Audacity Forum

Using Vista, if I have a project open and I open a second one (File->Open). this happens:

Start the first one and Pause the playback.

Click Pause on the second one. Nothing happens yet, just changes the focus. Click Pause again. The first one resumes playing!
The Pause buttons on both instances of Audacity control the same one. If neither one is Paused and one is actually Playing, the other is locked out as it probably should be.
Apart from this quirk, it's quite useful to be able to have two projects open at the same time so one can copy/paste a piece of one project into another. Does Audacity copy the selection into the target project so I'm not editing in the wrong project?

Just noticed the Playback Volume slider on each project moves the corresponding slider on the other project and controls the volume of whichever one is currently playing, but the change doesn't show up on the Windows Volume Mixer. Minor issue compared to the Pause button.

DickN wrote:Using Vista, if I have a project open and I open a second one (File->Open). this happens:

Start the first one and Pause the playback.

Click Pause on the second one. Nothing happens yet, just changes the focus.

Not true I think if you use the current 1.3.12 Beta. No focus change, focus remains in the second project. You can check your version at Help > About Audacity.

DickN wrote: Click Pause again. The first one resumes playing. The Pause buttons on both instances of Audacity control the same one. If neither one is Paused and one is actually Playing, the other is locked out as it probably should be.

Audacity can only play one project at a time (it's a feature request that it should mix project playback like tracks playback). If you use 1.3.12 you can switch to the second project and press Play to stop the first project and play the second one.

As I recall, we started making changes to Transport button behaviour in multiple projects and never finished it. I think it would be good if you could have different projects simultaneously paused. Unpausing project A would resume playback of that one, and if while project A was playing you then switched to project B and unpaused it, B would play and A would pause (Pause button in A would depress). As far as I recall, this is technically possible. But as it is now, I think Pause and Stop would actually be better to reflect the same state whatever window you are in. It looks very odd to have a project playing when its Pause button is down, and to actually pause it you then have to press Pause twice.

DickN wrote:it's quite useful to be able to have two projects open at the same time so one can copy/paste a piece of one project into another. Does Audacity copy the selection into the target project so I'm not editing in the wrong project?

Yes. Try it.

DickN wrote:Just noticed the Playback Volume slider on each project moves the corresponding slider on the other project and controls the volume of whichever one is currently playing, but the change doesn't show up on the Windows Volume Mixer.

The change shows up on the Device volume, which is what the Audacity output slider controls. See:
http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... er#p101702



Gale

Gale Andrews wrote:

DickN wrote:Using Vista, if I have a project open and I open a second one (File->Open). this happens:

Start the first one and Pause the playback.

Click Pause on the second one. Nothing happens yet, just changes the focus.

Not true I think if you use the current 1.3.12 Beta. No focus change, focus remains in the second project. You can check your version at Help > About Audacity.

Focus was on 1st project because I had just pushed Play on that one.

I am using 1.3.12 Beta.

The Pause button on the project that's playing doesn't change appearance when Pause is pushed on the other project, but playback does pause and resume. Also noticed that the mode change (playing/pausing) only occurs upon the corresponding state change (Up/Down) of the button being pushed. Thus, if Project A is Playing and the Pause button on Project B is Down, the first push of Project B Pause pops the button Up but has no other effect. The second push puts the button Down and Pauses Project A.

Gale Andrews wrote:

DickN wrote: Click Pause again. The first one resumes playing. The Pause buttons on both instances of Audacity control the same one. If neither one is Paused and one is actually Playing, the other is locked out as it probably should be.

...
If you use 1.3.12 you can switch to the second project and press Play to stop the first project and play the second one.

Yep, just tried it. Play on each one does a Stop on the other one. So my remark that having one project playing locks out the other one is wrong.

Just noticed another quirk: After Stopping Project A by pushing Play on Project B, pushing Stop on Project A Stops Project B. This seems to happen only if the Project whose Stop button is being pushed was previously Stopped by the other project.

Gale Andrews wrote:

DickN wrote:Just noticed the Playback Volume slider on each project moves the corresponding slider on the other project and controls the volume of whichever one is currently playing, but the change doesn't show up on the Windows Volume Mixer.

The change shows up on the Device volume, which is what the Audacity output slider controls. See:
http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... er#p101702
Gale

I started that one ! I hadn't looked at this on Windows XP when I posted it.

On Windows Vista, with 2 projects open the only response in the Volume Mixer window is the text under the Aucacity logo, which changes from the project name to "panel" while the mouse button is depressed on an Audacity volume slider.

With just 1 project open, woah! something strange just happened. Now with only one project open the response in the Volume Mixer panel is just like it was with 2 projects open - no response in any of the sliders, just the name change under the Aucacity logo. I tried closing and reopening Audacity, likewise the mixer panel, opening the RealTek GUI (which I normally have open when recording), even rebooting Vista. I observe that Audacity's Output Level slider now affects only Audacity's level in the Volume Mixer (as indicated on the meter there) even though it doesn't move the slider there and neither the Audacity slider nor the Speakers slider in the Volume Mixer affects the Output Level slider in Audacity. Actual volume level in the headphones behaves as 2 separate faders in cascade: Audacity's Output Level slider and Volume Mixer's Audacity (project name) slider, which also moves in response to Volume Mixer's Speakers slider. This is entirely different from the way it was behaving when I posted "Output Slider Association with Windows Volume Mixer". There's also a new slider in Volume Mixer, titled "Name Not Available". One of those Microsoft Updates, maybe?

Just tried all of this on the laptop (Windows XP, SP3). Same behavior among the transport buttons, but the volume sliders control the input channel slider (Labeled "Wave" regardless of Project name) on the Windows Volume Mixer (and vise-versa) as well as showing the change on both Projects' volume sliders.

I think the behaviour of the Pause button is distinctly odd.

(For some reason when I displayed this topic a few minutes ago there were no replies, but when I tried to post I was notified of multiple replies )

Gale Andrews wrote:As I recall, we started making changes to Transport button behaviour in multiple projects and never finished it.

I have a vague recollection of changes to play and stop in multiple projects but I couldn't find anything on Bugzilla so I've added the issue as stated. http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=234