Vertical scroll feature request

[stupakov]

It would be very helpful to have some more zoom options (I'm used to the zoom capability in Audition which is pretty powerful)
Specific changes I'd like to see:
* Vertical zoom in/out on all tracks (the "Fit vertically" option is useful but limited.)
I really like the ability to resize each track separately in Audacity, but having to do so for each track in a multi-track project is tedious.
* Support for mouse scroll wheel for zooming (again, if you can replicate the functionality in Audition, that would be great)
* Separate "selection" and "view" time range boxes, like in Audition.
* When zoomed out in a project with many tracks, the mute/solo/volume are hidden. It would be nice to have those controls resize gracefully with the track (perhaps by enforcing a minimum height), and/or to place them above the track info, which is generally less crucial to have accessible.

A couple of other requests:
* hovering the mouse over a track should give the filename (going to Track | Name... is less convenient)
* spectrogram color options would be nice

Thanks
Alex

[steve]

Audacity 1.3 has many more features than the old 1.2 version.

* Vertical zoom in/out on all tracks (the "Fit vertically" option is useful but limited.)

There is also "Collapse/Expand".

* Support for mouse scroll wheel for zooming

Mouse wheel on its own scrolls tracks up/down (when you have multiple tracks)
Mouse wheel + SHIFT scrolls left/right
Mouse wheel + Ctrl zooms in/out horizontally.
Left/right click on vertical scale zooms in/out vertically.

* Separate "selection" and "view" time range boxes, like in Audition.

Is it necessary to have a precise display of the view time range? Isn't it sufficient to look at the time line?
For the selected area, the middle box can be switched between "length" and "end" point of the selection.

When zoomed out in a project with many tracks, the mute/solo/volume are hidden. It would be nice to have those controls resize gracefully with the track (perhaps by enforcing a minimum height), and/or to place them above the track info, which is generally less crucial to have accessible.

When working with lots of tracks it is generally better to use the "collapse/expand" feature rather than "fit vertically".
I don't think that just repositioning the sliders above the track names would solve the problem (would probably get more complaints than the current situation, since it is often important to be able to identify tracks by their name - for example, if you have recordings of individual instruments from a string ensemble it is difficult to identify which is violin-1 and which is the viola just from looking at the waveform.

I agree that it would be useful to be able to restore all tracks to the default vertical zoom level with a single click. +1

* hovering the mouse over a track should give the filename (going to Track | Name... is less convenient)

Good idea +1

* spectrogram color options would be nice

That may become possible when full "theme" support is implemented. Customising colours and appearance (themes) has been experimented with but is so far only partially implemented - this is something that is planned for the future, but with the release of Audacity 2.0 being imminent the developers are concentrating on getting the audio side fully funtional and bug free.

[stupakov]

Steve,
Thanks for the quick and detailed reply.

Is it necessary to have a precise display of the view time range? Isn't it sufficient to look at the time line?
For the selected area, the middle box can be switched between "length" and "end" point of the selection.

I suppose a precise display of the view time is not necessary because you can select a region and then "zoom to selection".
However, it would be useful to find out the time range I'm looking at. A "select visible region" command would make this possible.
Specifically, I need to sync up two or more recordings of the same audio scene on two mics, and I want to determine the exact offset between the channels by zooming in to the same event on each channel, lining up the recordings, and noting the precise start and end time of the visible region on each channel.

I don't think that just repositioning the sliders above the track names would solve the problem

I agree that track names should stay on top; perhaps move the "Mono, 44100Hz, 32-bit float" info below the sliders?

When working with lots of tracks it is generally better to use the "collapse/expand" feature rather than "fit vertically".

I agree, and the ability to resize the box displaying each track individually is very useful. But let's say I have 32 tracks and want to see all of them in more detail (more height) -- I wouldn't want to resize or expand each track separately. It would be great to have "collapse all/expand all", or even better: a vertical zoom, which would effectively apply the "make taller" / "make less tall" to all tracks.

Thanks!
-Alex

[steve]

Specifically, I need to sync up two or more recordings of the same audio scene on two mics, and I want to determine the exact offset between the channels by zooming in to the same event on each channel, lining up the recordings, and noting the precise start and end time of the visible region on each channel.

Is this what you mean?

Start time of selected even in track 2 is "1 second 34004 samples". Track 1 is 5 samples later (0.11 milliseconds).

screenshot.png (80.1 KiB) Viewed 1932 times

perhaps move the "Mono, 44100Hz, 32-bit float" info below the sliders?

I can see pros and cons with that. Although the "Mono, 44100Hz, 32-bit float" info may be considered "dead space", it provides a handy place to click for toggling the selection of tracks. SHIFT+Click on that part allows you to select/de-select multiple tracks. When that part of the track header box is not visible, there is nowhere to click to do that.

let's say I have 32 tracks and want to see all of them in more detail (more height) -- I wouldn't want to resize or expand each track separately. It would be great to have "collapse all/expand all", or even better: a vertical zoom, which would effectively apply the "make taller" / "make less tall" to all tracks.

Well there IS a "collapse all/expand all" feature, but the limitation is that it only expands to the height that the track was before it was collapsed.

This limitation is not too serious providing that, when you want to shrink tracks vertically, you always use the "Collapse" feature (the little arrow on the bottom of the track info box) and not resize them manually. This way you can restore them to a reasonable working height using Ctrl+SHIFT+X.

Another issue is that there are already A LOT of keyboard short-cuts, and a desire by the developers to keep the interface uncluttered. There is not much room to add more controls, (such as "vertical zoom" buttons or sliders) and I think that the developers are reluctant to introduce new controls unless they think that it is worth the increased complexity of the interface.

It would be nice if scaling multiple tracks vertically could be achieved without the need for additional controls. Perhaps one way this could be done would be if manual vertical size adjustment affected all selected tracks. This way, if you want to zoom vertically on tracks 1,2 and 4, you just need to select those tracks and as you adjust the vertical height of one, the vertical height of the other selected tracks would follow suit. What do you think - would that do it? (perhaps with an option in Preferences to switch this behaviour on or off).

[waxcylinder]

Final summary above transferred to Wiki Pending Feature Requests - with a pointer back toi this relocated thread

Also transferred the Track Hover Help suggestion - plus STF's vote

Then moved this from "Adding Features" to "Audio Processing"

WC