Audacity Forum

Gale Andrews wrote:Audacity will only record into the selection region and stop recording when it reaches the end of the selection if "Play other tracks while recording new one" is enabled in Preferences (also done by enabling "Overdub" in the Transport menu in 1.3.9).

Ah yes, so it does - and that explains why waxcylinder saw the behaviour persist in 1.3.10 as it would have been using the same audacity.cfg file as his 1.3.9 installation, whereas I did not see the behaviour in a fresh install (with a new .cfg file).

What I don't see, is why continuing recording past the selected region would be desirable in any situation. As a (currently) undocumented feature I think it is confusing that selecting "overdub" should change this behaviour as there is to my mind no obvious connection of why it should do so.

Gale Andrews wrote:I think this may even have been discussed before long ago on -devel

More of a mention than a discussion from what I have found (may 2007 http://n2.nabble.com/Is-recording-suppo ... 53658.html )

If this behaviour is intended, then does anyone know why? If it is unintentional, then it should perhaps be recognised as a bug, even if not a very serious or important one, (and I agree that it is not sufficiently important to hold up the release of 2.0).

stevethefiddle wrote:

Gale Andrews wrote:Audacity will only record into the selection region and stop recording when it reaches the end of the selection if "Play other tracks while recording new one" is enabled in Preferences (also done by enabling "Overdub" in the Transport menu in 1.3.9).

Ah yes, so it does - and that explains why waxcylinder saw the behaviour persist in 1.3.10 as it would have been using the same audacity.cfg file as his 1.3.9 installation, whereas I did not see the behaviour in a fresh install (with a new .cfg file).

What I don't see, is why continuing recording past the selected region would be desirable in any situation. As a (currently) undocumented feature I think it is confusing that selecting "overdub" should change this behaviour as there is to my mind no obvious connection of why it should do so.

I think it was felt by some that if you were not recording against playback you would be very unlikely to want to restrict yourself to recording a region, so letting recording carry on past the region was more user-friendly in that the user did not have to deselect first. I think it's a questionable assumption, for example when you look at people recording an audio book and redoing a botched phrase. I don't think the assumption is strong enough to break the rule that playback and recording should respect a selection region.

stevethefiddle wrote:

Gale Andrews wrote:I think this may even have been discussed before long ago on -devel

More of a mention than a discussion from what I have found (may 2007 http://n2.nabble.com/Is-recording-suppo ... 53658.html )

If this behaviour is intended, then does anyone know why? If it is unintentional, then it should perhaps be recognised as a bug, even if not a very serious or important one, (and I agree that it is not sufficiently important to hold up the release of 2.0).

There was some discussion somewhere as I outlined above (maybe it came up while discussing overdub). It may be hard to call it a "bug" as I have the feeling the behaviour is intended (but misguided). If we feel it important not to change, then we must IMO make it "look" as if it is intended by letting the recording cursor move after the end of the selection, and letting the screen scroll after the cursor passes the end of it.

Gale

Gale Andrews wrote:I think it was felt by some that if you were not recording against playback you would be very unlikely to want to restrict yourself to recording a region, so letting recording carry on past the region was more user-friendly in that the user did not have to deselect first. I think it's a questionable assumption, for example when you look at people recording an audio book and redoing a botched phrase. I don't think the assumption is strong enough to break the rule that playback and recording should respect a selection region.

I strongly agree.
I've not been able to find any further discussion of this on -devel but think that it is worth raising again (at some point). Should I post a reply to waxcylinders message on -devel?

(it may be easier to make Audacity keep to the rule that playback and recording should respect a selection region than it is to make it "look" like the current behaviour is intended.)

stevethefiddle wrote:

Gale Andrews wrote:I think it was felt by some that if you were not recording against playback you would be very unlikely to want to restrict yourself to recording a region, so letting recording carry on past the region was more user-friendly in that the user did not have to deselect first. I think it's a questionable assumption, for example when you look at people recording an audio book and redoing a botched phrase. I don't think the assumption is strong enough to break the rule that playback and recording should respect a selection region.

I strongly agree.
I've not been able to find any further discussion of this on -devel but think that it is worth raising again (at some point). Should I post a reply to waxcylinders message on -devel?

By all means do so. Someone may remember what was discussed before. I do assume this behaviour is intended (a bit like loop play from a cursor point not starting from the cursor as you would expect, leading to similar odd looking behaviour), but I could be wrong.


Gale