Audacity Forum

Posted: **Sat Feb 21, 2015 2:27 pm**

Gale Andrews wrote:you should also be able to go straight to an unattended export in the same way Chains export automatically if there is such a command.

That sounds like it might be a reasonable enhancement in some cases, but wouldn't you normally set TR to start a bit early and end a bit late just to be sure that the beginning/end of the recording are recorded? (radio broadcasts are not guaranteed to start/end exactly on time). In which case, wouldn't the user normally want to trim the start/end of the recording before exporting?

Also, if there were an unattended export, what would be the export location and file name?

Posted: **Sun Feb 22, 2015 10:39 am**

Gale Andrews wrote:
waxcylinder wrote:
Gale Andrews wrote:You mean it does not tell you what it's doing if you already saved a project before you Timer Record?
Would that not at least be partially solved by a checkbox in Timer Record to enable automatic saving or not?

I'm coming round to thinking that rather than a checkbox in the dialog I would prefer to see a preference setting to manage whether automatic saving is done or not.

Only when set "on" would the proposed "Save Project" button and it's accompanying text appear on the dialog pane - and of course no confirming Save message on TR completion would appear when it is set "off".

Peter

Posted: **Sun Feb 22, 2015 10:49 am**

steve wrote: ... but wouldn't you normally set TR to start a bit early and end a bit late just to be sure that the beginning/end of the recording are recorded? (radio broadcasts are not guaranteed to start/end exactly on time). In which case, wouldn't the user normally want to trim the start/end of the recording before exporting?

Exactly, that's what I always do

steve wrote:Also, if there were an unattended export, what would be the export location and file name?

This one isn't hard - if one did this automatically as an option then you need the user to specify the export format, the filename can be taken from the project name and the location can be the same as the project location.

In fact this is what I do for the Dublin radio shows that I record for a couple of Irish DJ friends TR, trim, export to MP3 in that location, move it to DropBox for distribution/sharing.

But I really don't think I want to complicate TR further by adding such an optional export - apart from any other considerations, it would lead us into discussions about how we set up and validate folder locations for the user to choose for the export.

Peter

Posted: **Sun Feb 22, 2015 2:27 pm**

waxcylinder wrote:
steve wrote:Also, if there were an unattended export, what would be the export location and file name?
This one isn't hard - if one did this automatically as an option then you need the user to specify the export format, the filename can be taken from the project name and the location can be the same as the project location.

I think Gale was suggesting unattended export without saving the project, in which case no name or location has been set.

I rarely use Timer Record, so I don't have strong opinions about this, but if I were designing a new version (and assuming that we can still schedule only one recording) I would add three check boxes within a new "static text box":

---On Completion-------
[X] Save Project
[_] Export Recording
[_] Close Audacity

I would not hide these options in preferences or behind an "Options" button. I think they need to be visible in the main Interface.

If either Save Project or Export Recording is selected, the user would be prompted to set a name and file location.
If Save Project and Export Recording are selected, the same name and location would be used for both (optionally there could be a preference to allow the project and the exported file to have different names / locations)
If neither Save Project or Export Recording are selected, "Close Audacity" will be unchecked and greyed out.

____________________________________________________________________

Proposal 2:

Multi-event scheduling:
The main Timer Record interface would show a table with columns:

Code: Select all

|  ID  |  Name  | Start  |   End  | Save Project | Export File | Chain  | Deferred |
|  1   | <name> | <time> | <time> |      yes     |      no     | <name> |    yes   |
|  2   | <name> | <time> | <time> |      yes     |      yes    | <name> |    yes   |
|  3   | <name> | <time> | <time> |      no      |      yes    | <name> |    no   |
|  4   |        |        |        |              |             |        |
|  5   |        |        |        |              |             |        |

and buttons:
[Help] [Add New] [Delete] [Edit] [Cancel] [OK]

The first three buttons would open dialogs for adding, removing, or editing timed recordings.
If the user enters times (or names) that clash, the clashing events will be bold and red, and pressing the OK button would prompt the user to fix the error.
The column "Chain" allows the user to apply a named (pre-existing) Chain of commands to the recording (default = none).

By default, Chain and Export events are "deferred" until all timed recording are complete. If this is set to "no" then there needs to be sufficient time for processing, so the following comes into effect:

If a Chain is selected, then it is assumed that the chained events will take at least 10% of the recording time, and at most 100% of the recording time, and the user will be warned that the next recording may start late or be missed (these percentages are not cast in stone).
Similarly, Export is assumed to take at least 5% of the recording time and at most 10% of the recording time (these percentages are not cast in stone).
If either the "Chain" or "Export" options cause times to clash, they will be bold and red in the list.

Posted: **Mon Feb 23, 2015 11:54 am**

Steve,

with your proposal 1, I don't understand the "---On Completion---- [_] Close Audacity" button.

It seems pointless to make a TR and then just exit Audacity. Are you really meaning "Save Project and exit Audacity" ?

==========================================================================

Re Proposal 2

Although a while back I was strongly in favour of enhancing TR to be a multi-event, I discussed this with Vaughan at some length at AU14 and decided that this was no longer something I wanted to push for or really support.

Firstly because it gets you straight away into the tangled rats-nest of multi-project working (which is itself an issue to be discussed further once 2.1.0 is out the door).

And secondly because technology has moved on a bit since the proposal for this bit was written. Most PVR's will enable you to tune in to and record with multi-event timing radio programmes - and there are devices available that will reliably capture web "radio" broadcasts in multi-event mode (my Cocktail X30 is a good example).

I'm still discussing with Vaughan whether or not we should bother with the request for access to the controls during Timer Recording - this too runs into the multi-project rats nest - and I am mindful (as Gale reminded us earlier in this thread) that TR was designed for "unattended recording", so I'm leaning now towards not providing such access.

Peter.

Posted: **Mon Feb 23, 2015 1:00 pm**

waxcylinder wrote:with your proposal 1, I don't understand the "---On Completion---- [_] Close Audacity" button.

It seems pointless to make a TR and then just exit Audacity. Are you really meaning "Save Project and exit Audacity" ?

Lol - despite that being blindingly obvious, I just knew someone would ask, which is why I wrote:

steve wrote:If neither Save Project or Export Recording are selected, "Close Audacity" will be unchecked and greyed out.

waxcylinder wrote: it gets you straight away into the tangled rats-nest of multi-project working

Which is why I proposed a scheme that avoids that particular rats nest.

"Proposal 2" specifically prohibits recordings that clash, and as it is intended for "unattended recording". The user will not editing or playing other projects on that machine if they are "not present", so in what way is there a "tangled rats-nest of multi-project working" in "proposal 2"?

waxcylinder wrote:And secondly because technology has moved on a bit since the proposal for this bit was written. Most PVR's will enable you to tune in to and record with multi-event timing radio programmes - and there are devices available that will reliably capture web "radio" broadcasts in multi-event mode (my Cocktail X30 is a good example).

Surely that argument could be applied to anything?
Why bother with Audacity at all? Technology has moved on and there are plenty of other audio editors?
Why bother with Timer Recording at all now that we have "Listen Again", hard disk TV recording, radio programs available as downloadable podcasts, Amazon, Spotify, iTunes .... (the list goes on).

Everything in "Proposal 2" is already available for users on Linux with a bit of know-how. What I'm suggesting is making these features more readily available for other users.

It's not a feature that I'm particularly interested in, but...
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Feature_Requests

Multi-event scheduler (22 votes) for future recordings (like a VCR), not just scheduling a single recording for now

Perform system shutdown after recording. (7 votes)

Save on completion:

Posted: **Mon Feb 23, 2015 6:12 pm**

steve wrote:
waxcylinder wrote:
steve wrote:Also, if there were an unattended export, what would be the export location and file name?
This one isn't hard - if one did this automatically as an option then you need the user to specify the export format, the filename can be taken from the project name and the location can be the same as the project location.
I think Gale was suggesting unattended export without saving the project, in which case no name or location has been set.

Yes export without saving that was the main use case. An export is always safer than a project save, and doesn't prevent editing the export of the raw recording later.

And sometimes people don't care about editing or trimming and they do not want the clutter of saved projects. That's why I have misgivings about forcing such users to dismiss a prompt to save the project every time (as well as having to choose the export name and location every time they come back to Audacity after recording).

I would rather see a fourth checkbox "Auto file naming" or some such with an "Options..." button next to it that opens an interface that sets the location of the saved or exported recording and its name. The current choice for name and location would be shown as text.

steve wrote:I rarely use Timer Record, so I don't have strong opinions about this, but if I were designing a new version (and assuming that we can still schedule only one recording) I would add three check boxes within a new "static text box":

---On Completion-------
[X] Save Project
[_] Export Recording
[_] Close Audacity

I would not hide these options in preferences or behind an "Options" button. I think they need to be visible in the main Interface.

I completely agree. If Timer Record is to become more useful and "automatic" than it is now, it has to have a somewhat more complicated interface. If the dialogue must be "simple" I would rather see the controls Steve suggests and make the current "Duration" controls nothing more than text that displays the duration set by manipulating the Start Time and End Time.

steve wrote: Proposal 2:

Multi-event scheduling:
The main Timer Record interface would show a table with columns:
Code: Select all
|  ID  |  Name  | Start  |   End  | Save Project | Export File | Chain  | Deferred |
|  1   | <name> | <time> | <time> |      yes     |      no     | <name> |    yes   |
|  2   | <name> | <time> | <time> |      yes     |      yes    | <name> |    yes   |
|  3   | <name> | <time> | <time> |      no      |      yes    | <name> |    no   |
|  4   |        |        |        |              |             |        |
|  5   |        |        |        |              |             |        |
and buttons:
[Help] [Add New] [Delete] [Edit] [Cancel] [OK]

The first three buttons would open dialogs for adding, removing, or editing timed recordings.
If the user enters times (or names) that clash, the clashing events will be bold and red, and pressing the OK button would prompt the user to fix the error.
The column "Chain" allows the user to apply a named (pre-existing) Chain of commands to the recording (default = none).

By default, Chain and Export events are "deferred" until all timed recording are complete. If this is set to "no" then there needs to be sufficient time for processing, so the following comes into effect:

If a Chain is selected, then it is assumed that the chained events will take at least 10% of the recording time, and at most 100% of the recording time, and the user will be warned that the next recording may start late or be missed (these percentages are not cast in stone).

Similarly, Export is assumed to take at least 5% of the recording time and at most 10% of the recording time (these percentages are not cast in stone).

If either the "Chain" or "Export" options cause times to clash, they will be bold and red in the list.

On the whole I like Steve's ideas here, though I can see that the interface for this might be offputting.

Ideally Audacity would record multiple overlapping streams if the schedule demanded that. Isn't that what advanced specialist software for this purpose does?

I'm not sure whether we want to get into running non-deferred Chains on completed recordings and then running into another potential conflict with concurrent operations.

Gale

Posted: **Mon Feb 23, 2015 6:54 pm**

Gale Andrews wrote:Ideally Audacity would record multiple overlapping streams if the schedule demanded that. Isn't that what advanced specialist software for this purpose does?

At this point I think we would need to make some design decisions. Does the user want to make unattended recording OR does the user want hands-on audio editing.

We see plenty of users that want to do everything at the same time; record a live mic, play a MMORPG, chat on Skype, record the other person on Skype, record the game sound, and have a scheduled recording running in the background. Sorry but that is not going to happen, not without lots of additional hardware.

The way that I envisage "proposal 2" actually being feasible, is as a "schedule recorder". Almost like a standalone application. It would be specifically designed to run unattended, and so, like a VCR (remember those

), would need the schedule to be set up in advance. Once activated, it would take control of Audacity until either the schedule is completed or stopped. This need not (and probably should not) replace the current (single shot) TR, but rather would provide a more capable multi-event recorder specifically to meet the demands of those that are requesting such features.

Posted: **Tue Feb 24, 2015 2:42 pm**

steve wrote:At this point I think we would need to make some design decisions. Does the user want to make unattended recording OR does the user want hands-on audio editing.

If they don't want to make an unattended recording, why are they using Timer Record?

steve wrote:The way that I envisage "proposal 2" actually being feasible, is as a "schedule recorder". Almost like a standalone application. It would be specifically designed to run unattended, and so, like a VCR (remember those ),

Perhaps an advanced feature like that would be a downloadable module.

Did VCR's do editing? I never had one. It feels to me like editing is overkill.

Gale

Posted: **Tue Feb 24, 2015 3:02 pm**

Gale Andrews wrote:If they don't want to make an unattended recording, why are they using Timer Record?

Exactly my point

Gale Andrews wrote:Perhaps an advanced feature like that would be a downloadable module.

Yes, but with a (much) better way to install modules than how it is now.

Audacity has come a very long way since the first (0.8) release, and now includes most of the features that one would expect of a multi-track audio editor, plus a number of addition "special purpose" features (such as "WCAG Contrast", "Karaoke view" and "DTMF Tones") that extend Audacity further.

We frequently see requests for all manner of "specialist" features, that go beyond the scope of what one would normally think of as "necessary" for a multi-track audio editor. Adding such features into the core "Audacity" application is imo problematic on many counts. "Modules" appears to be a way forward that allows "specialist" features to be added without compromising either the specialist feature, or the core Audacity application.

Recording audiobooks is another area that could benefit greatly from the addition of "specialist features". What I'm thinking is that if all the tools and abilities for audiobook authors could be bundled into one "module", then we could offer an "Audacity for audiobooks" package, that provides all of the features that audiobook authors need in one simple to install package.

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