Audio Scrubbing doesn't stop after releasing mouse button

[Ramon0]

Hi everyone. New (old) Audacity user here

First of all, I hope being posting this in the right place. The case is, I'm in love with all the new scrubbing features in v2.1.2 (thanks to whom it may concern!) and everything works great here in my Windows 10 machine while scrubbing, but there seems to be something wrong when I release the left mouse button that causes the program stay in scrubbing mode instead of back to normal mode. For example, I open an mp3 file and, with the Selection Tool active, I hold the Ctrl key, perform a Left Mouse click over the waveform and drag left/right to star scrubbing... well when I release the left mouse button I expect I'm going to leave Scrubbing mode BUT, for some reason, I continue in scrubbing mode unless I press (for example) the Stop button, change curren tool or anything like that, which is very unexpected and kinda ruins the scrubbing experience to me. So the question is... is this a known issue? Maybe related to Windows 10 only? If that were the case, is there anything I can do to solve it?

Well, that was all... Thank you very much for any help you can provide and greetings!

[steve]

is this a known issue?

Yes. It's the way that it was designed to work, though I agree that it ruins the scrubbing experience for me too.

Maybe related to Windows 10 only?

No. As far as I'm aware it is the same on all platforms.

is there anything I can do to solve it?

Not unless you can either (a) program in C++ (b) persuade the "the powers that be" to change it.

[kozikowski]

Everybody who comes over from either video editing or reel-to-reel editing is horrified that Audacity won't scrub. What Audacity does right now is Best-First-Pass. Not a finished tool.

Koz

[waxcylinder]

Everybody who comes over from either video editing or reel-to-reel editing is horrified that Audacity won't scrub. What Audacity does right now is Best-First-Pass. Not a finished tool.

Indeed - and that's why there are currently two proposals outstanding relating to Scrubbing (and a number of bug entries) - see:
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Propo ... _-_Phase-1
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Propo ... _-_Phase-2

I'm hoping that at the verty least we get Phase-1 done for 2.1.3 - and it would be really good if we could crack Phase-2 as well ...

Peter

[waxcylinder]

Personally I find Steve's much improved Timeline Quick Play much more useful and usable than Scrubbing the way it is now - see this page in the Manual: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/timeline.html#tqp

Peter

[steve]

Everybody who comes over from either video editing or reel-to-reel editing is horrified that Audacity won't scrub. What Audacity does right now is Best-First-Pass. Not a finished tool.

The good news is that the difficult under-the-hood stuff necessary to make scrubbing work has now been done, and that works well. Much kudos to the developer for that.

[waxcylinder]

Everybody who comes over from either video editing or reel-to-reel editing is horrified that Audacity won't scrub. What Audacity does right now is Best-First-Pass. Not a finished tool.

The good news is that the difficult under-the-hood stuff necessary to make scrubbing work has now been done, and that works well. Much kudos to the developer for that.

Indeed - it's just a bit of polishing and cosmetic touches that need doing. A Steve says the engine under the hood is in great shape, a tricky piece of work for the developer involved

Peter

[Ramon0]

Thank you very much for all the attention and for the detailed information and links.

I've been reading everything carefully, but I well could be missing some point/s due to the language barrier, because everything seems to me less complicated to solve than all that... Of course I'm not saying it's an easy task to solve because I'm (very) aware about how much talent any task related to programming requires but rather, what I mean, is I think almost all the work is already there and it's indeed very well done! So I'm surprised by reading things like the feature could requiere a dedicated tool or more UI indications, etc. while, from my point of view, the only thing to make it perfect at this point would be to make scrubbing stops (and therefore return the app to it's normal or previous state) as soon as the Left Mouse Button (or the Ctrl key if you prefer) is released. Shouldn't it be that simple?? Or I'm (probably) missing something obvious here? Anyway, that's why I couldn't agree more with this statement...

The good news is that the difficult under-the-hood stuff necessary to make scrubbing work has now been done, and that works well. Much kudos to the developer for that.

...and I hope this great new feature finally gets the *final touch* that it deserves! With such "OnMouseUp stopping" (or whatever) behavior, I think it would be perfect in usability and simplicity/elegance terms and I'm going to hold my fingers crossed (the most I think I can do about it I'm afraid...) as much as I can.


Well, at least I know now it's not only me... so greetings and thanks again.

[Gale Andrews]

from my point of view, the only thing to make it perfect at this point would be to make scrubbing stops (and therefore return the app to its normal or previous state) as soon as the Left Mouse Button (or the Ctrl key if you prefer) is released. Shouldn't it be that simple??

Scrubbing as implemented has an advanced "scroll-scrub mode" initiated by CTRL + double-click where the distance the mouse pointer is from the playhead affects playback speed and mouse down scroll-seeks at faster speed.

Not having to hold the mouse or CTRL down while scrubbing does help those who may be suffering from motion impairment or repetitive stress injury. However for me the deal breaker is that I have to keep the mouse pointer moving to keep playback going. I agree it seems odd that CTRL has no function once scrubbing is on.

I do think we need a normal sort of drag bar where drag speed affects playback speed. I would want playback to continue at least when I release the mouse but others may object to that.

Given the current features in Timeline Quick-Play it makes it hard to put the "simple drag bar" there, despite it is the obvious place for it.


Gale

[Ramon0]

Scrubbing as implemented has an advanced "scroll-scrub mode" initiated by CTRL + double-click where the distance the mouse pointer is from the playhead affects playback speed and mouse down scroll-seeks at faster speed.

Hi again. I'm aware about that other scrubbing mode, but I feel equally bewildered with it at the time of releasing the mouse button for the aforementioned reasons about expecting to leave the scrubbing mode as soon as the mouse is released.

Not having to hold the mouse or CTRL down while scrubbing does help those who may be suffering from motion impairment or repetitive stress injury.

That makes me think... and, if that were the reasoning, couldn't the scrubbing more be aborted as soon as the user perform another Left Mouse Button click over the waveform? Because it actually seem to do nothing and maybe that could be the key to make the feature intuitive an accesible for impairment and not impairment users. I mean, you could scrub while holding the mouse button down UNTIL the mouse is released (as I think is the expected behavior), BUT you could also release the mouse button and continue scrubbing UNTIL you perform another click wherever the cursor is positioned at that moment. It sounds good to me because it wouldn't compromise any user experience (indeed I think it would improve accessibility in any case), but just thinking out loud...

However for me the deal breaker is that I have to keep the mouse pointer moving to keep playback going.

But that's not the case when using the advanced "scroll-scrub mode" you mentioned earlier, isn't it? Unless I'm missing something here (I've not played too much with that mode yet).

In any case, as things stand now, this lovely and awaited feature feels kind of "buggy" (or that was exactly my first impression at least) and I think it's a pity for all its potential and all the hard work that must have had behind it... Well, greetings and I hope it makes sense.