Sliding Pitch and Time Crash

[jorhay1]

Moved from Mac 1.2 Forum

Hi Everybody. (my 1st post )
LOVE Audacity!

My Mac crashes whenever I apply a Sliding Pitch and Time effect on a very short selection of a stereo file (a bit less than a second-like a snare) if the total length of the File is longer than 90 seconds and if the pitch is maxed down (-12) and the time is anything more than -%25.

On files that are 30 secs or less it works fine at -12/- EDIT:%75.

I'm trying to get the effect of a turntable hitting the power and the vinyl spinning down on a mix.

I have tried many different clips,
trashed the prefs.

2 ghz Intel Mac
2 gig ram
Mac OSX 10.4.11

Serato Pitch and time works great in Pro Tools

Thanks
Sorry if this is a noob question

[Gale Andrews]

Hi Everybody. (my 1st post )
My Mac crashes whenever I apply a Sliding Pitch and Time effect on a very short selection of a stereo file (a bit less than a second-like a snare) if the total length of the File is longer than 90 seconds and if the pitch is maxed down (-12) and the time is anything more than -%25.

On files that are 30 secs or less it works fine at -12/-%100.

I'm trying to get the effect of a turntable hitting the power and the vinyl spinning down on a mix.

I have tried many different clips,
trashed the prefs.

2 ghz Intel Mac
2 gig ram
Mac OSX 10.4.11

Serato Pitch and time works great in Pro Tools

I tried 1.3.13 Alpha on Windows 7 and I can get a replicable crash on 1 second of audio with Initial Tempo and Initial Pitch at 0%, Final Tempo at -86% or greater reduction and Final Pitch at -12. It makes no difference here as to the length of the whole track. You can only enter a negative tempo change of up to -90%, so I don't know how you are managing to enter -100% (which is nonsensical anyway). A pitch change of -12 on its own, or a tempo change of -90% on its own does not cause a crash, so I suggest you either:

• Use the slider, which makes the negative tempo change no more than -75%, and then run the effect again on the modified selection. If you don't want to change the effect parameters, you can use the Command - R shortcut to repeat the effect with the previous parameters. That gives a nice effect to my ears.
• Run the effect with a pitch change of -12 and no tempo change, then run it again with no pitch change and a tempo change of -90%

There is also a Nyquist plug-in called Turntable warp which "simulates unplugging and plugging in a turntable while it's powered, and related effects such as speeding it up before unplugging it". To use it, extract the .ny file from the zip, add the extracted .ny file to your Plug-ins folder inside your Audacity installation folder, then restart Audacity. I don't think it sounds as good as Sliding Time Scale when you want to simulate just "unplugging", but up to you.

I've e-mailed the author of "Sliding TimeScale", but I suspect the response may be to further restrict the greatest possible pitch change. You can run two passes for more extreme effects.



Gale

[jorhay1]

I tried 1.3.13 Alpha on Windows 7 and I can get a replicable crash on 1 second of audio with Initial Tempo and Initial Pitch at 0%, Final Tempo at -86% or greater reduction and Final Pitch at -12. It makes no difference here as to the length of the whole track. You can only enter a negative tempo change of up to -90%, so I don't know how you are managing to enter -100% (which is nonsensical anyway). A pitch change of -12 on its own, or a tempo change of -90% on its own does not cause a crash, so I suggest you either:

• Use the slider, which makes the negative tempo change no more than -75%, and then run the effect again on the modified selection. If you don't want to change the effect parameters, you can use the Command - R shortcut to repeat the effect with the previous parameters. That gives a nice effect to my ears.
• Run the effect with a pitch change of -12 and no tempo change, then run it again with no pitch change and a tempo change of -90%

There is also a Nyquist plug-in called Turntable warp which "simulates unplugging and plugging in a turntable while it's powered, and related effects such as speeding it up before unplugging it". To use it, extract the .ny file from the zip, add the extracted .ny file to your Plug-ins folder inside your Audacity installation folder, then restart Audacity. I don't think it sounds as good as Sliding Time Scale when you want to simulate just "unplugging", but up to you.

I've e-mailed the author of "Sliding TimeScale", but I suspect the response may be to further restrict the greatest possible pitch change. You can run two passes for more extreme effects.

Gale

Hi Gale,
Thanks for the info. (yes. sorry. I meant -75% tempo down - The maximum amount on the mac version 1.3.12.---well at least for me)

I tried the work around and it works.

A couple of things,
My selection is only 230 miliseconds long.
Both a pitch change of -12 on its own, and a tempo change of -90% on its own actually is causing a crash.
The length of the file is, in my case, is relevant. (If I copy the selection to a new track I can perform both -75% time and -12 pitch in one pass.)
The maximum tempo down i can do is 25%
The maximum pitch down i can do is -10 or -11 (-11 will cause crash once in a while)

But your work around works.
I tried:
Time: -25%, -25%, -25%, (or more)
then,
Pitch: -6, -6 (or -10, -2 etc.)

also your work around gave me this idea:

At the same time:
Time down -25%
Pitch Down -3 steps
Repeat to taste.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This really works well for me!


Thank you so much for your time.
Until this plug in (which is great and has so much potential) is worked out,
you've basically fixed my problem.

Thanks for the heads up on Turntable Warp.
I'll check it out.
cheers.

[Gale Andrews]

The maximum amount on the mac version 1.3.12.---well at least for me)

-75% is the greatest negative tempo change available if you use the slider. If you click in (or tab into) the text entry box, you can enter reductions up to -90%.

My selection is only 230 miliseconds long. Both a pitch change of -12 on its own, and a tempo change of -90% on its own actually is causing a crash.The length of the file is, in my case, is relevant. (If I copy the selection to a new track I can perform both -75% time and -12 pitch in one pass.)
The maximum tempo down i can do is 25%
The maximum pitch down i can do is -10 or -11 (-11 will cause crash once in a while)

I was actually testing on about 950 ms (near enough one second, because you said "a bit less than a second"). With that length, tempo unchanged and Initial Pitch Shift =0, Final Pitch Shift = -12, there is no difference in the time taken to a) process that selection within a five minute track or b) process it on its own track (underneath the five minute track or in another project).

But if I work with a selection 200 ms long, it takes a minute to process inside the five minute track with lengthy periods of Windows saying it is not responding; in its own track it takes a few seconds to process. If I work with 100ms inside the five minute track, I do get a freeze that goes on for minutes and have to force quit.

The other timeline-changing effects or others I tried such as Equalization don't behave like that, so I think you're onto something now I know how short the selection is.


Thanks



Gale

[jorhay1]

-75% is the greatest negative tempo change available if you use the slider. If you click in (or tab into) the text entry box, you can enter reductions up to -90%.

Great!

I was actually testing on about 950 ms (near enough one second, because you said "a bit less than a second").

When I wrote that, I had just downloaded Audacity that same day so i wasn't quite used to the time line. When I said 'a little less than a second' the file was quite zoomed out and i was 'guess-timating'
But when I went back to try your work around I saw that it was significantly shorter. And of course that's why I mentioned it. Sorry about that.

I was looking for a great audio editor that was simple yet powerful for some time.
I go back to the Sound Designer days (2.81,,,, ), Peak, etc,
and have not been satisfied with the commercial products on the market.
Audacity is PERFECT!
Thanks so much.

[Gale Andrews]

Clayton (the plug-in author) hopes to have a look at this problem shortly. I'll post here when there is some news. Sliding Time Scale is slower than Change Pitch or Change Tempo, but is higher quality and more accurate (it doesn't change the length when changing pitch). Clayton says he already has some improvements to make it a bit faster.



Gale

[steve]

I've been using the sliding pitch/time effect today on Linux (Ubuntu 9.04, Audacity 1.3.12) and Audacity has been crashing regularly. It seems to crash mostly when using extreme settings on relatively short sections of audio. In most cases I was processing selections of between 2 seconds and 0.5 seconds when it crashed.

[jorhay1]

I've been using the sliding pitch/time effect today on Linux (Ubuntu 9.04, Audacity 1.3.12) and Audacity has been crashing regularly. It seems to crash mostly when using extreme settings on relatively short sections of audio. In most cases I was processing selections of between 2 seconds and 0.5 seconds when it crashed.

yes sir.
I have been using Turntable Warp for the short extreme stuff and SP&T for longer, high quality things.
At least until Clayton fixes it.

[Gale Andrews]

I've been using the sliding pitch/time effect today on Linux (Ubuntu 9.04, Audacity 1.3.12) and Audacity has been crashing regularly. It seems to crash mostly when using extreme settings on relatively short sections of audio. In most cases I was processing selections of between 2 seconds and 0.5 seconds when it crashed.

Do you see what jorhay1 and I found, that if you copy that region to a new track or project and apply the same parameters to that new track, there is less likelihood of a crash or excessive processing time? Is it a crash (Audacity disappears) or a freeze for you?

In case Clayton cannot now get around to this for a while, I raised a bug.



Gale

[steve]

Do you see what jorhay1 and I found, that if you copy that region to a new track or project and apply the same parameters to that new track, there is less likelihood of a crash or excessive processing time?

Yes, that does seem to help.

Is it a crash (Audacity disappears) or a freeze for you?

Using it yesterday it was doing a proper crash (Audacity disappears).

Trying it today - if the audio in the track is short, then it will either work, or it will freeze.
If the selection is a small part of a longer (say 30 seconds) track, it will work, freeze, or crash.
Usually I can use the effect 2 or 3 times before it decides to mess up. Processor usage is pretty high when it locks up but not noticeably greater than when it is busy doing any sort of processing. Memory usage doesn't go particularly high either. Generally if I just want to use the effect once, there will be no problem, but there is definitely a bug in here.

I'm not really adding anything thing here other than confirming that the same problem also occurs on Linux. The Bugzilla entry covers what I'm seeing.