, the routing I went through to achieve this was however not funny. I went through each track and remove it's output to the master-out and added new outs to the two groups. A lot of clicks. After having done that I realized that adding the outputs to the group would have been much easier using the groups route-dialog. And probably removing the outputs would have been easier from the Master-out routing dialog... A few reflections from this exercise: - it works, it's usable, it can be quite fast if you have figured out how the stuff is glued together. - figuring it out takes a bit of time... - the number of routing possibilities sometimes hides the obvious. It took me a while before I realized the above scenario. To expand: you can add outputs and inputs on each and every strip, many times it is the same parameters you are changing just another view of the same thing. - the routing dialogs are a bit large... takes up lots of screen estate if you open a few (and I'm running at 1600x1200) Proposal #1 (smash it trash it): What about putting all the routing dialogs in one window with TABs, one tab for each routing dialog. Clicking on the route buttons in the mixer would bring the corresponding tab to the front. (and open the window if it wasn't open) This approach would save screen estate and it would save some work getting all these separate routing-windows to be updated whenever a routing change is applied. (since only the active route window is visible it doesn't have to update the others). ...I only have limited experience of this, perhaps there are usability issues with having them on different tabs. The above approach will not make it easier to add routings... adding sensible default routings seems like the best approach. As for other proposals... I really liked the simplicity of the old routing approach, granted it was also very limitied. It would be very nice if it was possible to add the new routing possibilies so they where directly reachable from the mixer window, instead of having a dialog inbetween. But I can't really think of any good way to do that. Mmm, maybe one approach. Proposal #2. Using the old-style dropdown-menu but making it multi-select so you can add all outs (or ins) to be activated). Hmm.. that sounds a bit too easy, I must have missed something :). Probably hard to see the big picture with it... perhaps it would work with BOTH routing dialogs and a routing-dropdown for the fast and furious :) Regards, Robert |
From: Werner S. <ws...@se...> - 2004-01-28 11:06:06
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On Saturday 24 January 2004 23:16, Robert Jonsson wrote: ... > Proposal #1 (smash it trash it): > What about putting all the routing dialogs in one window with TABs, one tab > for each routing dialog. Clicking on the route buttons in the mixer would > bring the corresponding tab to the front. (and open the window if it wasn't > open) > This approach would save screen estate and it would save some work getting > all these separate routing-windows to be updated whenever a routing change > is applied. (since only the active route window is visible it doesn't have > to update the others). ...I only have limited experience of this, perhaps > there are usability issues with having them on different tabs. > The above approach will not make it easier to add routings... adding > sensible default routings seems like the best approach. i thought of removing all route buttons and associate dialogs from mixer and replace it with a global route dialog. This dialog consists of two parts: 1 - a list of all routes; operations: select a route and press "remove" button to remove it 2 - a list of source nodes and a list of destination nodes; operations: select a source and a destination and press "connect" button to create a new route Maybe there are special buttons for removing all routes or to set some default routes > > As for other proposals... I really liked the simplicity of the old routing > approach, granted it was also very limitied. It would be very nice if it > was possible to add the new routing possibilies so they where directly > reachable from the mixer window, instead of having a dialog inbetween. But > I can't really think of any good way to do that. > > Mmm, maybe one approach. Proposal #2. Using the old-style dropdown-menu but > making it multi-select so you can add all outs (or ins) to be activated). > Hmm.. that sounds a bit too easy, I must have missed something :). Probably > hard to see the big picture with it... perhaps it would work with BOTH > routing dialogs and a routing-dropdown for the fast and furious :) the old style did not allow to connect one output to more than one input. I believe its not possible to do it with a simple dropdown. Werner |
From: Robert J. <rob...@da...> - 2004-01-31 01:50:29
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Hi, > i thought of removing all route buttons and associate dialogs from > mixer and replace it with a global route dialog. This dialog > consists of two parts: > > 1 - a list of all routes; operations: select a route and > press "remove" button to remove it > 2 - a list of source nodes and a list of destination nodes; > operations: select a source and a destination and > press "connect" button to create a new route > > Maybe there are special buttons for removing all routes or > to set some default routes Okay, hard to grasp how it would look, possibly something like qjackconnect I suppose, I'll be eagerly waiting to test it. > > Mmm, maybe one approach. Proposal #2. Using the old-style dropdown-menu > > but making it multi-select so you can add all outs (or ins) to be > > activated). Hmm.. that sounds a bit too easy, I must have missed > > something :). Probably hard to see the big picture with it... perhaps it > > would work with BOTH routing dialogs and a routing-dropdown for the fast > > and furious :) > > the old style did not allow to connect one output to more than one > input. I believe its not possible to do it with a simple dropdown. Yes, it did not. But I think it can be made to do that, not sure about the suitability, for certain operations I think it would be very fast. To clarify what I meant, the idea was that for each strip there is one or more dropdowns containing all corresponding connections. When you bring up the dropdown and click on one of the items it would be changed to a selected state (change of color or a dot on the side). If you click the item again the selection would be removed. I think these type of selection boxes are sometimes used in Mac OS. Actually calling it a dropdown might be misleading. a normal dropdown would not work for this since they display their single selection e.g. [ Group 1: ]|V| Instead it would have to be some kind of selection box that could show none or all of the currernt selections, e.g. [ Master/Group 4/Rou... ]|V| Regards, Robert |