Generate Silence in 1.3.7 versus 1.2.6

[ignatz]

This is my first post to this forum. I have been using Audacity for 2 or 3 years without any significant issues.

Here are 2 screen captures of the generate silence function. The first is from 1.2.6 and the second is from 1.3.7.

GS audacity 1.2.6.jpg (37.52 KiB) Viewed 1298 times

GS audacity 1.3.7.jpg (29.49 KiB) Viewed 1298 times

I work with wave or mp3 song files, typically one at a time, and want to add 2 seconds of silence at the end of each song.

In 1.2.6, I can simply hit the 2 key on my keyboard and click the "generate silence" button.

The procedure seems to be more complicated in 1.3.7. You have to highlight the 3 with the mouse, choose 0 and then highlight the 0 with the mouse and choose 2.

In what way and for whom is the behavior in 1.3.7 an improvement over 1.2.6?

Is there a quicker way generate 2 seconds of silence at the end of each song?

Is there a way to hack the registry to change that default from 30 seconds to the number of my choice?? I don't see any way in the Audacity interface to control the default. I opened the audacity.cfg file and do not see any setting for generate silence. If I understand correctly, 1.3.7 does not use the registry, so is the 30 second default uncontrollable?

Thanks for any responses.

[kozikowski]

I didn't find any way to change the defaults (open audacity.cfg in a text editor).

The generators are a constant source of entertainment. They zoom at the wrong times, the defaults are wacky, not settable, and don't follow Audacity Project Defaults, and there's no hot keys. Wouldn't you kill to be able to press Shift-Alt-S (or something) and get two seconds of well behaved silence inserted into the work with no other effort on your part? My personal need is 1/2 second. Try setting that with your data entry window.

Koz

[george13]

On 1.3.8., i can generate 2 seconds of silence with 3 button presses. The '3' in '30 seconds' is already highlighted and also the 'ok' button, so pressing '0', '2' and 'return' does it.

1.3.7. is probably messed up in that regard.

[ignatz]

George and Koz:

Thanks for the replies. I just installed 1.3.8. On my system, only the 3 in 30 is highlighted by default. I discovered I can do it in these 3 strokes. OK is not highlighted by default here.

0, which causes the 3 to change to a 0 and automatically highlights the 0 at the far right

2, which causes the already highlighted far right 0 to change to a 2

Click OK with mouse or enter.

This raises a larger point. I understand the application is open source and written by what amounts to volunteers.

Having said that:

Is there no oversight as to what actually is accepted into the released version? I would think that anyone would think that the behavior in 1.2.6 as described in my first post is preferable to what happens in 1.3.X.

Can I assume that whoever is at the top of the Audacity food chain disagrees and thinks 1.2.6 behavior is not preferable?

Or is there no one at the top of the food chain and we are at the mercy of whoever is in charge of developing each individual component, such as this generator?

Thanks again for any comments.

[kozikowski]

<<<Can I assume that whoever is at the top of the Audacity food chain disagrees and thinks 1.2.6 behavior is not preferable?>>>

I think it's much more complicated than that. The modules are interlinked and sometimes a simple change to the user interface causes all sorts of problems to ripple through the program. Sometimes a new version will cause the developers to go back and "clean up" all that ratty code that's been a vexation for months and years. Then they discover why it was ratty....

But it's also true that some modules have credits as they are, for the greater part, written by one person.

<<<top of the Audacity food chain>>>

People keep envisioning Massive Corporate Structure. I'm just a lowly, part-time tester and I'm half of the Mac Development Team.

This is the page for Feature Requests. I'd be surprised if you didn't have to scroll down about 500 times to get it all in.

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... e_Requests

The complaints that result in Massive Failure or Destroyed Shows usually get the most attention followed closely behind by Everything Else.

Koz

[george13]

Ignatz,

You described in great detail what i had in mind. I'm using the mac version so maybe the ok button isn't highlighted in the windows version, but pressing 'return' seems to work.

About your other question: i personally have not much of an insight in the development process, but I'm aware that a higher version number doesn't automatically mean everything is better (or even as good) as before ...

[ignatz]

Yeah, I haven't much of an idea as the scope of the development effort. For all I know, Audacity worldwide amounts to 5 people.

But it is curious that basic functionality of all menu items isn't at least looked at when all the individual components are assembled into a new release and made available for download. Other more important fish to fry, I assume. Better that than carelessness. Whoever develops the generate silence portion had to have something in mind when it was changed.

Thanks for the reponses.

[steve]

Many of the Generate effects do not have their own default values for duration, and so fall back onto the system default that is written into the Audacity code.

Considering that some users work on projects that involve many hours (or even days) of audio, while others work on projects that last just a few seconds (or even fractions of a second), the Audacity developers probably came to an agreement that 30 seconds was a reasonable default value to suit the majority of users. For myself I would find around 10 seconds to be a good default.

In Audacity 1.3.x the format for the time that is being selected can be in any one of several different formats, including "samples" for people working with very short audio clips, "frames" for people working with video, hh:mm:ss, or just plain "seconds" for general use. This was not available in Audacity 1.2.x where you had only the option for "Seconds". I would like to see an additional option for "bars:beats".

If you build Audacity from source you can change the fallback default by editing the "Effect.cpp" file and changing the line

Code: Select all

double Effect::sDefaultGenerateLen = 30.0;

By changing the "30.0" to "2.0" would then set the default to 2 seconds when you build Audacity.