timeline

[davelindsey]

Is it possible to show the timeline as the 'actual time of the day', ie have the start of the session show (for example) "12:11:40" rather that having it start as "0"??
(using version 2.1.2 on Windows 7)

[Gale Andrews]

Is it possible to show the timeline as the 'actual time of the day', ie have the start of the session show (for example) "12:11:40" rather that having it start as "0"??
(using version 2.1.2 on Windows 7)

No that is not possible, so I moved this to "Adding Features".

However the upcoming 2.1.3 release of Audacity lets you add system date and time to the name of a track when it starts recording. You can calculate time of day from this.


Gale

[steve]

Is it possible to show the timeline as the 'actual time of the day', ie have the start of the session show (for example) "12:11:40" rather that having it start as "0"??
(using version 2.1.2 on Windows 7)

What would the Timeline show if you record a track, and then record another track under the first track ("overdubbing")?

[Gale Andrews]

Is it possible to show the timeline as the 'actual time of the day', ie have the start of the session show (for example) "12:11:40" rather that having it start as "0"??
(using version 2.1.2 on Windows 7)

What would the Timeline show if you record a track, and then record another track under the first track ("overdubbing")?

Perhaps a little dropdown arrow in the Timeline where you chose which track provided the reference time of day for the Timeline?


Gale

[steve]

Perhaps a little dropdown arrow in the Timeline where you chose which track provided the reference time of day for the Timeline?

and if you pause during the recording, the numbers on the timeline show a sudden increase at the point where the pause occurred?

[Gale Andrews]

Perhaps a little dropdown arrow in the Timeline where you chose which track provided the reference time of day for the Timeline?

and if you pause during the recording, the numbers on the timeline show a sudden increase at the point where the pause occurred?

I guess if you Pause, then we pad with silence like some of those request we do for Sound Activated Recording.

How do the grown up DAWs display timecode in files?

Perhaps davelindsey will give his own answer to your questions, too. It's not something I am interested in myself.


Gale

[steve]

How do the grown up DAWs display timecode in files?

The grown up DAWs handle time much the same as we do, where time is local to the project. That is, all time measurements are relative to some "time zero" - the beginning of the project.

Surveillance recorders on the other hand, work more like a camcorder, where the "system time" (time according to the recording device's "real time clock") is encoded into the recorded data. This works for a surveillance recorder because the recorded data is immutable, but for Audacity, as soon as you make your first edit / process, there is no longer correlation between the original (time stamped) data and "project time". (This is why recovering broken projects becomes near impossible if the project has been edited or processed).

time.png (110.02 KiB) Viewed 3452 times

[steve]

Is it possible to show the timeline as the 'actual time of the day', ie have the start of the session show (for example) "12:11:40" rather that having it start as "0"??

It's not currently possible, but would it be sufficient if a new feature allowed an arbitrary offset for the Timeline? For example, if you start a recording at 3:00 pm, then you could offset the Timeline start position to 15:00.

[davelindsey]

Hi guys, thanks for your active discussion on this.

I am using Audacity to analyse noise or vibration data recorded on other devices, where events are linked to real times, a bit like your example of a camcorder/surveillance data.

Thus the 'Data Time' does not to be sequential. If some reference to the data time could be maintained (almost as a second, non editable clock), that would work beautifully. If data was deleted, there would be a discontinuity in the Data Time, but the Audacity timeline could be continuous. Similarly, if data was added, Audacity's timeline would continue to be continuous, but the Data Time would not show anything; the Data Time is needed only as a reference.

I accept that my use is not the most common way to use the software, but I suspect that quite a few people use it in the way I do.

Hope this clarifies my thoughts

Cheers David

[steve]

If some reference to the data time could be maintained (almost as a second, non editable clock), that would work beautifully.

That already happens in a fashion.
When you record in Audacity, the audio data is written to disk as a series of "block files". These are small (typically 1.1 MB) files with the file extension ".AU". Typically each block file contains about 6 seconds of audio, and the operating system adds a time stamp for the creation time of each block.

Now comes the problem.
If you change the track audio, for example if you amplify the track, each block file is replaced by a new block file that contains the modified audio data, and the operating system time stamps each of these new files with their creation time. As soon as you process the audio in any way, the time stamp of the block files that make up the audio track do not relate to the time at which the recording was made, but to the time that the block file was created, which is the time that you processed the track. Showing the creation time of the audio data in the Timeline would only make sense for an un-edited, un-processed recording, but would turn to a meaningless jumble as soon as you start editing the audio (and editing audio is the primary purpose of Audacity).