Song Direction

[Andreas1012]

Hello everybody,

if click on a point of the song with ctrl, the song plays from this point. The Problem is since i have resetted my PC, the song plays forward if the mouse is on the right side and plays backward if the mouse is on the left side. For me this function realy disturbing. Does anyone know, how i can deactivate it.

Thanks

Best Regards

Andreas

[waxcylinder]

You have put yourself in scrubbing mode - just press the Stop button to return to normality ...

Hard to tell when you're in scrub mode as there is no proper or effective visual cue
There is a bug report for this - I have just added your tribulations here as a use-case.

See: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/sc ... eking.html

WC

[Paul L]

Version 2.1.1 introduced some ESC key actions, such as aborting a zoom-in drag in the vertical ruler. Perhaps ESC should also always stop playback, including scrubbing, and recording, independently of keyboard preferences which may also assign that function to other keys like space. Perhaps this universal ESC key convention needs to be emphasized in the manual and tutorials for future versions.

I hope to see more ESC key actions in 2.1.3, such as, aborting all of the click-drag-release actions like draw and envelope and time shift tools.

[waxcylinder]

A good start Paul (but only a start) would be to fix Bug #1053 http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1053
where Gale suggest the left part of the Status Bar should say "Scrubbing" rather than "Playing" when in scrub mode (and possibly change to "Seeking" while in Seek mode). Plus as he also points out the central part of the Status bar message gives incorrect advice/information while in scrub/seek mode.

And fix Bug #1052: http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1052
No visual indication whether CTRL has initiated scrubbing or not (to which Andreas' experience in this thread was added yesterday as a use case).


I say "only a start" as I suspect that by itself it is a bit too subtle for most folk to notice stuck down there at the bottom.

I do think we need to provide also a much stronger visual cue to indicate scrubbing, what we choose can be open to debate after the upcoming release of 2.1.2. Personally I think I would like to see a Scrub-Play button added to the Transport Toolbar. The user would press this to go into scrub play mode (rather than using the current control and click, scrubbing would start at the current cursor position and of course just as now the user can change the cursor position to change scrub-central. The scrub-play button would be depressed in the toolbar while scrub play is active - and should be more obvious to the user to think of using the Stop button in the same Transport Toolbar to stop scrub-play.

And while we're at it I would also like to see us fix Bug #991: http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=991
By conscious design Pause is not actionable while in scrub mode but the Pause button is not grayed out as it should be to indicate that it is inoperable, nor is the Transport>Pause command.

BTW all three of these bugs are rated at P3, sufficiently highly to warrant an obligatory mention in the Release Notes for a release - so we really should be putting some focus on fixing them.

Thanks,
Peter.

[Robert J. H.]

Version 2.1.1 introduced some ESC key actions, such as aborting a zoom-in drag in the vertical ruler. Perhaps ESC should also always stop playback, including scrubbing, and recording, independently of keyboard preferences which may also assign that function to other keys like space. Perhaps this universal ESC key convention needs to be emphasized in the manual and tutorials for future versions.

I hope to see more ESC key actions in 2.1.3, such as, aborting all of the click-drag-release actions like draw and envelope and time shift tools.

I'd like the escape key also to cancel the label edit mode, i.e. undo the creation of a label or setting the label back to its original content, before entering edit mode.

Thanks Paul

Robert

[Andreas1012]

Thank you so much for your quick answers. Probably one of the two or three most important programs on my PC.

[Gale Andrews]

I'd like the escape key also to cancel the label edit mode, i.e. undo the creation of a label or setting the label back to its original content, before entering edit mode.

That makes sense, if we user ESC more widely.

As well as making it more obvious when you are (accidentally) in Scrub, I think it should be more obvious how to enable it. Yes it could be another Play button. It could also be a draggable bar of some sort, or a widget you could drag on the Playback cursor. Just about anyone could discover that.

Should you not be able to enable Scrub Play when already standard-playing, without having to click? Engaging the suggested Scrub Play button could do that, too.

I say yet again, there should be an option to disable backwards scrub. With that option on, when you move the pointer backwards, forwards play automatically starts from there. Then there is no need to press SHIFT *and* have to move the pointer to restart playback from that new point. I would actually use scrubbing then (sorry Paul, but I find scroll-scrub too "fiddly"). Even then I would still find dragging something to scrub far more intuitive.

Andreas, in case you don't know, you can click in the Timeline above the blue waves to immediately forwards play from that click point. It's like the old CTRL + click in the waveform, but you don't need to press CTRL.


Gale

[waxcylinder]

What Gale says ...

[Paul L]

I'd like the escape key also to cancel the label edit mode, i.e. undo the creation of a label or setting the label back to its original content, before entering edit mode.

That makes sense, if we user ESC more widely.

As well as making it more obvious when you are (accidentally) in Scrub, I think it should be more obvious how to enable it. Yes it could be another Play button. It could also be a draggable bar of some sort, or a widget you could drag on the Playback cursor. Just about anyone could discover that.

I welcome suggestions for alternative user interface for scrubbing and seeking. The choices made for 2.1.1 may not have been best and I hope we can revise them. I will write more later.

Should you not be able to enable Scrub Play when already standard-playing, without having to click? Engaging the suggested Scrub Play button could do that, too.

That goes beyond user interface changes and would require more work to get the playback engine to cooperate.

I say yet again, there should be an option to disable backwards scrub. With that option on, when you move the pointer backwards, forwards play automatically starts from there. Then there is no need to press SHIFT *and* have to move the pointer to restart playback from that new point. I would actually use scrubbing then (sorry Paul, but I find scroll-scrub too "fiddly"). Even then I would still find dragging something to scrub far more intuitive.

Andreas, in case you don't know, you can click in the Timeline above the blue waves to immediately forwards play from that click point. It's like the old CTRL + click in the waveform, but you don't need to press CTRL.


Gale

Scrub something. Move the mouse left, click, and move right again. Play restarts where you clicked. Is it good enough?

I don't understand the reference to SHIFT which is not part of scrubbing interface any more.

Do you say you would use scroll-scrub if it were not "fiddly" or that you just don't find it at all useful? Then don't use it. I presume there is no trouble avoiding it. I think it is a nice option to have. A version of play that leaves the play head centered and scrolls the wave instead satisfies at least one old feature request, doesn't it?

[Paul L]

A good start Paul (but only a start) would be to fix Bug #1053 http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1053
where Gale suggest the left part of the Status Bar should say "Scrubbing" rather than "Playing" when in scrub mode (and possibly change to "Seeking" while in Seek mode). Plus as he also points out the central part of the Status bar message gives incorrect advice/information while in scrub/seek mode.

Part of that bug description is that you can't click and drag to select audio during scrub, but the status bar suggests you can.

Maybe the real problem is that we should reenable click and drag to select during scrub.

The reason we don't is that we need some way to switch between scrubbing and seeking, and decided on left click, among several not wholly satisfactory alternatives. I wanted to reject anything using a modifier key because it would conflict with the use of certain keystroke commands during playback, like ctrl-m to drop labels or shift-a to stop and set cursor.

My thinking now is that scrubbing and seeking should be controlled by mouse clicks in the horizontal time ruler, not in the track area. Though it could still be (as now) that seeking is a drag but scrubbing is not. Scrubbing could still change speed and direction in response to mouse motion events, no matter where the pointer goes.

Let us not forget too: http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1079 "Scrubbing is stopped when a tool that is not Select is chosen"

The reason for that complaint: I make scrubbing and seeking available in selection tool only, because ctrl-click in the track area has other meanings in other tools, and while we might accept the forfeit of left click to select, I did not want to forfeit left click in other tools -- so a tool switch would make change to seeking impossible, so it was better just to ban scrubbing when you switch. This reasoning isn't pretty! Again it suggests to me that the clicks to scrub and seek might be better done in the time ruler, leaving all the other clicks and modified clicks in the tracks in whatever tools free to keep their old meanings. Then without that conflict, it would make sense to allow scrubbing in the ruler no matter what the tool is.

And fix Bug #1052: http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1052
No visual indication whether CTRL has initiated scrubbing or not (to which Andreas' experience in this thread was added yesterday as a use case).

Do we make a new cursor that looks like a scrub-brush? Maybe that's too "cute" but a cursor change would be nice. It could also become binoculars for seeking.

I say "only a start" as I suspect that by itself it is a bit too subtle for most folk to notice stuck down there at the bottom.

I do think we need to provide also a much stronger visual cue to indicate scrubbing, what we choose can be open to debate after the upcoming release of 2.1.2. Personally I think I would like to see a Scrub-Play button added to the Transport Toolbar. The user would press this to go into scrub play mode (rather than using the current control and click, scrubbing would start at the current cursor position and of course just as now the user can change the cursor position to change scrub-central. The scrub-play button would be depressed in the toolbar while scrub play is active - and should be more obvious to the user to think of using the Stop button in the same Transport Toolbar to stop scrub-play.

And while we're at it I would also like to see us fix Bug #991: http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=991
By conscious design Pause is not actionable while in scrub mode but the Pause button is not grayed out as it should be to indicate that it is inoperable, nor is the Transport>Pause command.

BTW all three of these bugs are rated at P3, sufficiently highly to warrant an obligatory mention in the Release Notes for a release - so we really should be putting some focus on fixing them.

Thanks,
Peter.