Delay typing into a label or dragging tracks vertically

[waxcylinder]

@both waxcylinder & dickN:
Can you give system details (CPU speed, RAM, OS w/ SP, disc space available)?
Can you give explicit steps (including kind & size of audio) leading to slow behavior?

It's a seven year old Dell Dimension 2400 desktop

Speed = 3.06 GHz

RAM = 512 MB (small, I know, by modern standards)

O/S = XP-HE-SP3

Free Space = 30.6 out of 81.0 gB de-fragged regularly

But note that labelling worked fine and dandy (immediately briskly) in 1.3.12 and previous (and still does - I've tested recently) - so I don't think it's the PC, my inference is that someone's changed something in the code ...

WC

[steve]

Not seeing any slowness with labels here.
Tested with a 50 minute track and a dozen long text labels.
Audacity ® 1.3.14-alpha-Apr 23 2011
Ubuntu 10.10
Intel Core2 Duo @ 2.00GHz 3GB RAM.

[DickN]

@both waxcylinder & dickN:
Can you give system details (CPU speed, RAM, OS w/ SP, disc space available)?

XP has SP3, machine is a laptop with 1.5G mem and CPU speed is typically around 850 MHz (nowhere near spec). Audacity typically reports 6-12 hours of available disk. This is the machine that is least affected by the issue.

The Vista (SP2) machine is 64b, 1.8 GHz quad-core with 4 GB RAM and over 200 recording hours of available disk space. This is the one most affected.

This behavior did not happen with 1.3.12 on either machine.

Can you give explicit steps (including kind & size of audio) leading to slow behavior?

Typically I have one mono track, generally in the 60-90 minute range, and I'm dropping point labels while recording or playing and range labels while stopped. If I type a long label text, on the Vista machine it is not echoed until after I stop typing. The "3-6 seconds" I mentioned previously is from the time I stop typing. It seems like it takes longer with a longer label text.

@dickN -- would you consider changing the thread title to something which might attract other users with this problem? Maybe something like:

Big delay in displaying characters typed into a label or when dragging tracks vertically

Sure! Uh, how do I do that? Won't all the replies have the old title?

[Edgar]

@dickN -- would you consider changing the thread title to something which might attract other users with this problem? Maybe something like:

Big delay in displaying characters typed into a label or when dragging tracks vertically

Sure! Uh, how do I do that? Won't all the replies have the old title?

As the OP (original poster) you may edit the title. Look at the first post (yours) in the thread, at the top right are 4 graphic buttons -- "Edit", "X", "!" & "Quote" -- use "Edit". One of the items you may edit is the title of the post which is what folks will see when they visit the forum and browse the threads. Replies do not inherit but what matters most is what is seen in the forum overview (doing a search will find the replies with the old title so this might actually be good).

[Edgar]

But note that labelling worked fine and dandy (immediately briskly) in 1.3.12 and previous (and still does - I've tested recently)

What is the build date of your 1.3.12 ( Help > About Audacity ). I will look at the commit log starting with that date and see if I can spot anything which might relate to labels. I can build some interim revisions for y'all to test to see if we can pin this down to a specific commit. Without a lot better bug report (specific steps etc.) I doubt we can interest a Developer Programmer unless we also can get a bunch more folks chiming in with "me too" (hence the title change).

[Edgar]

OK, I can now duplicate this problem. I need to have a lot of audio -- it is barely perceptible with 2 hours of mono noise, just noticeable with 3 hrs; with 1 hour I see no problem.

@Steve -- could you re-test with 1 to 4 hours of generated noise?

[Edgar]

I went back to a 14Oct2010 build of 1.3.13 and the problem is in that build as well.

I have a 24Jan2010 build of 1.3.10 but I do not know the revision -- the problem is clearly NOT in this build.

<vulgar explicative> -- SVN only lets me look back a few months. I have no way of digging back into the changes between Jan & Oct 2010.

[steve]

@Steve -- could you re-test with 1 to 4 hours of generated noise?

Sorry, I've got 4 OS's on this machine and not a very big drive, so I've not got space to do much over an hour.
I may be able to have a go on another machine some time next week.

[steve]

I've edited the topic title. Had to go for a shortened version due to the maximum number of characters allowed in a title.

[DickN]

Thanks, Steve!

My 1.3.12 build is dated Mar 29,2010 (sorry about that, Edgar).

Speed of the computer may not be the determining factor. It's much more pronounced on my quad-core Vista machine than on my circa 2006 laptop. The laptop does have a faster disk drive. Probably irrelevant, but will mention anyway: On the Vista machine, when I resize a spectrum plot the plot is redrawn continually as I move the boarder. On the laptop, it's not redrawn until I release the button. It's as if Audacity knows it's running on a slower machine and tries not to keep it too busy.