Sound design icons for the Mixer Board

[tintwotin]

Now we got Audacity to work directly with Blender, it would be useful to add sound design icons to the Mixer Board.

These are the most common types of tracks for sound design:
The Dialogue (DX),
Automated Dialogue Replacement (ADR),
Foley (FLY),
Sound Effects (SFX),
Ambience (AMB),
Music (MX),
Room Tone (RT)

Instead of trying to come up with some icons which may not fit everyone's taste, I've used the acronyms as icons(mock-up):


I don't have time to learn to build Audacity in order to submit this as a proper patch, so I hope it is okay I share the icons this way?
The icons are saved as xpm and png and are completely free to use:
https://blenderartists.org/uploads/shor ... cNLHNM.zip

The font used is Cinematografica: https://www.dafont.com/cinematografica.font

[tintwotin]

I think, I has posted this the wrong place? Maybe a mod can move it into the right place?

[waxcylinder]

I think, I has posted this the wrong place? Maybe a mod can move it into the right place?

Which section would you like it to be on ?

[tintwotin]

I don't know. Is there a dev section? What I'm after is mainly in section where a Audacity dev will let me know if this is useful or not. Or if I have figure out how to build Audacity in order to submit a patch, to get response on that question?

Another question is if the Audacity handling of xpm files includes semi transparency, if not these icons will not work?

[steve]

Is there a dev section?

Not really. This forum is primarily for "end user support".

The most "technical" forum boards are these: viewforum.php?f=6

It could be moved to: "Adding Features to Audacity".
After allowing time for other users to comment / discus the proposal, requested features are logged by a forum moderator on the Audacity wiki. This is helpful for the Audacity developers to get an idea of what features / enhancements users want. It does not guarantee that the feature will be implemented.

There's also the "Audacity Artwork and Graphics" board here: viewforum.php?f=67

I think the "Adding Features" board is the best match.

Another question is if the Audacity handling of xpm files includes semi transparency,

I may be wrong, but I think not. None of the current icons use transparency.

Also, the images are not simply "drop in the XPM files". There is also code that decides which image to display based on the track name.

[James Crook]

Thank you TintwoTin.

Audacity is taking part in Google Summer of Code this year. One of the four proposed projects is to redo the MixerBoard. If that project goes ahead, this might be one of the things that happens.

I've linked their discussion group to this post on the forum - so there may be some interest from them in using the icons and styles.

[tintwotin]

Thanks for your replies. Trying to help out improving the Blender Video Editor is quite time consuming, so I doubt I can allocate the time to figure out how to do a build with those icons included, though I would like to see how they would be working.

Looking at the Gsoc projects ideas: https://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/GSoC_Ideas_2021 the expansion of Python script also looks interesting. A fellow Blender add-on coder and I are using the python option(inspired by Steve, thanks!) for as seamless as possible integration of Audacity and Blender, and things like sending playhead position back to Blender could be useful and also detecting changes in clip positions and durations and send them back to Blender, and og course sending date in the other direction too. I do not have the full overview of what is there and what would be useful to have, but at this early stage the integration simply rocks in ways I never would have thought it would be possible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f61Zvb8AipA

[tintwotin]

Realizing that the Mixer Board is only controlling the master volumes for each track, makes it very little useful for sound designing. Why isn't the potters from the Mixer board connected to ex. the envelopes?

[waxcylinder]

tintwotin, do you realize that we already habe the facility for some graphic instrument icons for the Mixer Board?

Mixer Board 3-0-0.png (40.83 KiB) Viewed 1923 times

See this page in the Manual
https://alphamanual.audacityteam.org/man/Mixer_Board

Peter.

[steve]

Why isn't the potters from the Mixer board connected to ex. the envelopes?

Because no-one has written code to do that. Feel free to submit a patch.