Play, from paused, jumps to the start for no reason

[AndyCivil]

This happens to me frequently; imagine I'm working my way through an audio document, I pause the playback for some reason, if I press "Play" then it jumps back to the beginning of the work, for no apparent reason. (However, if I remember to un-pause it by pressing the "pause" button again, then it correctly carries on from where it was.)
1. Was this a mistake? Most audio playback devices do not re-start the track if you exit the 'pause' state with 'play'.
2. Would this be fixed if I downloaded the latest version? I'm using 2.0.1 from 25th June 2012, so it's a bit old now.
I must admit I find it a pointless annoyance to keep losing my place because it takes me time to find where I was again. Losing your place is not the kind of error that you can correct with an 'undo' because it's not considered an editing operation, but it's just as time-consuming to fix.

[kozikowski]

Play always plays the current selection. If you have nothing selected, it assumes the whole document. Updating your Audacity isn't going to help, but should you decide to, Audacity 2.1.2 is available from here.

http://www.audacityteam.org/download/windows/

As you noted, Pause is a suspension of process, not an event and so you can't UNDO your way back to where you were. So yes, you have to keep finding the P key. Audacity 2.1.2 may have other additional tricks. It's also possible you can use the keyboard shortcuts to change it to another key.

Koz

[kozikowski]

There is the Transcription Toolbar. Anything there?

http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tran ... olbar.html

Koz

[AndyCivil]

Thank you for answering, your prompt answer is reassuring in that, I know I'm not imagining it. I feel that the user interface is non-intuitive enough to be considered 'wrong', and here is my reasoning:

• 1. What is the difference between "pause" and "stop"? I suggest that when you pause, you expect to continue from the same place. If the current state of play is "pause", you have already declared your intention to resume from the same place, so jumping to the start of the selection is not logical.
• 2. The toggle feature of the 'pause' button seems to be a hangover from the days when pause was achieved with a pop-in pop-out mechanism that lifted the capstan wheel away from the spindle, preventing it from driving the tape. However, to copy that model, you would have to mandate that the pause button would have to be released—pressing play would do nothing (because the tape transport was in play anyway).
• 3. Although the play button functions as "play from beginning of selection" that is not the icon used on it. The icon for that, is a 'play' triangle with a vertical bar to the left of it. Some devices have both, e.g. this one http://www.dtxmania.net/wiki.cgi?page=qa_dtxc_create_e therefore, the icon used does not correspond with the function.
• 4. The discussion on this forum page makes it clear, because they're talking about what icon to use for 'play from beginning', that the regular 'play' icon does not convey that meaning. http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/8 ... crubber-ux

Do you think I can register this as a bug?

P.S. thank you for the 'play at speed' suggestion, it is different, in that it doesn't necessarily play from the start, but also it doesn't play from where you paused, either. In fact if you click on the time bar at some point, and it plays from there, then if you pause it, the 'play at speed' button goes back to that point you clicked on. I think it's the left end of 'loop play' even if the loop has no defined end. (One of the many confusing things about Audacity is the many different cursors!)

[waxcylinder]

1) To resume playing (or recording) from the paused postion while playing simply press the Pause button again.

2) If instead while Paused you press the Play button Audacity will start playing from where the cursor is (as you have discovered)

3) Similarly pressing Stop when recording or playing wiill return the current position to the current cursor position.

4) There is an additional command (which I personally find very useful) that you may have not discovered as there is no button for it in the Transport Toolbar which Stops and resets the cursor positiion to where it was stopped when playing
Transport > Play/Stop and Set Cursor its keyboard shortcut is the somewhat awkward Shift+A
For my personal use to make that easier I have reset that shortcut to be Numpad_Insert - a single keystroke at the bottom left of my numpad on a double-sized key. But I do have to carefully ensure that I do not have NUMLOCK set "on" on my numpad.

See: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tran ... olbar.html

and http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/transport_menu.html

in the Manual for the trnsport buttons and commands.


And see this page on keyboard preferences (and how to change the shortcuts): manual.audacityteam.org/man/keyboard_preferences.html


WC

[steve]

Do you think I can register this as a bug?

No, not as a "bug" (because it does what it was designed to do), but feel free to make a "feature request".

As a general point, something that comes up quite frequently is: "Audacity does not behave like other audio players".
Often those complaining are correct that "Audacity does not behave like other audio players", but Audacity is not an "audio player", it is a multi-track audio production application. As such there is a need for functionality that does not apply to "audio players". This is not unique to Audacity, I've seen similar complaints about other audio production software.

I agree that the Pause / Play / Stop behaviour is imperfect, and there have been many discussions about how to improve it, but with a huge range of different use-cases, plus technical constraints, there has, so far, been no consensus about changing it.

As has been described, the current behaviour is that "Pause" toggles between paused and not paused, and "Play" initiates playing from the start of the selection (or the "play from" position if there is no selection). If pressing "Play" when playback is paused did the same as pressing "Pause" when playback is paused, then we would lose functionality that is important for some users. We would not want to do that.

The behaviour that you describe - continue playing from the paused position - is achieved by toggling "Pause", that is, press the Pause button (or "P" key) again. I don't think that we would want to duplicate that behaviour with the "Play" button at the expense of losing a one click way to play from the start of the selection.

Having an extra button (like DTXC) could be a viable option.

[Gale Andrews]

I agree that we might have used "Play triangle with a vertical bar to the left of it" for the icon for current play behaviour. We should really have done that when we changed Play so that it restarted playback or restarted paused playback. That is useful behaviour so I agree we would not want to change it.

I see the problem that the Transport Toolbar is not customisable enough.

I think there should be an option that actually shows a Stop and Set Cursor button.

I think a better option than a permanent second Play button would be an option that made the Pause button turn into a Play button when clicking Pause. So at that point there would be two Play buttons. Or just do that anyway.

I do think we must bear in mind that some users may only rarely be playing to find "edit points". Transcription is an obvious use case.

Anyway it's a "feature request" not a bug. What does AndyCivil want to "vote" for?


Gale

[waxcylinder]

I think there should be an option that actually shows a Stop and Set Cursor button.

ooh yes please +1

Or make the Stop button behavior switchable between current behavior and "Stop and Set Cursor" - controlled by a Preferences setting - default, of course, to be current behavior.

Peter.

[AndyCivil]

I like Gale's suggestion of having the "pause" button switch to a "play" button while in the 'paused' state. Because, frankly, that's what the functionality is! Making the icons reflect what the functionality is, seems like a good idea to me. The comment about "now there will be two 'play' buttons" really brings home what's wrong with the interface, because the other 'play' button isn't really that, at all, it's a 'play from start' button. Doesn't that really highlight the issue? You have two buttons with the same icon, but do different things...

You COULD add an extra button, to have "play from start" and "play" as well, with the correct icon, and this would harmonise the interface with other editor software. However, that would require more space. Therefore, my vote would be for the following:

• 1. Don't actually change the functionality at all, but make the buttons carry the correct icon.
• 2. The "play from start" button should have a "play from start" icon on it.
• 3. The "pause" button should switch to a "play" icon while in the paused state.

(Note that you wouldn't see two 'play' icons, because one is a 'play' icon and the other is a 'play from start' icon.)

[AndyCivil]

I just wanted to add two side comments, neither of these are important.

1. It may seem curious that I'm using an audio editor to play a sound file, the reason is that I'm recording a speech with a mono tie-clip microphone, but the recorder is stereo, so I end up with one silent channel. I NEED audacity to delete the silent channel and bring the good channel to both left and right - so it makes sense to listen to the sound right there, instead of go to the hassle of exporting, and opening up a regular media player!

2. I have a similar issue with CD players, because of the overloaded "scan-back, scan-forward" and "track-back", "track-forward" rocker. CD players are designed for music, so they don't consider that I might be listening to a 1 hour audiobook track. I can be half way through a book, and try to scan one way or the other, but if I fumble it at all it might take it as "track-back". Do you know how long it takes, to scan half an hour using a scan button, just to find where you were again? I wish desingers would regard 'current position' as having the importance that it does, and not allow users to delete/lose that important information by a fumble, without an "are you sure" confirmation!