Re: [Traverso-devel] Some glitches with 0.40.0

[Remon]

Hi Nic,

> tool tips were meant as small but important improvements, which should be
> simple to solve and should thus make it into the next release, before we
> focus on major changes and forget 'polishing' 0.40.0 a bit more.

OK, I'll see if I can add those tooltips, I think it indeed makes sense to add 
them now.
Also, my plan is to keep cvs in a highly releasable state, so new features or 
fixes can be released real soon! (which also involve polishing things).
My experience is that (real) testing by many users only happens after a 
release, so long periods of 'we are testing now, please test too' doesn't 
work....

> The thing with the fades and key actions, well... you know we have very
> different approaches. While you have a very clear idea of how the
> contextual interface should be implemented in a consistent way, I just load
> a project from time to time and see how far I get with mixing as compared
> to Samplitude (until I reach a point where I need feature X to go on). In
> these situations I look at it purely from the user's point of view, and I
> usually find lots of minor issues that are not at all obvious from the
> developers point of view. When I report them, it's not my intention to say
> "that's crap, fix it!". Instead I want to hear your opinion, maybe discuss
> it, or just make sure you registered it and will consider it in future
> design decisions. My comments were meant to be constructive criticism, not
> nagging, 

Of course, and it's highly appreciated! 

> but then again I can absolutely understand that even constructive 
> criticism can be inappropriate in certain situations and cause a lot of
> frustration.

Hehe, yeah, our most polished release ever is barely out, and instead of 
praise, a list of complaints :D
Bad timing, that's all, and your feedback is very valuable, please don't 
hesitate to bring those issues up now and then!

> > I think it's something that's used elsewhere, but perhaps different. The
> > point is that an object could be too small to be edited contextually, so
> > we 'select -> magnify' the object, and it becomes large enough, while the
> > rest of the viewport remains the same.
> >
> > Say you have a clip of 20 pixels height, and 10 pixels width, selecting
> > the area -> magnify, magnifies the selection part to say, 100 height, 250
> > pixels width. Within the magnified area, you can use the contextual
> > interface just like you was used too, including scroll, zoom, split,
> > well, you name it....
> > Until implemented, it's hard to know if it will work, but what do you
> > guys think ?
>
> My spontaneous ideas are:
>
> Contra:
> - difficult to implement
> - it could be confusing, but as you say, we'll have to test it first
> - there might be simpler solutions, see below

Yes, the simple solution of course will be implemented as well, but it 
degrades Traverso's powerfull functionality, that is, when working with many 
small clips, Traverso's interface doesn't offer any advantage over other 
programs.

The 'magnifier window' would be integrated into the canvas, like a normal 
canvas item. For that to work, we need to be able to add a normal QWidget (or 
actually a QGraphicsView) as a normal canvas item.
Trolltech is working on this as an experimental project, and maybe it will be 
available in Qt 4.4.
In case that will be true, adding this particular feature is very simple! 
(basically adding another QGraphicsView as a canvas item, setting the part of 
the scene to visualize, and ready to go....)

> Pro:
> - it might actually work ;-)

I hope so :D

> What I would like to have is the possibility to change most of the
> parameters of a clip numerically. E.g. opening a clip editor which allows
> to set:
>
> - start position
> - length / end
> - gain / normalize value
> - fade length / mode / strength / bending
> - plugins
>
> (I haven't mentioned yet that I would like to have plugins for individual
> clips. Please ignore it for the moment ;-) ) Being able to enter these
> values numerically is important IMHO. Maybe such a dialog reduces the need
> for the zooming function you described above? OTOH one must be able to
> select the clip in order to open this dialog or to zoom the clip. So
> selection is still not solved in both cases. How about zooming clips below
> a certain width threshold (around 20 pixels) a little bit, say to 20
> pixels, as soon as they have mouse focus? Similar to buttons indicating
> focus with a graphical effect.

The 'zooming clips when below a certain threshold' is kinda what the magnifier 
window should accomplish...

And yes, an 'AudioClip edit Widget' is planned, with the variables you 
mention, though I didn't think of plugins yet. BTW, plugins are part of 
AudioClips allready, The gain and gain curve currently are implemented by a 
Gain Plugin !
Also, the normalization and gain have merged into one value (just gain) in 
Traverso 0.40.0, as suggested, hopefully I understood that correctly ?

It also reminds me of the planned feature to enable numerical input for hold 
actions...

> > > I'll think them out a bit more before getting on your nerves O:-)
> >
> > Hah, yeah, you actually did work on my nerves .... :)
>
> I realized that. Sorry again.


Ah, no problem! I'm glad you're looking forward to make Traverso better and 
better!


Regards,

Remon