Audacity Forum

When using Punch and Roll, if you do one insertion, then decide you didn't like it and hit Undo (so you're left with the track up to the insertion point), the head is at End of Track, and you can't just do Shift-D to P&R from that point--the error says you must be at a point in the track. The same error is produced if you just go to end of track (K) and try to P&R record from there. While this is clearly the intended behavior, it's not useful for the user. One should be able to hit K, then Shift-D to preroll from end-of-track and carry on recording.

Hi Stuart,

StuartGauffi wrote:When using Punch and Roll, if you do one insertion, then decide you didn't like it and hit Undo (so you're left with the track up to the insertion point), the head is at End of Track, and you can't just do Shift-D to P&R from that point--the error says you must be at a point in the track.

I have been extensively QA testing this on Windows and mac and working on the documentation for this - and I do not see this behavior.

a) When I Stop Punch and Roll (during the rolling recording), the head stays at the splice point I set,
b) when I do the Undo the head still stays at the splice point
c) I can then use Shift+D to redo a Punch and Roll

Actually there is a undocumented feature whereby i can omit step b) (the Undo)


I can recreate your issue if I stop P&R during the pre-roll playback

d) When I Stop Punch and Roll during the 5 second pre-roll platback , the head stays at the splice point I set
e) but this point is now the end of the track as the P&R command has removed the unwanted audio beyond the splice point
f) Shift+D then produces the error do to the condition you describe below

g) if you now do an Undo the "unwanted" audio is restored and you can re-perform the P&R with Shift+D

StuartGauffi wrote: The same error is produced if you just go to end of track (K) and try to P&R record from there. While this is clearly the intended behavior, it's not useful for the user. One should be able to hit K, then Shift-D to preroll from end-of-track and carry on recording.

I'm not convinced that this is intended behavior - and I'm far from convinced that it is good or wanted behavior - it seems perfectly sensible to the that you might want to P&R from the end of a track to take the benefit of the pre-roll playback.

We did make a change recently so that if the splice point position was the beginning of the track then P&R would not work and would produce the error message. This was mainly to protect against deletion of a whole track where the user had set "on" the "select all if none selected" preference.

I am going to raise a bug report for P&R not working with splice point at track end.


Many thanks for testing and for your report - much appreciated.

Peter.

UPDATE: bug raised: https://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1890

waxcylinder wrote:
a) When I Stop Punch and Roll (during the rolling recording), the head stays at the splice point I set,
b) when I do the Undo the head still stays at the splice point
c) I can then use Shift+D to redo a Punch and Roll

Actually there is a undocumented feature whereby i can omit step b) (the Undo)

I have now updated the alpha 2.3.0 Manual page for thathttps://alphamanual.audacityteam.org/man/Punch_and_Roll_Record#Still_not_satisfied.3F

Peter

StuartGauffi wrote:When using Punch and Roll, if you do one insertion, then decide you didn't like it and hit Undo (so you're left with the track up to the insertion point), the head is at End of Track, and you can't just do Shift-D to P&R from that point--the error says you must be at a point in the track.

I do not observe the same when I try it. If Undo is the very next thing I do after stopping the re-recording, then all is restored as it was just before Shift+D -- the cursor position is as before and the old bad take is back to the right of it. I was careful to be sure it worked that way before inviting alpha testers.

The same error is produced if you just go to end of track (K) and try to P&R record from there. While this is clearly the intended behavior, it's not useful for the user. One should be able to hit K, then Shift-D to preroll from end-of-track and carry on recording.

This is a good idea and we may do it this way before release. Thank you for the suggestion.

Paul

StuartGauffi wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 15, 2018 2:31 am

One should be able to hit K, then Shift-D to preroll from end-of-track and carry on recording.

Hi Stuart,

you should be glad to know that we have indeed implemented this for the upcoming 2.3.0 - I've just QA tested it and it works well,

Thank you for making such a good and sensible suggestion.

Peter