For testing purposes I’ll make up simplified cross-fade effects (linear fade only) so that these alternatives can be tried.
In terms of functionality, yes (it does what it is intended to do).
The forum topic for the Text Envelope is here: Text Envelope
Fade Shape does not have to be out, but personally think that if Fade In/Out is available as a separate effect then the case for including the “S” shape fade in the cross-fade effect is quite weak and not worth the extra control.
Me too. Especially not calculations that have to be exact to n decimal places.
The Audacity/Nyquist plug-in GUI is part of Audacity and not part of Nyquist. The GUI does not support interactivity, so controls can not be greyed out, or set to values based on other values in the interface, or set according to any properties of the selection.
Nyquist can determine the total length of the selection, but Nyquist only has access to the selection after the OK (or Debug) button has been clicked.
Nyquist can not see splits or white space in the selection, so it is not able to determine where one audio clip ends and the other begins.
When using the “Limit” control, audio deletion will occur when the selection duration is greater than the combined duration of the fade-in and fade-out.
This cannot be displayed in the plug-in GUI as Nyquist only knows the duration of the selection after the OK (or Debug) button has been clicked.
Deletion will only occur if the “Limit” is set greater than zero (“Limit” is disabled when set to zero) and less than half of the selection duration.
I’m not keen on “Custom fade length” as this implies (to me) that the control will set the length. In the current version, the control will only set the fade duration if the selection is long enough for both the fade-out and the fade-in. If the selection is not long enough for the “set” duration, then only the first half of the selection is used for the fade out and the final half is used for the fade-in.
It is possible to make a plug-in where “Custom fade length” will set the length even if this length is more than half of the selection, but the results of doing this can be quite bizarre. For example, if the selection is 10 seconds of which the first 5 seconds are the end of “song A” and the final 5 seconds is the start of “song B”, then setting the “Custom fade length” to say 8 seconds will create a cross-fade such that the fade-out section is the first 8 seconds of the selection and the fade-in section is the final 8 seconds of the selection. However, in this case the initial 8 seconds of the selection has 5 seconds of “song A” and 3 seconds of “song B” and the final 8 seconds has 3 seconds or “song A” and 5 seconds of “song B”. The only way that I can see to sensibly resolve this and avoid such a weird cross-fade is to throw an error if the “Custom fade length” is greater than half of the selection duration. Other than the word “Custom” this is exactly what I had in the version that I first posted in this thread.
I think that something like “Shortened fade length” may work.
What we really want to say in 5 words or less is something like:
“If the selection is sufficiently long, use only the first x seconds for the fade-out, the final x seconds for the fade-in and delete the region between, otherwise use the initial half of the selection for the fade-out and the final half for the fade-in”.
How about if the control said: “Cross-fade duration” and if the selection is not at least 2x the duration set by this control then an error message is returned with something like (the numbers could be the actual values used):
“To create a 5 second cross-fade, 5 seconds is required
at the start of the selection for the fade-out AND
5 seconds is required at the end of the selection for the
fade-in.
The selection was only 8 seconds, so the maximum
cross-fade duration for this selection is 4 seconds.”
Is it not obvious that creating (for example) a 5 second cross-fade from a 20 second selection will delete some of the selection? (The info text and the Help screen can both say that this will happen).
I suppose that we could have a multiple choice control:
Action: “Fade only” or “Fade and Trim” or “Cross-fade”
Where:
“Fade Only” will apply the fade-out and fade-in but will not delete any audio and will not move/mix the fades.
“Fade and Trim” will apply the fade-out and fade-in and will delete (trim) any excess between the two fades.
“Cross-fade” will apply the fade-out and fade-in, will delete (trim) any excess between the two fades, and will move/mix the two fades to create a cross-fade.
I don’t personally like this idea but I think that it would make it clear what the cross-fade was doing. The downside is that options 1 and 2 are pretty pointless and only option 3 does what the plug-in is intended to do.
I don’t want to dumb down this effect to the point where it ceases to be useful. Even the initial version of this plug-in was “idiot proofed” by Ctrl+Z.