Append Import

[steve]

@Gale Andrews

Tested on Windows 8 (just to be awkward). If the “Import Folder” field is empty and I choose “Sequential”, “Mono” (or “Stereo”) I get a message “Directory “” does not exist" (with no Debug output). The “Usage” help states the working directory correctly, though. This is true whether the working directory contains importable files or not.

Thanks, that was a bug. I think that I’ve fixed it now, but please recheck this in the next version if you can on Windows 8 in case it does something weird.

@Gale Andrews

I take it we cannot have a control:
“Label sequential import” Yes, No"
that does the labelling at import time

Sadly no.
Plug-ins can only return one result to Audacity (other than debug text). So you can either return the audio, OR labels, but not both.

@Gale Andrews

It seems un-necessary to label starting at the cursor point

Nyquist is unaware of the cursor position or the track start time. The start time for Nyquist is “time = zero” and Audacity puts “time = zero” at the cursor position.
This is part of the wish-list feature that I’ve been discussing with Robert J. H. here: Information passed from Audacity to Nyquist

@Gale Andrews

I see from the code that “Alternate channels” assumes equal file length, but could it not fill the empty channel with silence if the files are different length, rather than truncate the file?

I’m not sure why it does that… I think that is an Audacity bug, possibly related to http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=425
The sound exists in Nyquist, but Audacity is truncating it to the shortest channel.
I can work around the problem by padding the shorter channel with silence at the end.

@Gale Andrews

I know file lists only support ascii

“Nyquist” only supports ASCII. In cases where Nyquist does not need to “understand” the characters (if Nyquist can just treat the string as a series of one byte characters), non-ascii characters will often not cause a problem, but in the case of “reading” the file list, Nyquist runs into the Unicode character and produces the “invalid octal digit” error. I don’t think that I can do anything about this. The “fix” is for Nyquist to support Unicode, but I guess that is a long way off.

Thanks for the help screen suggestions. The new version is:

Append Import will look in the ‘Import Folder’ for
‘filelist.txt’. If found, it will try to read each
audio file listed in ‘filelist.txt’ and ignores any
audio files in the Import Folder. If not found, all
supported audio files in the Import Folder will be
loaded in alphanumeric order.

The default Import Folder is:
“/home/steve”.

Supported file types .WAV .AIFF and .AU must have
valid file extensions. If used, ‘filelist.txt’ must
contain only a list of uncompressed audio files.
Each file must be on a new line and must be either:

1. A file in the ‘Import Folder’
2. A fully qualified file name.

Import Mode:
‘Sequential’ will append the files end-to-end.
‘Alternate Channels’ will assume that the first file
is intended for the left channel, the next file for
the right, and so on.

To see a list of imported file names, click the
Debug button.

@Gale Andrews

I think this is one plug-in where a built in C++ version would be vastly more functional.

IMO, the biggest limitation is the lack of a file browser for Nyquist plug-ins. I don’t think that the developers ever really expected Nyquist to be used for anything more than simple experimentation. As Nyquist plug-ins are becoming more sophisticated they are running into the limitations of the very basic interface. It’s not only the GUI limitations, but the limited interaction between Audacity and Nyquist. I hope that we can find a developer that is interested in developing Nyquist functionality in Audacity.

List of changes in this version:

• Bug fix for empty ‘Import Folder’.
• Debug window indicates if no files found (rather than just an empty debug window).
• The debug window now shows the import folder path before the list of imported files.
• If one channel is shorter with Alternate Channel mode, pad the shorter channel with silence.
• First help screen updated.
  AppendImport.ny (9.67 KB)